[Yourtopia] Modified ui draft: index creation with manipulation of sub-sliders

[David Potocnik]

Hi Marian, and all !

I'm new to this list - but have researched/thought about what I
understand Yourtopia's doing for a while now.
So pardon me for not yet formally introducing myself, but given the
timeframe, I'll just write up! ;-)
(Also did not yet read list archives! Did check the Wiki here ).

Coming out of the blue:
Marian, I think these are great. But my image of doing this - coming
mostly from seeing similar "slider-based personal index generators"
before - would be to try to bring these metrics closer, as close as
possible to the user.

Are the sliders about compromise? Are they tied to each other - when
one goes up, others go down? (Otherwise we might be tempted to put all
up, and not really disclose what's not as important to us.)

...A cool interface about compromise comes to mind from a game I used
to love, "Master of Orion II" civilization builder. You know, you have
20 points: Hate managing revolts? Plus points to that. If you want
your race to be telepathic, that's 6. And when points run out, and you
still want to plus Science, you have to take some to have below
average "Physical strength", for example.
...I've mentioned "being telepathic" - note that's a non-slider,
"qualitative" rather than "quantitative" feature. These might be
important to Yourtopia aswell. "[x] Allows gay marriages" kind of
deal.

Next, it seems to me it's really hard doing slider bargain with things
like "safety" and "education".
Those are very abstract terms. (How are they measured? What do they
mean? What does "science" represent? How to make this feel less
"random"?)

I suggest we try focusing on putting these into context.
Instead of having just a bare "security" slider, you could present the
info as (just laying out direction):
--> "Very insecure : ~1 crime per 4 people, meaning there's a there's
a 25% chance of something really bad happening to you every year!"
The min and max would be analog to absolute min and max values, and
the slider inbetween somewhat non-linear. This would also add a new,
"concrete" representation dimension to the tool, that I think would be
very useful!
(I'll give a personal example: I've grown up in a culture that doesn't
know street crime. I've heard warning about going to Barcelona, and
tried to do my best - but you can imagine how that ended. If I'd known
I have a "solid" 1:10 chance of getting robbed every week, I'd behave
differently.)
Or for science:
--> "Very above average : probably a predominantly student town, with
a concentration of top-ranking research institutions."
You can see what I'm doing here: I'm making it up! That's because I
have no clue where the ratings come from. It's just "science".

To build further on, put it relative to what the user (from New York,
for example) might be used to.
--> "Very safe : Comparatively much more secure than New York -
statistics show you might be 15 times less likely to get mugged, and
10 less likely to get shot."

That brings me to the next thing:
A system like this, trying to to understand the user, should
definitely focus on learning as much as possible about it. So it's
integral to do Linked Data - import the Facebooks, Twitters and
Last.fms. Try starting there.

....wow, a bit more for starters than I've expected. Thanks for still
reading. Hope I'm not going completely against everything - in this
case we can just discuss it out of the current scope, perhaps in
another thread.

Have a sunny day.
David / dcht00
--from http://facebook.com/cyberhippitotalism - a live in hack-lab in
the Canaries

On 16 April 2012 09:31, Marian Steinbach <marian at sendung.de> wrote:
> Hi everybody!
>
> Only Dirk has answered my question about priorities. Thus the result
> is: A solution for manipulation of index proxies (individual variables
> behind the categories like environment) is more important now than
> display of a "all users index" now. Dirk is right, we will collect all
> the weights the users collect. So the overall index display can be
> implemented at a later point.
>
> So this ui modification should enable the user to modify the weights
> of the proxies (the individual indicators) within one category.
>
> Here are two wireframes for the same thing, in different states:
>
> 1. The users has clicked the "employment" keyword to get additional
> details. There, the sub-sliders are visible in their default position,
> which is: all the the maximum.
>
> http://www.sendung.de/cust/okfn/yourtopia/wf-20120413-1900/?Page=Category_details_plus_Sub-Sliders
>
> 2. If the user drags all three sub-sliders within one category to the
> minimum position, this results in setting the whole category to the
> minimum. The category slider is then disabled. This is shown in this
> sketch:
>
> http://www.sendung.de/cust/okfn/yourtopia/wf-20120413-1900/?Page=Category_details_plus_Sub-Sliders_zero
>
> @Rosamaria: I guess this is more or less what you suggested.
>
> In order to disable a proxy, the user has to drag a slider to the
> minimum position. I think this is nicer than having an additional
> checkbox or some other toggle mechanism, like in my first draft.
>
> The fact that the sub-sliders are hidden in the details panel will
> mean that only users interested in the internals are going to see it.
> It won't get into the way of people who simply want to play with the
> category values. Dirk gave me the impression that the sub-sliders are
> by far less important than the main category sliders and probably will
> only appeal to an expert audience.
>
> You can give me feedback on this until today 16:00 UTC, which is 17:00
> London time and 18:00 Italy/Germany time. If I don't here from you
> until then, this is the way I am going to code this part.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Marian
>
>
> --
> http://twitter.com/MarianSteinbach
> http://www.sendung.de/
>
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