I made an app to build badminton tournaments, feedback from tournament organizer requested

They way of creating a new event is very unintuitive. When I run a tournament, I'll start with the events, before any entries are in.

I would move Tournament configuration (tournament name, public or not, court configuration) to a separate tab. In particular, it should not be possible to easily delete courts.

Event configuration should also be in a tab of its own.

I'm not sure what reaching final rounds per pool does. In general, I would like to have the option to configure multiple rounds in any fashion, with common systems (groups of x players, then single-elimination with 4/8/16 players, with Top 4 / Top 8 / Top 16 playoffs, optionally a similar tournament for place 16-32) being options.

I'm surprised that the default scoring system is 1x21_21, not 3x21_30, but ok. Apparently 5x11_15 can not be selected? That's rather strange.

When I click on Select the number of pools, nothing happens.

What are the numbers I can input before players in an event? Seeding would be appropriate, but it should be labelled.

I'm not sure what the explicit match creation is about. I would love to be able to modify the size of the event.

The UI in the event details is much clearer in describing what is going to happen than that in the event creation. Why not use a nice diagram during event creation?

The tie breaker is really not clear. There should be more text; I'd also simply list the other criteria (presumably matches won / games won / points won), maybe on another dialog.

Priority for events seems to be a strange feature. I guess I understand what it does, but why would I prioritize one event before another? I may be prioritizing players (notably those who are still in in multiple disciplines), but not events.

This software seems to be designed for informal and small tournaments. Even in the private tournaments I run, we would plan out the entire day beforehand - otherwise you'd risk large wait times. Typically, I would have events starting throughout the entire day - say, MD A and MD B start at 9:00, then WD A at 9:30, then WD B at 10:30, MD C at 12:00 etc. . This way, you only have to wait 30 minutes or an hour between matches, which makes it much more comfortable. Many players can also sleep in

I like that the software seems to work even when you're offline! This is great if it actually works, since mobile connections can be spotty in some halls.

Esc and Enter should decline and confirm modal dialogs, most notably score input.

Score input fields are type=text, number would be more appropriate. Bonus points: Let me enter the loser's score (e.g. 17 -15 20) and automatically fill out the result (21:17 15:21 22:20).

I should not be able to enter invalid scores, like 12:12.

How do you mark that a player did not show up, or gave up because of injury?

There are also a number of strange texts: Subscriptions should be Entries, Control Table should be Tournament, Order of play for this event should be Event priority, tieBreaker should be Tie Breaker, Start Matchs should be Start matches. There are also inconsistencies with the capitalization.

For me, a number of features are missing:

• Club association of players. Here in Germany, every tournament asks for the club, to avoid players from the same club playing together in the group phase. It also increases the team spirit and it's easier to know who to contact in case of problems, like the player not showing up on time.
• There doesn't seem to be a way to print scoresheets, letalone umpire sheets. In many halls we play in, tournament control is overhead, and it takes a couple of minutes for the score to reach from the court to tournament control. Therefore (and to avoid problems), score recording on paper is really a must here, even for private tournaments.
• There's no way to record if a player/entry paid. (The workaround is simple: Ask everyone to pay before they can get on court)
• Export to tournamentsoftware.com would be a must-have here.
• Import from tournamentsoftware.com would be nice.
• Import/export from/to BTP would be good for the transition.
• To be assured of the longevity and to be able to fix bugs, there should either be a large company behind it, or the source code should be published. This would also allow local-only deployments in the hall, which work independent of network connection.

 

In the tournaments I organize, there are really two roles: One team is planning the tournament, and another team is entering results, calling out matches, etc. . For official tournaments, In lower tournaments, the latter role may even be done by kids, so that's why I thought adding courts on the main screen for these kids wouldn't be a good idea.

In general, we also plan ahead the entire tournament, since we tend to be limited by courts (and umpires for higher tournaments).

This is because coaches and the players want to know when their first match is beforehand. At official tournaments, we also publish timetables of start times. As a player, I appreciate that; as it allows me to eat or go to the physio when I know I have a longer pause coming up.

About seeding: you mention that seeding numbers must be unique. But many tournaments seed only approximately, like two players on 3/4 and 4 players on 5/8. Also, how do you seed? I do this with an external system which lists league level as well as the an ELO-style score of all the matches the players has played in (official or well-run private) tournaments so far.

The steps from starting an event to having the matches scheduled is not intuitive at all: I have to select the number of pools (which looks strange, not like a standard button at all - it's a radio input, right?) and then click Create Matchs (which really means drawing the players, right?). Afterwards, how do I redraw? Although the interface of BTP is very convoluted, it seems much more powerful.

Also, what does the Launch Finals button do? By default, I would much prefer players to be promoted automatically once it's clear they're first.

Yes, but that wouldn't fair, would it? If a very good player is injured in the second game of the second match, then their first opponent will have 0:2 games, their second opponent 2:1, and their third opponent 2:0. Most tournaments strike out all results of the player to make it fair.