Interface efficiency

[Arquebus]

I understand the rationale behind having an inefficient interface for the first few iterations, back before Retina and during the 3.5" iPhone era. But now with Retina the standard for iOS devices and the new iPhones being at minimum 4.7" on the diagonal, I think it's time to increase the information density.

The fonts in iOOTP are enormous, making only a few rows available on the screen at one time. But iPhone users routinely read text that is less than 1/3 that size, now that Retina makes it legible.

The other problem I have is with the menu "tree", which is confused in its design. Although it's possible to get the feel for how to get to all of the screens, having multiple routes and an inconsistent interface for switching among them makes the learning curve unnecessarily wonky. Again, with bigger iPhone sizes and Retina screens, adding a menu bar on one edge or even a "drop-down" icon in one corner would not significantly impact readability.

[Markus Heinsohn]

I dunno... adding more info will turn the look & feel into something cramped. So, I disagree here.

[Arquebus]

Originally Posted by Markus Heinsohn

I dunno... adding more info will turn the look & feel into something cramped. So, I disagree here.

You know, I think you're right, on second thought. I've just fired up '14 on my 6+ and the row heights look fine. There's a bit of trailing whitespace between the columns that could tighten up (for example, the Nationality column is much wider than any of the info contained in it), but that's a tiny quibble.

I guess my bigger concerns are the multiple menu trees, and the screen swipes. The baseball button and the Main Menu button have a few duplicate functions.

Baseball Button = Main Menu > Manager > Manager Home
Baseball > League Info = Main Menu > League
Baseball > Manage Team = Main Menu > Team

It would make sense if the Baseball button were an overall shortcut, but as you can see from the list above, the latter two paths are identical in length, and the naming conventions are different. (Especially odd given that the buttons in the Main Menu are enormous, and could stand to have the same longer text as the Baseball button's buttons, which are narrower.)

Also, the screen swipes are inconsistently organized. If you look at the Team Menu, for example, it's laid out left/right top/bottom as follows:

Minor League > Active Roster > Disabled List > Rotation/Bullpen > Front Office > Lineups > Schedule > Edit > Depth Charts > Team drop down > Strategy

But if you swipe to the right to move between screens, starting from Minor League Roster, the sequence is as follows:

Minor League Roster > Disabled List > Active Roster > Rotation/Bullpen > Lineups > Depth Charts > Strategy > Schedule > Front Office > back to Minor League

There is no relationship between the two patterns, making it difficult to learn or get used to. Also, there is no indication on any given screen what is to the "left" or to the "right" of that screen. And since you can't use the menu buttons pattern as a guide, you just have to slog through.

To clarify what I mean here, I'll assign numbers to the menus on the menu page, going left to right and top to bottom. When you do screen swipes, the number pattern is: 1 - 3 - 2 - 4 - 6 - 9 - 11 - 7 - 5 - loop to 1

Even if I re-number top to bottom, then left to right, you get 1 - 2 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 4 - 3 - loop to 1. There's a run in there (7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11) that makes sense, since it's the right side of the menu going top to bottom, and the first two and last two are on the left side of the menu (1 - 2 , then 4 - 3), but it's still not transparent to the user. Even some kind of graphical indication on the menu page that the left and right sides of the menu are distinct groups would be helpful. Though I would still love to see a drop down menu button on each page that lets me hop to one of the screens directly.