Refresh Approximation units (aka "Whimsical" units)

[grochocki]

Problem Statement In general, we want to provide "real world" approximations for conversions to help users conceptually grasp the magnitude of the values being displayed while performing unit conversions. However, we do not currently scale these approximations or document them as well as we should.

Evidence or User Insights The community has identified gaps in our documentation in regards to these units (#120). There is also some confusion around when we decide to show which units (#335).

Proposal Improve the approximation units we display and how we display them by defining an appropriate scaled set of approximations for each applicable unit converter type and auditing the set of units we display today for accuracy. We should also more thoroughly documenting these units.

Goals

• Present representative approximations across all applicable unit converters
• Approximations are accurate and scale appropriately with magnitude of inputted values (e.g., maybe we should add "Olympic size swimming pool" for really large volumes)

Non-Goals

• None

Low-Fidelity Concept N/A (we should leverage the existing design).

[DennisGaida]

+1 for better documentation

Currently not in the design, so maybe this is out the question, but I would suggest adding a tooltip to the whimsical unit. I think it would be beneficial understanding on what the unit is based on.

Take this example:

A cup in Germany (which is my locale and location) is 250ml. A coffee cup is 125ml. To me the whimsical unit doesn't make sense and doesn't help me understanding anything. If I had a tooltip explaining "1 coffee cup = 1 cup (US)" I would know what that coffee cup is actually based on and I would understand that US cups are a tiny bit smaller than 250ml - though I don't think this is what I should learn from whimsical units.

Same goes for the airplane speed - add a tooltip saying "this is based on the regular cruising speed of a 747 at 10.000ft" or whatever it is based on.

[MicrosoftIssueBot]

This is your friendly Microsoft Issue Bot. I've seen this issue come in and have gone to tell a human about it.

[michael-hawker]

In some ways having a mode where you could type in any value like "250 ml" or "100,000 years" and get the converted whimsical units could be cool. Good learning and discovery mode.

The time ones could be neat to have things like time since historic events or periods/eras or ages of things in the solar system/planets/universe...?

[ghost]

We reviewed the pitch and would love to explore this idea further! The pitch is a great start, but there are still some open questions. I am moving this issue into planning to iron out some of those details and I created calculator-specs/approximationUnits to track progress. A human will follow up with some feedback on your pitch shortly. Keep in mind that not all ideas that make it into the planning phase are guaranteed to make it to release. For more information on next steps, check out our spec workflow.