DevLog #8 Collection

Welcome our MTG Doctor DevLogs where we cover the changes that are being made to MTG Doctor as part of our Phoenix release coming later this year. Today we’ll be going over the new experiences we are adding to the Collection feature.

Improved Discoverability

For our rework of the collection feature one of our driving goals was improve the discoverability of features available in the collection for players. In the original implementation of MTG Doctor we had placed these features behind a long press, however this proved invisible to many players. So for this next generation of MTG Doctor we are moving such features up to the app bar and exposing them as menu options.

This is an approach the we followed throughout the entire collection so you will now see this behavior pattern persisted in all areas of the feature like the set and card views.

Improved Glanceability

The next item we improved in this version is the glanceability of interface. In the original version we went with a combination or red and green to highlight which cards were missing and which cards were collected. This resulted in a case of everything being highlighted and thus no information was really highlighted. For this upcoming version we moved to having the collected cards be highlighted and the uncollected cards be shaded. This increase contrast makes it easy to discern at a glance which cards are collected and which cards are not.

Improved Collection Editing

The way in which the collection is edited has also been improved. We moved from a modal that required entering the quantity for each to simplified controls. We also took advantage of the new real estate to display additional information about the card in text form. Finally, viewing the card image is still available like in the original MTG Doctor version view the actions on the app bar in this new screen.

Continuing with the sprit of glanceability we now show a progression of the playset completion in the form of a color gradient. As more copies of a card are collected this is reflected as a completion of the card in the interface from a gray version of the card to a fully colored card.

New Card View

A new experience added in this rework is the collection card view. In addition to the original table view a collection can now be viewed as a card grid displaying the art of each of the cards in that collection. This view does its best at highlighting the beautiful Magic: The Gathering art by supporting both regular cards and plane cards.

Improved Import and Export

The import and export process have also been improved in this update. We have added support for most common formats and also added logic to figure out the import format from the imported file. This allows for a lower interaction cost by not having to select the import format of the imported file while adding into the collection.

Filtering and Searching

Another feature that is new to this update is the ability to search or filter a collection and sets. As of this version rework we reduced the interaction cost of getting to a set in the collection and allow you to quickly search for it or filter the list of visible sets in the event you ware looking for more than one set. This same behavior has been added to the individuals sets for finding cards which comes quite handy specially in sets having 300 or 400+ cards.

Closing Thoughts

This bring us to the end of this DevLog. 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. 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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