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Where in the USA is this?

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Re: Where in the USA is this?

#201

Post by smaudet »

mike_hock wrote: post #66
bhaney wrote: post #60

The most interesting part of this to me is the UX feedback from the comments here. Many people, myself included, say they had no idea at first that the photos were all meant to be from the same location, even though the very first sentence of the instructions was "There are five photos from the same place." I'm pretty sure I read the instructions, I guess that just didn't register? An opportunity to reflect on how ha…

Oh, I didn't even realize that until I read your comment. I got a lucky first guess and thought "wow, I'm good at this," and then they just kept getting worse, lol. I guess it's because that information is dropped at the wrong time, because right after that you first have to spend time on figuring out how the weird UI works so you can actually make your guess. Why does the map have to be hidden behind a button, and w…

I have a context for a fair number of mobile games. The UI felt fairly intuitive to me.

Was it great? No. But I also didn't have to spend any time figuring anything put.

Context matters the most.

Re: Where in the USA is this?

#202

Post by smaudet »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #179
ethanbond wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is a design problem. The fact that so many missed it is just evidence of how subtly tricky good design is.

That's a kind of standard answer about manuals and design, and on the one hand I understand its practicality, but on the other hand, I'm starting to have doubts - this approach may be another cause of exacerbating the very problem it's trying to work around. That is, the more stuff is usable without reading manuals, the more people ignore the manuals - making it harder to build complex, powerful tools, and in fact cr…

I mostly agree, except this is a simple game. It should be simple to play.

If folk aren't seeing the text laid out in front of them, there are a couple tricks - demonstrate, make the instructions pictographic/difficult to dismiss.

There is a fine line between making your game accessible and providing too much instruction, but I can think of a couple visual cues that probably could have been given.

That being said I had no problem reading the intro, on the other hand I will regularly finish those long, long, long 45 minute articles that have "congratulations you made it to the bottom", and I know generally people who are great at reading much, much faster than me have little problem figuring out "techy" things, so I do think in general people just don't read enough.

Re: Where in the USA is this?

#203

Post by chefandy »

ethbr0 wrote: post #132
anonu wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH I understood the instructions immediately. This is a fundamental issue in UX. Some users will know right away and others will not. Maybe a better sentence structure? Maybe something like "Guess the 1 location where all these photos were taken" (?) From my experience, most people don't read the instructions or text notes anyway. So its possible that an even better UX is one where the user figures out what they ca…

> From my experience, most people don't read the instructions or text notes anyway. This fascinated me ~90s computer gaming. There were clear camps of "people who always read the manual" and "people who never never read the manual."

As a designer, I can assure you that 90+% of computer users will never read a line of actual software documentation in their entire lives. It's not because they're lazy, it's because they don't have to. In many cases it doesn't even exist. The FOSS community almost universally blames marketing and advertising for the dominance of commercial consumer-level software, but that doesn't hold a candle to the experience upgrade of using professionally designed software. To people with a mental model of the way computers function, the differences seem trivial, or even annoying. To everybody else, they're essential. To a developer, an interface is the way users interact with the application. To everybody else, the interface is the application.

Re: Where in the USA is this?

#204

Post by Washuu »

chrisco255 wrote: post #152
postmodest wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was off by 6 miles because the actual pin is off by six miles for the last picture. Also, as an American, the fact that I recognized the first picture to within 50 miles makes me sad. Our bridges should not look like that, even there.

The bridge in the fitst photo is an old one lane bridge, probably was used by carriages. It looks like it mostly just connects a small neighborhood of houses, not a main road by any means. There are probably newer concrete bridges out of frame, but they're not as picturesque as old steel bridges.

There are plenty of old steel and wood bridges across the northeast that are exactly like that. They are closed to general traffic and only used by locals.

Re: Where in the USA is this?

#205

Post by mjsweet »

No kidding, I’m from Australia and my first guess was 155 miles from the location. My closest ended up being 140. I basically thought, “that looks like the mid west… Alabama” and had a stab!

Edit: sorry I meant Nashville

Re: Where in the USA is this?

#206

Post by [deleted] »

ethbr0 wrote: post #132
anonu wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH I understood the instructions immediately. This is a fundamental issue in UX. Some users will know right away and others will not. Maybe a better sentence structure? Maybe something like "Guess the 1 location where all these photos were taken" (?) From my experience, most people don't read the instructions or text notes anyway. So its possible that an even better UX is one where the user figures out what they ca…

> From my experience, most people don't read the instructions or text notes anyway. This fascinated me ~90s computer gaming. There were clear camps of "people who always read the manual" and "people who never never read the manual."

[deleted]

Re: Where in the USA is this?

#207

Post by tripa »

vansid wrote: post #197
TeMPOraL wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manuals in the 90s were sometimes actually fun . I still occasionally reminisce about that time in primary school, when one of the classmates bought (well, his parents did, I suppose) an original, boxed copy of StarCraft. He used to briefly lend the CD, and at some point copies of the CD started circulating, and he would just share the CD key with a few people - but in between, he lent me the manual . I think I was t…

Some old-school 80s and 90s games used manuals as form of copy protection. I distinctly remember parts of "Day of the Tentacle" where the game would ask you to enter a word or phrase from the manual...and if you didn't have it (because you copied the disk and not the manual), then you couldn't move forward. Pretty interesting idea that eschewed technological tricks to prevent copying.

DoTT copy protection involved balancing the portable battery's chemicals. Copying a word or phrase feels off brand for a LucasArts game, that was more of a Sierra thing.

Which specific version do you distinctly remember?

Re: Where in the USA is this?

#208

Post by grigri907 »

jb1991 wrote: post #55
brezelgoring wrote: post #34

I got 0 mi! [1] After the first 2 I stopped attempting cities and figured the picture didn't matter, it was a game of triangulation. Nice game, I like it, even though I've never set foot in the US. [1] Spoilers! - https://i.imgur.com/azCWc3i.png

I must have missed the part in the instructions where all the photos are from the same place. Is that what you mean by triangulation?

Imagine drawing a circle with a radius of your error each time you guess. After the second guess, there will be only two intersecting points. A careful third guess should tell you which of the two it is.

Re: Where in the USA is this?

#210

Post by mitchdoogle »

chefandy wrote: post #203
ethbr0 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From my experience, most people don't read the instructions or text notes anyway. This fascinated me ~90s computer gaming. There were clear camps of "people who always read the manual" and "people who never never read the manual."

As a designer, I can assure you that 90+% of computer users will never read a line of actual software documentation in their entire lives. It's not because they're lazy, it's because they don't have to. In many cases it doesn't even exist. The FOSS community almost universally blames marketing and advertising for the dominance of commercial consumer-level software, but that doesn't hold a candle to the experience upg…

It seems to me like some of the most successful commercial software virtually requires either reading the documentation, or doing some sort of training
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