4 ms·

The site is not helpful, and gets in the way of teaching. I am the target demographic, and went straight to the exercises. So much clicks on every step, the but

by iamshs 12y ago

The site is not helpful, and gets in the way of teaching. I am the target demographic, and went straight to the exercises. So much clicks on every step, the buttons to click on are grey and mouse focus turns them even more dull. Provide some visual clues on what buttons to click next, going forward and going backwards button both are the same color. Exercises themselves are more trivia then help in teaching what the piece does or where you went wrong. And "moving past the basics" exercises are http://i.imgur.com/c54R08y.png http://i.imgur.com/c54R08y.png I just left on the first exercise itself. One of the hints: Attack two pieces at once. Yeah, right. Nothing like codeacademy at all.

aparadja 12y ago
The how-to-draw-an-owl example is not accurate at all. If you would not have gone "to the exercises ignoring all the other stuff", you would have gotten a clear 6 minute lecture where Andrew Ng explains, in detail, the position in the first exercise. In the video, he introduces three tactics, the fork, the pin and the skewer, which are methods to attack two pieces at once. If your comment was just plain sarcasm, then I apologize, I didn't get it.
- iamshs 12y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8156581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8156581 This is the problem. He/She conveyed it better. A single hint buried under verbose reading, and then a freaking pop-up saying the same hint.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  [please read edit!] I think GP comment is right to some extent. I went in with the "moving past the basics" and watched the whole video, it didn't teach me anything I didn't know. I found the setting up of the positions distracting - it should either have been set-up in advance or he should have talked about the positions, named the openings and such, or kept quiet. You're watching moves but they don't relate to what he's saying until the position is set and we start the actual lesson. The grey "move on" button was not at all obvious, standard "go" green would help. When you complete the exercises it simply prevents you moving the last piece rather than indicating on the board that the exercise is complete and you did it. It doesn't look like there is more than one possible response either, which means that additional hints could tell you the next move they're expecting. The examples were facile until the "combining tactics" - then I did Bf4 (bishop from c1 to f4) and the exercise just sticks ... did I do it or is it glitch, there's no feedback. Should I click to move on? There's no affordance or visual indication as to what to do next. Similarly there's no explanation - AFAICT - why you did right [?] moving to f4 (protects c7 for the knight to do the king-rook fork?). The quiz questions get the feedback correct, they show the answer in green (don't know what they do if you get it wrong ;0)) but the last question then goes to a further question "undefined", what now? Should I click the greyed out arrow to move on?? Is part one over? The board: when learning usually you get piece move highlighting wherein you click a piece and it tells you the available moves via highlights on the squares. That's usually paired with ability to click the destination rather than dragging the pieces which can be a bit awkward. Oh, just went back to first exercise to see if it did "move highlighting". The pawn when dragged over e3 changes the "undo" to "move on", now I can't see if there are any other valid moves. Perhaps I twitched, did I get it right? Which square was the right one? Logged in, slight problem as I had js disabled, but easy to handle and not unexpected. Takes me on to "Tactic 14954" - I've done a move (Bf5) and board is frozen, did I win? Same as with the exercises. Is the board waiting for the server to tell it the next move, is there a js engine that's computing the next move?? I'm assuming it's done but the only available button says "give up", so ...? Aside: Is there a way to export chess problems easily to a local chess board? That would be great, could use the videos, export to a local board with extra features and that would let you play on the positions and such. It's a good start. Looks generally nice but there are some pretty big UX problems that cross in to genuine bugs in utility IMO. [Using FF31 on Kubuntu] Edit: Apologies, it appears to be a problem with FF31.0 for me, Chrome is working, giving feedback and such. Will let comment stand.
  - Matetricks 12y ago
    Thanks so much for the feedback! This comment is immensely valuable in helping us test cross-browser compatibility. Glad to hear everything's working smoothly on Chrome.
Matetricks 12y ago
In the videos before each set of exercises, I try to lay out all of the key ideas so you have in your arsenal everything you need to successfully complete the lesson. I probably don't succeed in this goal all of the time, so your feedback is very useful for me in rethinking how a user progresses through the exercises. Providing an option to read the solution after a certain number of incorrect moves may improve the overall experience and discourage brute-forcing the answer.
- icco 12y ago
  One thing I've learned in writing coding exercises, is that engineers tend to jump straight to the example code, ignoring all previous instruction. It might help to build your examples with the possibility that your student totally ignored everything you've said up until they started moving pieces.
  - Matetricks 12y ago
    Good idea - we might prompt the user to go back and review the video if they seem to be struggling with the exercises.
    - octatone2 12y ago
      I think the main problem is that when you get into the exercises that require combinations of tactics, it assumes the student has the capacity to make that leap, or recall on demand everything they have learned and put them all together without a helping hand. I'm towards the end of "Diving Deep" and I'm ready to give up as the exercises continually lead me to brute force moves until I hit the specific move you are looking for.

by iamshs 12y ago

aparadja 12y ago

The how-to-draw-an-owl example is not accurate at all. If you would not have gone "to the exercises ignoring all the other stuff", you would have gotten a clear 6 minute lecture where Andrew Ng explains, in detail, the position in the first exercise. In the video, he introduces three tactics, the fork, the pin and the skewer, which are methods to attack two pieces at once. If your comment was just plain sarcasm, then I apologize, I didn't get it.

iamshs 12y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8156581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8156581 This is the problem. He/She conveyed it better. A single hint buried under verbose reading, and then a freaking pop-up saying the same hint.
pbhjpbhj 12y ago
[please read edit!] I think GP comment is right to some extent. I went in with the "moving past the basics" and watched the whole video, it didn't teach me anything I didn't know. I found the setting up of the positions distracting - it should either have been set-up in advance or he should have talked about the positions, named the openings and such, or kept quiet. You're watching moves but they don't relate to what he's saying until the position is set and we start the actual lesson. The grey "move on" button was not at all obvious, standard "go" green would help. When you complete the exercises it simply prevents you moving the last piece rather than indicating on the board that the exercise is complete and you did it. It doesn't look like there is more than one possible response either, which means that additional hints could tell you the next move they're expecting. The examples were facile until the "combining tactics" - then I did Bf4 (bishop from c1 to f4) and the exercise just sticks ... did I do it or is it glitch, there's no feedback. Should I click to move on? There's no affordance or visual indication as to what to do next. Similarly there's no explanation - AFAICT - why you did right [?] moving to f4 (protects c7 for the knight to do the king-rook fork?). The quiz questions get the feedback correct, they show the answer in green (don't know what they do if you get it wrong ;0)) but the last question then goes to a further question "undefined", what now? Should I click the greyed out arrow to move on?? Is part one over? The board: when learning usually you get piece move highlighting wherein you click a piece and it tells you the available moves via highlights on the squares. That's usually paired with ability to click the destination rather than dragging the pieces which can be a bit awkward. Oh, just went back to first exercise to see if it did "move highlighting". The pawn when dragged over e3 changes the "undo" to "move on", now I can't see if there are any other valid moves. Perhaps I twitched, did I get it right? Which square was the right one? Logged in, slight problem as I had js disabled, but easy to handle and not unexpected. Takes me on to "Tactic 14954" - I've done a move (Bf5) and board is frozen, did I win? Same as with the exercises. Is the board waiting for the server to tell it the next move, is there a js engine that's computing the next move?? I'm assuming it's done but the only available button says "give up", so ...? Aside: Is there a way to export chess problems easily to a local chess board? That would be great, could use the videos, export to a local board with extra features and that would let you play on the positions and such. It's a good start. Looks generally nice but there are some pretty big UX problems that cross in to genuine bugs in utility IMO. [Using FF31 on Kubuntu] Edit: Apologies, it appears to be a problem with FF31.0 for me, Chrome is working, giving feedback and such. Will let comment stand.
- Matetricks 12y ago
  Thanks so much for the feedback! This comment is immensely valuable in helping us test cross-browser compatibility. Glad to hear everything's working smoothly on Chrome.

Matetricks 12y ago

In the videos before each set of exercises, I try to lay out all of the key ideas so you have in your arsenal everything you need to successfully complete the lesson. I probably don't succeed in this goal all of the time, so your feedback is very useful for me in rethinking how a user progresses through the exercises. Providing an option to read the solution after a certain number of incorrect moves may improve the overall experience and discourage brute-forcing the answer.

icco 12y ago
One thing I've learned in writing coding exercises, is that engineers tend to jump straight to the example code, ignoring all previous instruction. It might help to build your examples with the possibility that your student totally ignored everything you've said up until they started moving pieces.
- Matetricks 12y ago
  Good idea - we might prompt the user to go back and review the video if they seem to be struggling with the exercises.
  - octatone2 12y ago
    I think the main problem is that when you get into the exercises that require combinations of tactics, it assumes the student has the capacity to make that leap, or recall on demand everything they have learned and put them all together without a helping hand. I'm towards the end of "Diving Deep" and I'm ready to give up as the exercises continually lead me to brute force moves until I hit the specific move you are looking for.