Word Scramble for iPhone by Zynga appears at first to be yet another grid-based word game where you race the clock touching letters in sequence to spell words for points. Because these games are simple in concept, simple to implement, and offer good replay to gamers at little cost to developers, the App Store is full of them. Unfortunately, many appear to be crafted with more regard for turning a fast buck than for creating a fun experience.

But Word Scramble is not only free and fun, it’s well-designed and includes some surprising but appreciated features:

• online play against the anonymous hordes
• online play against your friends, whom you invite from your Contacts list with a special code
• Play and Pass, letting you pass the iPhone between up to 4 players in turn

I’ve really enjoyed the online play, but once the round starts and you’re racing the clock against others, the hectic action highlights a few design choices of the main screen shown at right—not flaws exactly, but limitations that if addressed would make the game easier to play and more enjoyable.

When you’re playing, some things are important…

• Your score and rank
• The amount of time remaining
• The top three scores (to know how much more you need to score)
• How quickly you can submit a word, or cancel a mistake

…and others are not:

• Total possible points
• The names of the other players

Based on this, Word Scramble hampers play in three ways:

1. Unimportant stats are too prominent.
2. Important stats are too scattered and too small.
3. The Submit and Cancel buttons are too small.

Here’s an alternate design to address these limitations, shown with the original:

Original	Revised

What’s different:

Improved how player info is presented

• Gathered player info at top. You care about both score and rank, so it makes sense to place them together. You also care about rank in relation to the other player, which is presumably why it was placed at the bottom, but keeping score and rank in close proximity reduces distraction.
• Made Score and Place larger. They’re important and should be easy to scan.
• Made Time Remaining. Also important, so made easier to scan. Reduced the color value to differentiate it from score and rank, and centered it in a nod to the iPhone’s clock placement in the status bar.
• Eliminated the total possible score. This was too small to be useful, and largly ignored during gameplay anyway.

Improved how other players are presented

• Gathered score and name below the icon. This reduces the noise with no loss of information.
• De-emphasized the names. During gameplay scores are more useful during gameplay, so display them accordingly.
• Clarified how many people are playing. The original screen presented this statistic almost as an aside, but it deserves more prominence.
• Eliminated the frame and shadowing surrounding the icons.
• Used resulting room to make the icons a little larger.
• Show only the 1st Place badge, since the others are implied. The badges for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place are redundant once you’ve played a single round. Kept the 1st place badge to distinguish the game leader from the others.

Improved the action panel

• Made the Confirm and Cancel targets appear larger.
• Reduced the bordering and shadowing.

The alternate design may not be prettier—I’ve tried to refrain from aesthetics here—but it should ease gameplay.

I recommend Word Scramble. The developers did a great job, and it’s really fun.