The Premise

Points, being a social game, requires at least two people to play. In Points, people form "groups", which are contexts in which points (and virtual money) are given or taken away. Points is structured this way because it allows you to give points arbitrarily, and while you always have to give a reason... sometimes there's really no good reason at all. It's just for fun! As such, having a global leader board would be non-sensical. Points really only has meaning in the groups that players form because in those groups the reasons why points are given or taken are understood without much explanation.

For instance, if I give you 15 points and say "Dude, awesome dinner party", there's not much more I have to say. If I say "Great haircut" and take away 5 points, you'll know I'm being sarcastic (no offense to the implied "you" who is reading this). We like to keep it simple and fun, between people that know each other.

The User Interface

The Points user interface is made up of three main screens and a couple of auxiliary screens. The main screens are the home page, groups pages, and user pages.

The Home Page

The home page, at least once you've participated for a bit, contains two important sections: Activity and Groups. Activity is time-sorted list of all the activity for all your groups, related to anyone in those groups. Don't worry though, we only start out by showing the most recent two items. You can click the "load more" button to show more if you're interested in digging deeper. Groups is the list of groups you belong to. You will need to be in at least one group to participate. Clicking on a group will take you to a group page (see the Group Pages section below).

From the home page, you can also create a new group, join an existing group using an invite token, enter your settings, or update your profile by clicking on the avatar in the top left of the screen.

Groups Pages

Groups pages list all the members of a group and also include a feed of all the activity between group members. If a user is a member of more than one group, only their activity within the current group will be displayed. Clicking on a group member item will take you to a user page (see the User Pages section below). From a group page, you can also invite others to join the group -- anyone can invite anyone (advanced group management features are coming soon). When you invite someone you need to give them something to start out with (or take something away), to get them in the game. If you decide to leave a group, you'll need a new invitation to re-join, if you ever want to in the future.

User Pages

User pages let you focus on a particular group member. You can see their totals for the group, re-invite them if necessary, award or take away points, or see their activity stream.

Awarding / Taking Points (or Virtual Money)

Awarding and taking away points and virtual money is easy and fun! You'll need a reason, but the reason can be arbitrary -- just remember, you're friends might not like it if you're too arbitrary and retaliate! The green button next to the "reason" input, provides you with a tool for selecting "stock" reasons and reasons you've used in the past. This tool is aware of whether you're giving or taking and whether it's points or virtual money, so the lists should stay manageable (you can always delete items with the standard swipe and delete gesture).

Invite Tokens

With Points, the people you invite to join a group don't have to actually accept an invitation. Instead a placeholder user exists until the user actually joins and accepts your invitation. This means you can easily invite people outside your social group to join, like President Obama for example. (To invite fictional users and users that are highly unlikely to join your groups, please specify one of your own email addresses.)

Because Points is so flexible in this regard, we use unique tokens to link up these placeholder accounts with real user accounts. These tokens are sent along with invite emails.