A post for Greg about a visual hueristics problem on Tapology.

This will probably be boring to everybody who isn't Greg. 

It's a problem both simple and complicated. Bear with me. This is going somewhere valid. 

First let's get into the logic of picking a fight:

Whenever somebody picks a fighter over another, they are making value judgements based on metrics determined in previous performances of that fighter, and 'weighing' up whether these result in a higher probability of that fighter defeating their opponent.  This involves looking into the records of both fighters, obviously.

And this is where things go awry at the Tapology data-human interfacing level. I am going to break this down slowly, from the beginning:

Let's take one fight from the upcoming card Viera vs Holm. Let's make it Jonathan Martinez   vs.   Vince Morales.

So here's what happens:

Let's say I log into Tapology to make a pick. I see the upcoming UFC card--the one that is pending. I click that thread, and start scrolling through the fights. I decide to pick  Jonathan Martinez   vs.   Vince Morales first. Here I am at a junction. In order for me to pick a fighter, I must first look into their records as per the process detailed above. I choose to look Martinez first. So I click Martinez's name in the thread which is hyperlinked in red.

This takes me to Martinez's profile page. Here, I find a bunch of stats, and graphs. This brings me to the first problem: absolutely none of those graphs are useful, nor necessary to me in making a pick determination in any way whatsoever, because:

A) He is not fighting himself. He's fighting somebody else.
B) Who has beaten and by what manner is far, far more important than the abstracted facts of knowing things such as whether his fights have lasted longer or shorter amounts of time with cumulative fights, record by year, and record by promotion.

I can virtually 100% iron-clad absolutely assure you, absolutely nobody is making reference to any of those things when they make a pick. You might as well include what type of haircut a given fighter had when they took a loss. As a metrical record, this would have as much significance, and would be used in making a determination as frequently. Literally nobody is using those things. There will doubtless be a few contrarians who respond to this post purely out of spite, but I assure, they're absolutely, bona fide full of ****. They never--I repeat--never--look at those graphs. Ever. Nobody is doing that. I'll often use Sherdog out of convenience even though it's vastly inferior to Tapology and is a bigger ****show than Kish's bedspread on curry night purely because those utterly useless graphs--which are quite frankly just chart junk--irk me.

Here's what they are doing, and what I'm doing too: Three degrees of research. It goes like this:

1. Look into fighter A's record
2. Look into fighter B's record
3. Look into the records of who they have beaten, and who they have lost to by method.

Maybe that's 4. Whatever.

And that's it. That is the process of at least 95% of every single human being who picks a fight. You could of course extend this process more and more degrees, but I would almost bet the farm that most people are going to 3-5. Anyone who is not doing that is just picking a fighter based on who has more wins, which is practically an exercise in futility.

Now you might be thinking 'Yeah--so what? You can just click the fighters listed in any given fighter's record and dig in, and so on'. Well here's the problem with doing that: It's a ******* pain in the ass to do on Tapology if you have windows configured they way it comes as factory default, and if you don't know how to do one very simple thing.

Let's get back to Jonathan Martinez   vs.   Vince Morales  by way of example:

If I want to know about Martinez's record,  and Morales' record, I first have to click their respective profiles. The problem here is that I cannot view both of their records at the same time. Visually, I cannot compare and contrast between them respectively. You can extend this problem on and on.

This is the point at which you say 'What the actual **** are you talking about, Fish? Of course you can look at both their profiles simultaneously. If you wanted to look at both of them at the same time, just right-click both of their profiles and window-snap them for side-by-side framing'.

And you'd be right. But the thing that's not being considered here is thus: You would not believe how many people I have met that didn't know that either of these things was possible--or didn't know how to do it. You assume basic operating knowledge, but believe me, it's a bit like common sense--it's not that common. And I would wager with extreme confidence this is happening a LOT on tapology.

'********'.

But is it?

Because I am an expert procrastinator, I did some research to try and verify the fidelity of this notion.

It turns out that, according to at least one study from 2020, that only 1 in 3 adults 40> would be defined as computer-literate in the US, and this figure is substantially worse in countries not the US.


The median age of UFC fans is 40 years.
UFC Corners 90% of the MMA market.
Tapology is accessed from all corners of the globe.

When you consider these things in relation, it's a pretty safe assumption that there's a bunch of people who have enough savvy to find their way to tap, but not enough to create side-by-side panels for viewing records.

So let's assume you didn't know the simple action of window-snapping. What would that mean, and what would that look like when trying to view profiles? Well, it would mean you would have to flit back and forth between pages. What this would result in would be a human 'temporary memory' challenge that virtually nobody would ever pass unless they had a photographic memory. The reason for this is that the median short-term recall span range in human beings is between 20 and 30 seconds--nowhere near long enough to store information between fighters to make a decision. It's at this point that I'll admit to doing this--not because I can't snap windows, but because it's like a kind of mini-game, and yes, I am that literally that sad, weird nerd who enjoys the recall challenge.

Anyway, what would happen at that point would be that someone opened a fighter profile on Tapology, and opened their opponent's profile on something else....like Sherdog. This would enable them to click between records without page loads--which still isn't ideal, but would still be preferable to flitting back-and-forth between pages with clicks. So essentially, windows/browsing illiteracy is very likely splitting Tapology's market share with sherdog any other sits which provide fighter data.

The way to fix this is to code in an option that allows both competing fighters' records to be viewed simultaneously in one frame. There needs to be a button, and it needs to be highlighted in fluorescent danger yellow lines running at angles, like the do-not-step-over line at the subway, and it needs to read: Compare. And when somebody clicks that button, it needs to create a side-by-side window featuring the record of both fighters. And below that, there needs to be data which is meaningful for comparative use. For example: X fighter has won by submission x amount of times, while his opponent x has lost by submission x amount of times'.

Anyway, I hope this post proves useful and is at least food for thought. The schematic outlined directly above would be a cleaner, more streamlined system preferable to the one that exists for everybody whether they can window-snap or not. It would mean less page clicks generated. Which may or may not be good for business. I don't know how it all works.

Maybe it's better a second window, 
bellow the original stats...
so you can put there the comparison section... !?
So you can open anything you want at the time... !? 
( just think around... ) 





Or something similar... !?