Overview
Players and tournament directors were frustrated with the current process of manually tracking results on paper. I partnered with Chess Palace to research, design, and test a new dashboard that updates real-time results during their 56th annual chess tournament. As a result, transforming the handwritten process into a digitized system strikes the balance between efficiency, fairness, and engagement for users and stakeholders.
Timeline
4-weeks
Role
Product Designer
Type
Info Dashboard
Mobile/Tablet
New to chess like me? Expand for a crash course in chess tournaments!
Chess Tournament Refresher!
Information About the Chess Player
Chess players are registered on the United States Chess Federation (USCF) organization with their:
- Name
- USCF 8-digit ID # (player identifier number)
- USCF Rating (player skill level)
- ranges from 100 being the lowest, and 3000 at the highest
- the higher the number, the better you are as a player
The People Involved
Tournament Director
The tournament director is responsible for setting up players and making sure that USCF rules are observed.
The Players
Players usually play against someone of a similar rating.
In the game, one player plays the White pieces, while the opponent plays the Black pieces.
They meet at a board designated with a number.
Other Terms
“Bye”
When a chess player will skip a specific round and comes back later
“Withdraw”
When a chess player leaves the tournament for good and does not come back to later rounds
Players must notify tournament directors about these changes so that pairings can be adjusted accordingly for players who want to play.
The Charts in a Chess Tournament
When you walk into a chess tournament at American Open, you will see a poster board like this with three different sheets of paper.
Here is the breakdown of each chart:
The Pairings Chart
answers “Who am I playing against?“
The Standings Chart
answers “How do my results compare to others in my section?”
It is ordered by highest to lowest updated rating (“Post” column) within a section.
The Wall Chart
answers ”How is everyone else doing?”
The wall chart is ordered from top to bottom shown by the highest to the lowest overall rating.
🎉 Congratulations, you can now volunteer at chess tournaments!
Problem
A large chess tournament run with paper-printed dashboard is prone to schedule delays and misinformation
Every year during the Thanksgiving holiday break, up to 800 individuals gather to compete in the chess tournament called the American Open.
It is hosted by ChessPalace, a family-run business in Orange County run by the Ong family. Chess Palace provides chess lessons for players of all ranges, from toddlers to expert-level Grandmasters.
I participated as a volunteer to help the chess tournament and observed:
- The Tournament Director was the single-point failure and bottleneck – manually enters game results, creates pairings, and addresses all anomolies
- lack of structure for communicating concerns – chess players complaining to the tournament director about cheating and incorrect game results while he’s preparing rounds
- error-prone system to track and update game results – piles of paper charts next to the tournament director, only as organized as he can direction focused attention to
- redundant information on Pairings, Wall Charts, and Standings Charts
Research
The negative impacts of an outdated system
I dug deeper into the process through user interviews with the tournament director and several chess players.
Key pain points I gathered are
- concerns with cheating: people are erasing answers, or people say they won when they didn’t win
- incorrect pairings: malicious results output wrong pairings for the next round
- time sinks: fixes may involve recalling back all results and increase delays
Identifying redundant information
The dashboard consists of three charts:
Once I broke down the information on the dashboards, I found that there was the same kind of information posted on three charts.
While wall charts, standings, and pairings show information differently when printed on separate sheets, the digital version can be more creative for both the tournament director and players.
Creating a better user flow for chess players and tournament directors
User Personas of Target Users
Based on user interviews, user flows, and observations, I narrowed down to two distinct users for this design:
- Chess players aged 13+ (tournament assistants help children under 13 to enter results)
- need information and updates in a timely manner
- need a robust method of entering accurate results
- would like to browse other players’ information and history while waiting
- Tournament directors
- need to provide live, automated updates to players
- need to communicate with players synchronously
Chess players will primarily enter game results and tournament directors will pull this data to create pairings for the next rounds, thus chess players will drive the inputs.
Ideation
Sketching new interfaces for chess players
I brainstormed through low-fidelity sketches to determine the features we want. The client and I marked features with red stars to progress to higher fidelity designs.
Wall Charts + Standings + Pairings = New Dashboard
Submitting Results
Communicate Byes and Withdraws to Tournament Director
Final Designs
Turning sketches into high-fidelity prototypes
Player Dashboard
This is the revamp where information from wall charts, standings, and pairings are combined into an all-in-one view, with players listed and their results with time.
Filter Dashboard into Wall Charts, Standings, Pairings
The all-in-one view can be more information than necessary depending on the context, so players and audiences can filter out the information they need to see or turn it into a wall chart, standing, or pairings board.
Submitting Results
It is important that both players submit results to prevent cheating.
Tracking Byes and Withdraws Throughout Games
Players can communicate their withdrawals and byes to tournament directors ahead of time so that future games can be planned accordingly, reducing delays.
Notifications
Notifications are a systematic way to communicate between tournament directors and players, without players bombarding tournament directors in person or too late when games have already started.
Mobile & Tablet Versions
I created both mobile and tablet version prototypes for the following reasons:
- users immediately thought “mobile” would be the solution
- the topic of players using mobile to cheat came up frequently during user interviews
- the first two points contradict each other
- tablet can replace boards and mitigate cheating
Results
User Testing: “Will players like the mobile version more than the iPad version as they predicted?”
I tested both prototypes on real players after they finished their games.
Here are the insights I received:
- easy to navigate – including how to submit results, interpret information, and navigate through different features
- tablet was preferred over mobile – although mobile was initially thought to be most convenient
- use mobile for read-only – so that non-players can follow live time information and use iPad just for submitting results
Overall, a success for usable design!
Reflection
Innovation requires a new set of eyes
As a non-chess player, this was an exciting project that required a lot of problem-solving and innovation!
I was nervous about the learning curve going from Wall Charts, Pairings, and Standings to the player dashboard, but very relieved to find that it wasn’t confusing at all.
As a student designer working with a real family business, the most important takeaways I learned from this project are:
- design is not the same as developing the product
- scope creep can happen when the problem statement is forgotten
- design solution needs to align with development capabilities
To be continued…
The clients were very excited about the design solutions I had proposed. We are searching for a developer who will fit the client’s budget to help us bring the design to life.
In the meantime, the client will transition to QR codes and Google Drive.
