DevLog #0 - 12+ of Years MTG Doctor

Welcome to our first DevLog for MTG Doctor Phoenix, the new version of MTG Doctor! If you’re here, you probably know MTG Doctor, but you might not know is that MTG Doctor been around for over 12 years. That makes it one of the oldest Magic: The Gathering apps out there! Over those years, the team has learned a lot, and with new technology available, it’s the perfect time to make a new, improved MTG Doctor.

In this DevLog series, we’ll share our designs and ideas as we work to build a version of MTG Doctor that will last another 12 years or more.

Now, let’s dive into the first change in MTG Doctor Phoenix: the action dashboard

Initial Design

When we first released MTG Doctor over 12 years ago, we had three mean features. A deck creator to make building and diagnosing decks really easy. A card search so we could quickly find information and pricing about a card. A battle helper to track life points and other information during a game. With time as more features were added we still wanted to maintain a low interaction cost for these key features and that led to the current version we have today. 

Pros:

• Finding cards, deck creation and battle helper all have a low interaction cost of one action.

Cons:

• Newer features carried a higher interaction cost of two actions. 

• Newer features were hidden away under the “Extras” section making them harder to be discovered.  

For MTG Doctor Phoenix our main goal is to apply all the lessons we have learned over the years. And for this screen our primary goal is to improve on all the shortcomings of the original version. 

Initial Redesign

The first idea we explored was replacing the main screen with a scrollable section. We also swapped out buttons for icons to show each feature more clearly. This made the design better, but it still didn’t feel quite right.

Pros:

• Finding cards, deck creation and battle helper all have a low interaction cost of one action.

• Many of the features that were previously hidden behind “Extras” became quickly discoverable.

• Many of the features that previously had an interaction cost of two due to their placement in “Extras” now had their interaction cost lowered to one. 

Cons:

• Some of the features that were now placed in the bottom would require additional scrolling to discover and use. 

Even though this version was better than the original, it still didn’t feel right so we went back to the drawing board.

Final Redesign

After trying a few more designs, we finally found an approach that met our goals. This new version keeps things simple, combines icons with a scrollable section, and lets us rearrange features. The ability to rearrange features means that as users we can now put the features we use most at the front and push the less-used ones further back on the screen.

Pros:

• Finding cards, deck creation and battle helper all have a low interaction cost of one action.

• Many of the features that were previously hidden behind “Extras” became quickly discoverable.

• Many of the features that previously had an interaction cost of two due to their placement in “Extras” now had their interaction cost lowered to one. 

• The ability to rearrange the features allows to have the most commonly used features carry an interaction cost of one while lesser used features carry an interaction cost of two. 

• Features can now be discovered 15 (one page) at a time rather than a 3 (one row) at a time. 

Cons:

• Some features still inevitably require an interaction cost of two even though they are less commonly used features. 

Closing Thoughts

Thank you for reading this far and for using MTG Doctor all these years. Whether it has been one year or the entire 12+ years, MTG Doctor would not have grown into such a great tool as it has without your support.

Join us during future DevLogs as we continue to share the next generation of MTG Doctor built on over 12 years of experiences and lessons.

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