Badges, Badges, Badges

This week, we were assigned into new groups to continue building mockups of Devcathlon (the Hackystat game). My group consisted of Robin Raqueno and Anthony Du. I thought we did well as a group. We didn't start early but we still kept a reasonable schedule considering it was Super Bowl weekend and everyone just wanted to spend time with their families and friends.

So the focus for this mockup was to (1) create three new award events, (2) create three new badges, and (3) come up with a level system when a user accumulates so many badges.

As a group, we were able to quickly reflect on our bad habits and use that to our advantage. We all sort of just went "oh yea!" or "that's right." So between the three of us, we came up with the following:

1. New Events
• Falling Coverage Trend (DEDUCT) -- Often times we found ourselves writing code without test cases. We normally just bring our coverage back at the end. If the falling trend continues over n days, we felt a deduction is warranted here.
• Team Communication (AWARD/DEDUCT) -- Communication is key. Although hard to keep track, perhaps all involved users need to file once a week "Self-Report Event" with topics discussed. If no type of reports has been on file for 7-14 days, then it definitely indicates that no communication has been established. DEDUCT for no communication, AWARD for consistent. Awarded on a 1 or 2 week basis
2. New Badges
   
• First Time for Everything -- If the user successfully wins a match, this badge is acquired. It's encouraging to have a simple badge to start off your profile. (unless you're constantly stuck on bad teams) . That is why this badge is worth less points towards leveling up.
  
• Master of Building -- Successfully committed 25 consecutive times without breaking the build. How many times have we heard stories or experienced first hand where someone forgets to verify and the build is broken? We thought 25 times was a hard number to reach and if someone can reach that number, then he/she probably already developed a good habit of verifying before commit.
  
• Most Valuable Player -- The high scorer in a match regardless of win or lose. This is a tricky one. Because if the other opponents are crappy, then this badge can be easily attained. We can possibly have further restrictions, such as MVP of match where the "match point total" exceeded n points.
3. Levels system
• Human Evolution -- This just came up as a silly comment and we decided to roll with the idea. The evolving from chimp to man is an indication of intelligence. Just as we begin as crappy programmers to more experienced. No one wants to be called a chimp, so that should be extra motivation to gain badges and level up.

As a group, we came up with some pretty good ideas. I thought our team meetings were very productive. And that should be an additional rule to Team Meetings to get the points. I've been to meetings where it's just okay, "you do this, you do this." No in-depth discussion if my perception is the same as others. Is it better or worse?

Robin and Anthony both introduced different ways of expanding and collapsing content through AJAX and Javascript. I thought it was really cool and I think I definitely walked away with some new material. I definitely think we probably would have scored in the high 100's or even mid-200's. Good stuff, good stuff.