DevLog #9 Card Finder

Welcome to our latest DevLog for MTG Doctor Phoenix, the next generation of MTG Doctor. If you’ve been a member of the MTG Doctor community all these years, thank you for your support and if you are not familiar with MTG Doctor thanks for taking the time to read our log. This week we really excited to talk about the new Card Finder experience coming to MTG Doctor.

Re-Design Motivation

The ability to easily find the cards we want is at the core of deck building and while the original design allowed for this it suffered from a few shortcomings like: inefficient use of the screen real state, a high interaction cost for finding certain cards and even a lack of intuitiveness for newer players.

• Screen Real Estate: The original version would take up 1/3 of the screen in many devices in its collapsed state. When expanded this would take almost the entire screen and in some smaller devices this was the case. This made it a bit clunky when trying to find cards.

• High Interaction Cost: If we knew the name of the card then finding it had a low interaction cost. However if we wanted a bit more detail like say a converted mana cost of less then 2, it would required expanding the filter, selecting the operator and then entering the number 2 in the CMC box.

• Lack of Intuitiveness: The original version also dropped us into a screen with a lot of filter levers but not much else leading in some cases to a bit of analysis paralysis. It was also not particularly helpful for newer player who were not familiar with many of the cards and thus were not sure how to being finding a card.  

To address these shortcomings and more we decided to do a complete re-design of this feature applying all the lessons learned over the past 12+ years.

New Card Finder

In this new version we can see right away that now we have more of the screen real state allowing us to see more cards and more information about them. The original filter controls that took up 1/3 of the screen have now been tucked away into locations we have come to expect like the action button and more menus giving us more space to display the results even in small screen devices.

In addition to the layout improvements the Find Cards page now reveals a list of cards as soon as it is displayed doing away with a bit of that initial analysis paralysis that the original design suffered from. With this new approach even new players that might be unfamiliar with Magic: The Gathering can enjoy exploring the vast number of cards available.

In this new design accessing the filters is a bit more comfortable when using the device one handed. Additionally we have placed the action button in the middle of the screen so that it is just as easy for left handed players to access them as it is for right handed players. Lastly we have organized the filters based on their frequency with more commonly used filters closer to the bottom of the screen and less commonly used filters farther away.

If you are wondering what each of those filters options is about in the new design we’ll be covering them next. (With the exception of the “Filter by theme” that one is a whole new filter coming to MTG Doctor and deserves its own section so we’ll talk about it at the end)

Filter Improvements

As we worked on designing the new experience we also made sure that we communicated more about the filters and their usage within the design. While we were at it we also made some filters more powerful.

Filter by Color

The color filter allows us to find cards based on their mana cost. In this new version not only do we communicate more about each of the features here but also made a better use of the screen. Replacing the check box list we had with a horizontal selection of colors made the feature not only more compact but also more intuitive than it originally was.

Filter by Expansion

Even filters that might have been considered self-explanatory in the original now benefit from an additional explanation to further ease the player’s experience.

Filter by Format

The filter by format which allows for filtering out the cards that are not legal in that format also benefits from this additional information in this version and we also took the chance to do away with many of the formats that are no longer used these days. This simplified the overall feature while maintaining its value.

Filter by Card Type

In the case of filtering by card type we have cut down the interaction cost by providing a list of types to filter by rather than having to manually input the type. In addition to this reduction in cost we found this makes the overall filter more available to less experienced players who might not be aware of all the card types in Magic: The Gathering just as well.

Filter by Card Subtype

For card subtypes we decided to take a similar approach as with type which we found beneficial for both veteran players as well as newer players. With over 500 subtypes in Magic: The Gathering today this new way allows for players to discover subtypes they might not even be aware of and build interesting decks around them.

At the same time we still maintained the flexibility to find more specific subtypes by querying for them. This allows those of us who know what specific subtypes we are looking for to quickly find cards that meet that requirement.

New Feature: Themes

This brings us to what we believe to be the most powerful new feature in this re-design, the search themes. Search themes allow us to filter for cards that match requirements that are more complex than just color or type, like for example: sweepers, or land destruction. These largely reduce the interaction cost for finding these cards from having to toggle and type different queries and filters down to (often times) a single tap.

Adding to the power these filters provide is the fact that they can be stacked with all the other filters allowing us to find the kind of card we are looking for and sometimes even the cards we didn’t know we were looking for.

With 55 themes and growing finding that very specific card becomes much easier and less time consuming.

Current Themes

The current list of theme as of this update is as follows:

• Blink / Flicker

• Bounce

• Burn

• Clan: Abzan

• Clan: Jeskai

• Clan: Mardu

• Clan: Sultai

• Clan: Temur

• Edict

• Freeze

• Guild: Azorious

• Guild: Boros

• Guild: Golgari

• Guild: Gruul

• Guild: Izzet

• Guild: Orzhov

• Guild: Rakdos

• Guild: Selesnya

• Guild: Simic

• Historic

• Impulse Draw

• Land Destruction

• Life Drain

• Life Gain

• Loot

• Mana Dork

• Mana Rock

• Mill

• Mono Black

• Mono Blue

• Mono Green

• Mono Red

• Mono White

• Outlaws

• Overrun

• Pitch

• Protection

• Pump

• Ramp

• Rituals

• Rummage

• Sans Black / Growth

• Sans Blue / Agression

• Sans Green / Artifice

• Sans White / Chaos

• Shard: Bant

• Shard: Esper

• Shard: Grixis

• Shard: Jund

• Shard: Naya

• Tax

• Tutor

• Wheel

• Wrath / Sweeper

• WUBRG

Improved Query

Lastly we decided to cut down on some of the interaction cost of querying for things like cards with a certain power or converted mana cost. In the original this required selecting the operator from a drop down list and entering the desired amount in its respective box. For this new design we have combined this into a single search field and we handle the resolution of the operator from the entry allowing us to enter all the information in one place. Like for example, finding cards with converted mana cost less than 2.

Improved Card View

Aside from all these improvements to how we search for cards in this new design we didn’t miss the change to also add some improvements to the card viewer. In this new version we have made the card view a bit larger to allow the art to shine through much nicer while at the same time reducing the amount of information presented. Pricing now includes just the high, mid, low and no longer includes the foil. This new design now aligns better with the changes to the TCG Player APIs. Foil pricing can toggled on or and for those cards we now get foil high, foil mid, and foil low prices in that pricing row instead.

Finally we we also added a new button “New Deck From…” and to learn about the sweet experience that brings you’ll have to check out our future DevLogs where we’ll talk about the changes to the deck creation component of MTG Doctor.

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. 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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