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Should The Basketball Score Board Delay Before Updating?

By: posted May 21, 2008

Growing up, the score at the bottom of the screen of a Basketball game would update about a second or so after you looked down at it. And, as you didn’t look down until you saw what looked like a legitimate basket, there was a flow.

1. Notice the basket
2. Look down to bottom of screen
3. Watch the score change

Lately, probably because of advances in technology, the score often updates before you look down. You can be left staring and waiting and sometimes not really knowing whether the current score is the updated score or the pre-basket score. You can end up staring longer than you would had the score been delayed a second, allowing you to look down.

So, from a UI perspective, should there be a 1 second delay in the update of the score on the screen? Would one test this? How?

Categories: design

  • mr wunderkind

    over time the rhythm of the ball out of the basket to the floor with a bounce atop a score ribbon which changes on-screen a beat later could prove refreshing but suscept us to a lifetime of people who don’t watch a lot of sports asking why the score takes an extra second to change. but in our lifetime contact with humans whose categorical interests do not coincide with ours will peter out, no? bottom line: los angeles wins.

  • http://snowcore.net Snowcore

    I adore basket! It’s the best game!

  • chool

    I’m not much of a sports fan but I have had this experience before… waiting to see the score change after a basket, a run, whatever. This is also relevant for game shows like Jeopardy. I second the motion for a brief delay. Part of the viewer experience is actually seeing your teams score advance.

  • Alan Bachers

    It is because of the slow technology that, after downing a basket, we stop, await the score change, then return to the game. This is purely an artifact of signal processing that we have to wait for the feedback before we proceed, say "attaboy" or whatever. I work with real-time feedback of EEG activity in performance enhancement which works the opposite of the reward of the "electronic M&M" score tick. The feedback of the video and audio feedback proceeds UNTIL the brain enters a state of turbulence or instability that decreases optimization. That event interrupts the game until the person returns to the present moment focus, away from worry, doubt, "rehearsing the mistake," and moves back into the "zone." Gamers improve dramatically, as do brains with ADD, brain injury, etc. Repeated returns to the zone from distracted, performance decrementing states allows the brain to develop these optimization states ongoingly instead of the instabilities, and those optimization states become where life is lived. Scores (and most everything else) improve with this training.So, instead of interrupting when a score is made, interruptions should occur only when an error is detected, regrouping can occur, and improvement is established. Literally, the brain only learns when it makes an error, then corrects it, reinforcing the improved response. Our obsession with perfection and avoiding errors only makes us make the mistakes "perfect." Just watch an athlete or a musician or gamer as they approach a known instability in their repertoire. It is literally written all over their brain as a vortex of instability. In neurofeedback, we let the brain know it is "heading for the cliff" in plenty of time to avoid the mistake, and it literally corrects itself, the "mistake" disappears, and is replaced by increased optimization. These are interesting issues to ponder in development of sophisticated online training regimes. A colleague who delivered 10 neurofeedback sessions to students applying to Julliard who had previously taken SAT tests, showed 230, 173, 130 and 90 point increases in their repeated tests. Usual test/retest improvements are about 14 points. Waiting for the score to tick is exactly backwards and inhibits flow.

  • yt

    I was watching the Celtics game and noticed this the other day. I tivoed a shot and realized the update is made before the ball touches the ground. That means the update is on the order of 1/3 sec. QED. basketball games are scored by robots.

  • http://cpultzlps.tumblr.com/ Chris

    Oh sweet sanity! I thought this was my own private nightmare! I appreciate that others are troubled in the same way I am about this issue. Misery loves company.

  • Snoutie

    Score should update ASAP, but appear highlighted (e.g. in reverse video) for a fixed duration (empirically tunable), say two seconds.

  • WRT

    It’s not and either/or question.I’d say: change it immediately, but provide a couple-second indication that it’s just changed. For example, (1) it could flash briefly, (2) a moving dot could draw a circle around it, or (3) it could "glow" which slowly fades away.