I have redesigned the Fantasy Scout website.

My (incomplete) redesign notes run at more than 9,000 words, but I don’t want to bore you, so here I’ll post just some major points.

General principles

What to have on the site:

For the following actions… the ones that are needed in order to play (here “to play” doesn’t include “to act as a gamemaster”) the ones already considered in the previous version of the site

…a way to do them…

…and the data needed to do them, details and causes of those data, details and causes of those details/causes, etc.

Criteria:

Every cause/detail is next to the datum or is linked from it.

The site must be working in the browsers used by 95% web users in the world. (by the way, did you know the site loads on the first web broswer ever? 🙂 )

Max width: 60 characters. It is OK to hide a datum, if… …one doesn’t need to compare different rows about that datum (for example, the given name of a player, because you only need to know a player’s given name – you don’t need to compare it with the given name of the other players)… …and one doesn’t need to filter rows on the basis of that datum… …and the datum has no causes.

Min text size: 12.

Generally, the design is opinionated.

Workflow-breaking changes

I tried not to disrupt the existing workflows of the site users. However, I had to break two of them, in order to allow a new feature and to keep the site consistent. Here are the two changes:

To check the international matches played by a given player, you don’t click on the name of the player anymore (doing so lets you see anagraphic data and links); rather, you click on the number of points the player has scored.

To check the players picked by a given scouts in a given cycle, you don’t click on the name of the scout anymore; rather, you click on the number of his players.

The good news is that, now that the behaviour of the site is consistent, I won’t have to break any workflow anymore (at least as long as I keep the basic idea of the site…).

The future

Let’s start from you. Of course any bug report is very welcome. But I am also open to suggestions! Finally, don’t forget that you can design a guest page. For all this (i.e. bug reports, suggestions, guest pages) you can contact me at milivella@gmail.com .

As for me, this is the list of the user-facing changes I’m considering:

Restore the blue color for links (and pseudo-links, i.e. expandable content).

Addressing the problem of the performance of pages featuring a large table, starting from the Caps one.

For consistency’s sake, having expandable (and collapsible) content formatted as link not only in the tables but also outside of them (where they are now marked as “[+]”).

Using real arrows (e.g. ←) instead of fake ones (<- or <) in the ranking navigation strips.

Finding a more readable way to display the dates of the last updates.

Letting users choose what columns are displayed (suggested by Daniele).

Adding placeholder text (e.g. “Filter”) to the filter fields.

Having the meaning of the column header abbreviations (also) as tooltips.

Making the arrows that mark the sorted column more visible.

Fixing the problem that in Predicted Rankings pages, scouts who are tied by points are given different positions.

Again in the Predicted Rankings pages, adding an “average position” column.

Changing the way player names are made unique: now it is “Jones P.”, but it could be “Jones, Phil” or “Jones (Phil)”.

Having a slightly more fine-grained market value in the Players page while not infringing Transfermarkt’s copyright. E.g. 8.5, 8, 7.5, 7… instead of 8, 7…

Fixing the pop-ups in the Players Prediction page: it should be at the center of the page; you should be able to close by clickin an “x”; they should be more readable (by inverting bold and non-bold? by making it a mini-table?).