Very cool. I really like the new interface!
Here's what I noticed. Note that though I'm a 4-year drive & strategy team veteran, this is my first season as scout team manager for our team. (Also, this is our team's first season with a scout team manager.
) Additionally, I'm not a programmer, so I really don't know what most of this entails or how hard it is/would be.
1) What's better than the old version: Navigation is much smoother, and the aesthetics are very nice. (That "Found 1 matching teams" popup was getting rather annoying, no offense.) URLs are much easier to decipher and manipulate. I love that you can search match results by team number!
2) What's worse than the old version: not much. It'd be nice to get the standings & awards links back for events.
3) New feature ideas:
- It'd be nice if the "teams attending" list gave seeding scores as well. Coopertition and Hanging would be a plus, along with the ability to sort by any of them. Awards would be epic.
- Having match results on the team page would be great.
- Maybe it's just me, but I really don't need the Team Search Results page. If I typed an accurate number/unique name, can it just go to their page? (It could have some other way to get to the general search results.) If they were inactive this year, it'd be nice to have a warning on the top of the page, though.
- The pages for an individual team by event are a neat idea, but it'd be nice if you could get to the overall team page from there. Also, if the "Teams Played With/Against" lists were hyperlinked to those teams as well.
- The team awards section is good, but it's missing most if not all of the 2010 awards. I don't know what the problem is, but the most disconcerting thing is that there's no warning. Even a "This list does not include 2010 Awards" would be helpful.
- The Champions/Finalists award listings (sans 2010) are good. It'd be great to have all the elimination placings, with draft order if possible. Or, at least qualification seed would be nice. I know you can't pull it directly from FIRST's lists, though, which makes it difficult. (1114's database does this, and I've found it invaluable for my own scouting.)
- This may just be my connection, but the site (and just that site) is still running very slowly. Not sure how easy that is to address.
If you're looking for some more quantitative pre-competition scouting metrics, below is a list of what I use in my own scouting. Work in progress, and it's slimmed down to what I find most relevant for a given event (ie doesn't include much history or detail).
Basically I'd love to see number of previous events this season (for quick reference when you're doing 80 teams, I know I can count them
), hanging points (quick though not fool-proof indication of hanging ability), and most of the 1114 and 2834 stats.
List, "+" indicates recommendation. See
here for rationales
Team number
Team nickname
+ Number of previous official competitions this season
Name of last official non-championship event, and of championship division if applicable
+ Average score per match at last official non-championship event (2834)
+ Average Winning Margin at last official non-championship event (2834)
+ Elimination Placings this season along with draft number for all official events
Engineering and Other Awards, including multiplicities
+ Average Offensive Score, world percentile (1114)
+ Calculated Contribution, world percentile (1114)
+ Seeding Score, world percentile (1114)
+ Average Defensive Score, world percentile (1114)
+ Contribution to Winning Margin, world rank percentile (2834)
+ Percent of Qualification Matches Won at last non-championship event, and championship division if applicable
+ Percentile Rank at last official non-championship event, and overall championship percentile rank if applicable
+ Hanging Points Scored at last official non-championship event