I’m working with two Bristol University computer science teams who are each developing an Android app for a really nice user interface to the squash websites; badsquash and squashlevels.
We’re targeting a much improved process rather than just a nice interface and this is the sort of thing we have in mind for badsquash (also applies to the Somerset system):
- The captain finds out when and where the next league match is and sends a prompt to all the players in his/her team about this and to ask them to check and enter their availability. The DB can be searched for possible club players to start with. Could be a long list so only a few will be part of the team.
- The players receive the prompt and make sure their availability is up to date. They can do this at any time but it does change and a prompt is good.
- From the availability the captain selects the team and sends this back out to the players. Some are in and some are out. Some maybe reserves.
- There may even be some way of organising who’s driving – a nice to have
- At some point, the captains will confirm who’s playing and in what order. At that point both captains (and perhaps the players) have access to both lists. That’s very nice as everyone will know who they are playing even before they get there.
- On the night everyone plays and a number of players get to mark. The app will provide a simple marking function using the pre-agreed names.
- Each match result is available for the captain to review and after the matches have all been played he/she can confirm with the away captain and send off to the system. Nothing is officially recorded until then.
- During the social time (after the matches) the app could even give a report of how it went – a nice to have.
- Personalised profile page with access to the various ranking lists for the player
And this is what we have in mind for squashlevels:
- Help with finding a local club with players of about the right standard
- Hold times for the player when they can play such as Tuesday lunchtimes, Monday evenings etc. Perhaps even specific dates.
- Show the user who is available for a game and when and what standard they are. Suggest players of about the same standard who are available.
- Allow the user to select potential opponents and then send out a request to them
- Allow those players to accept a request and therefore agree to play on a particular date/time
- Allow the players to enter the results of the match afterwards
- Similar functionality around playing box matches. I.e. arranging a game with their opponents and entering the results afterwards.
- Personalised access to the box pages
- Personalised profile page with access to the various ranking lists for the player
If you’d like to be involved in any of the follow ways then please get back to me. These projects have already started so don’t hold back if you’re interested:
- Input on functionality - what should the app do, how should it look, what’s the most useful way it could improve your squash playing life?
- Testing – be able to download beta app (from Google Play), try them out and give us feedback. Feedback would need to be timely – i.e. within one week.
You don’t need to be local or a computer genius, just keen, interested and willing to help.
Thanks,
Richard Bickers.
