[Yourtopia] "Learn more" text and general concept conflict

Fri Apr 13 03:14:35 BST 2012

Dear Mariam,

On the statement "By picking indicators and telling Yourtopia how important
they are in
relation to each other, you collaborate with all other users in building
the world's first composite index of regional progress without arbitrary
weighting assumptions.": I think both options that you presented would make
this possible. In both cases the user is already generating a composite
index. The only addition to make the user construct an index together with
other users would be to average across all users so far.

This would be like on yourtopia.net. When the user does the quiz on that
page, it generates his personal composite index. And when you go on
http://yourtopia.net/result, the page just sums over all user's composite
index to create one "meta-index".

It would be superb, if we could have the same be implemented for Yourtopia
2.

One slight modification might be needed though: Yourtopia 2 provides the
instant visualization of the rankings/heatmap, and as the user gets excited
about this, he will probably play around with the sliders a bit. So the
question for generating the meta-index is then, which of the various
rankings each user might generate do we use? For this reason, might we have
a button under the sliders that the user clicks when he found his final
configuration? The button could read "Confirm my final selection, to
contribute to overall index", or something similar. Does that make sense?

Otherwise I much like both versions of the app. And we could also change
the text. As this concerns a core part of the idea underlying Yourtopia,
however, it would be fantastic if you could still integrate it.

Change of topic: On the selection between the two apps that you suggested.
I like both and your argument for the second is very convincing. Still I
think that experienced users will be very interested in which proxy
variables are used for the different categories. In fact, the choice of
proxy variables is a main topic in the Stiglitz et al report that
stimulated us (and the Italian government) to look at measuring social
progress in the first place. So unless it makes your work even harder
(which I guess it does, and then please forget whatever I say), it would be
most brilliant if there were an "expert mode" in which users can vary the
proxy variables for each category. For example as in
http://energy.publicdata.eu/ where the user is able to get more control if
he clicks on the + sign in the top left corner (although I am not sure this
is the best way of doing it).

Generally I love both interfaces that you did and am extremely happy about
it. And if my above suggestions cause alltoomuch work, then what you
developed is amazing already.

If the expert mode and the overall-index thing could still be realised, we
would have even better chances to relate the website to the work of
Italy/EU/OECD/Germany on measuring aggregate social progress, but maybe
those additions are not possible for the moment.

Many thanks for the amazing work again and one-armed best wishes, ;-)

Dirk

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 10:50 AM, Giacomo Luchetta <
giacomoluchetta at gmail.com> wrote:

> Southern quality of life is made of "less-standard" phenomena, such as
> climate, more leisure time, less stress, stronger family connections,
> good food. I am listing several indicators, just as a brainstorming, I
> am not arguing that all of them make sense:
> 1. average temperature
> 2. days of sun
> 3. traffic
> 4. quality of air / air pollution
> 5. number of people living alone / number of divorces
> 6. number of people suffering from obesity / heart attacks
>
> In these indicators southern regions may have an advantage.. but
> actually I do not know whether these features may and should enter the
> composite indicator. And Trento and Bolzano would come out first in
> any measure of human development in Italy, regardless of the
> indicator, the weights, etc...
>
> giacomo
>
> 2012/4/12 Rosamaria Bitetti <rosamaria.bitetti at gmail.com>:
> > Velichka, I like your solution!
> >
> > (cultural note: yours is what in Italy we would call a democristian
> solution
> > (for almost half a century we were ruled by a centrist party who was
> always
> > looking for compromise).
> >
> > I'll check on the stats to see if we can manipulate some resuls, but I'm
> > afraid Trento and Bolzano (not being Italy) will always be outliers...
> >
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 16:27, Velichka Dimitrova
> > <velichka.dimitrova at okfn.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hey Marian,
> >>
> >> Back to the first question: the composite index that Dirk wrote about
> >> means just the weighed index, which appears in both versions that we
> had so
> >> far - with just 7 categories + GDP and with all 21 + GDP indicators.
> >>
> >> The actual problem I see if that many of the indicators are correlated,
> so
> >> one always comes up with the roughly the same result - Trento or Bolzano
> >> first. Alternatively we could include some data series for which
> Southern
> >> regions as we discussed yesterday - possible something related to
> culture?
> >>
> >> @Rosamaria, do you see any stats on http://noi-italia.istat.it/ where
> >> Southern states or any other states would be coming first?
> >>
> >> As about the two versions - the bubbles and the detailed slider
> version, I
> >> think we should stick with the latest version which Marian suggested -
> would
> >> it be possible though that one would also be able to modify the relative
> >> weight of the indicators within one category upon clicking for more
> details
> >> - Let's say I put use the bubble sliders to determine the relative
> weight of
> >> e.g. Health with respect to all other categories (what has been already
> >> done) and then when I click on more I am also given three sliders to
> >> determine the relative importance of health satisfaction, chronic
> diseases
> >> etc within the health category. This will be an extra option which
> maybe not
> >> all users will make use of - yet it is good to have in case there are
> users
> >> interested in more detail.
> >>
> >> What do you think?
> >>
> >> Velichka
> >>
> >>
> >> On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Rosamaria Bitetti
> >> <rosamaria.bitetti at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> ...but it also makes it more interesting (tested on non geek sister).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 15:01, Marian Steinbach <marian at sendung.de>
> >>> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Am 12. April 2012 14:37 schrieb Rosamaria Bitetti
> >>>> <rosamaria.bitetti at gmail.com>:
> >>>> > so basically the final result will be this one?
> >>>> >
> >>>> >
> http://www.sendung.de/cust/okfn/yourtopia/wf-20120403-1200/?Page=Home_-_Category_details
> >>>>
> >>>> Yes, that was the state of the discussion before today.
> >>>>
> >>>> > Can we add the possibility of adjusting sub indicators in this
> version
> >>>> > or is
> >>>> > it too complex?
> >>>>
> >>>> If we would add the option to adjust sub-indicators, we would end up
> >>>> more or less at the version we discarded.
> >>>>
> >>>> Yes, I think that this this introduces a complexity which narrows down
> >>>> the target audience quite significantly.
> >>>>
> >>>> Marian
> >>>>
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> Yourtopia mailing list
> >>>> Yourtopia at lists.okfn.org
> >>>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/yourtopia
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Rosamaria Bitetti
> >>> my LinkedIn profile
> >>> cell: +39 320 6275664
> >>> skype: rosamaria.bitetti
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> Yourtopia mailing list
> >>> Yourtopia at lists.okfn.org
> >>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/yourtopia
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Velichka Dimitrova
> >> Project Coordinator
> >> Economics and Energy Projects
> >> Open Knowledge Foundation
> >> Twitter: @vndimitrova
> >> Skype: vn.dimitrova
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Rosamaria Bitetti
> > my LinkedIn profile
> > cell: +39 320 6275664
> > skype: rosamaria.bitetti
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Yourtopia mailing list
> > Yourtopia at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/yourtopia
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Yourtopia mailing list
> Yourtopia at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/yourtopia
>
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