Web/Mobile App Critique

    The app that I've chosen is TAP The App, which is an app I use frequently for my pool team. It is designed to not only track your statistics as a competitive player, but also to do live scoring during matches. When scoring, there are a variety of options to choose from based on the play made by the shooter; the options chosen then feed into the stats for the player. If a player is on both an 8-ball and 9-ball team, they can see their combined stats for both teams or they can break them out for one type of play over the other.

    Something I would add to the app, if I could, is a random coin flip so we don't have to search for a quarter before every match. Every Tuesday and Thursday you can bet on being asked if you have a coin--you'd think we'd learn to keep one in one of our cases, but alas...

    One thing I don't like about the app is some screens work just fine if you are holding your phone normally, but some need to have the phone turned to fully display. Actually, overall the whole appearance of the app is just not very attractive or professional looking; but then again, it is amateur pool, so why not have an amateur looking app?! (and in case anyone is wondering, the website is worse than the app and--except for the home page--hasn't been updated since 2015-https://tapleague.com/)

    Another piece I would change is something a lot of people are complaining about in the last couple of weeks. We are in playoffs to determine who gets trophies for the session. There are 4 teams and two weeks of playoffs. Nowhere in the app does it tell us who is playing who in the playoff rounds. We've had to call the league operator to find out who we're playing each night. The scheduled games were only listed through the week of May 11, which was the last week of regular session play before playoffs began.

    The third item I would change is in the scoring piece itself. To mark a shooter's play, you choose a button on the screen. Each button is a bright color, except for one. The Time Out button is white, on a white background so it just looks like some letters floating on the screen.

    Navigation in this app is also a nightmare. There is no way to go back to the screen you were just on. You can hit the back button over and over again on your actual phone screen, but often it sticks on the same screen. I usually get frustrated and just shut down the app and reopen it to get to the original home screen because hitting the little house button does not take you to home as you would expect.

    I guess there's a lot about this app I would change if I could. Screens and stats need to be explained better. With a lot of the stats, no one knows how they are calculated or what they are based on. I've already mentioned layout and design as well as navigation. Unlike a lot of types of apps out there though, if you play in the TAP league, you only have the one option for the app.