simplification/refinement of design and interaction

[jywarren]

The current preliminary wireframes look like this: http://publiclab.org/wiki/indoor-air-quality

And the dashboard in particular has a lot of different content on it.

C: The consent possibilities seems too busy

N: Another point on the interface: we will probably end up having a pretty large number of questions, so minimizing the number of "clicks per question" will be important so we less risk of people losing attention/battery power/free time before they complete the questionnaire. Does this make sense?

N/NS: wonder if the interface leans a bit towards the complex side of things and it might be confusing to the average user. Should be pretty easy to make the site a little less busy or have ways to have the interface opt into a more complex interface (maybe a question on their web usage could be a "throw away" early question and also the interface could be catered to their answer?). My guess is that the average user of this site will make 30-40 k less than the average PL user and will be 30-40 years older.

Just a very first stab at less content on that page might look something like this:

[jywarren]

Here's a screenshot of what it might look like to see peoples' stories, with an attempt to simplify/refine. I'll try one with a graph next.

[jywarren]

Maybe something like this:

[jywarren]

It could also say "Stories from 15 people:" in the bottom box.

[shapironick]

How could we take Charlie's relational prompt work for us here? Instead of saying these people said xyz to this question. perhaps we could say something like "this is a very common symptom XX% of people have reported it but its not yet in the scientific literature, thank you for helping us take record"

and then farther in, but not necessarily associated with a specific question, it could have a "report" that is like "these people also live in similar homes, these people also have similar symptoms, these people also live in your state...maybe you could .... (compare notes/share information about state regulations/share mitigation techniques/ etc)

[jywarren]

thank you for helping us take record

I kind of think this wording favors the "help us do science" attitude; maybe we could say "You and # other people have helped the public better understand this issue." or something more like that?

What if we prompted people to read others' stories and relate their stories; like, "# people have shared their stories. Explore them to find someone who's come forward with similar experiences."

And/or this could be a place to encourage people to contribute their resources to a collaborative knowledge base.

[shapironick]

Yes! +1 on all points

[jywarren]

Cool, what about something like this?

[shapironick]

Looks good--I do wonder if we should be encouraging exploring after each question or if maybe after each category there would be space to explore. Because 1) people probably like doing about 5-9 things of the same kind of activity before switching to another kind and also 2) we will not want to actively distract them from entering information. 3) we can decenter relating from single Q&As and move them towards a larger space of dialog where interactions could go between and beyond questions.

Maybe we can have a the "you and 17 other people" response at the bottom of each question but leave the exploring part to the end of each category as per your graduation idea. So people would answer for a bit then explore for a bit then answer for a bit etc. Also I think this would be helpful for the symptoms section as well because even seeing some other responses to similar questions might change their responses on subsequent but related questions.

[jywarren]

Ok, I'll try one with a few questions. Maybe we should open a more specific issue for designing the layout of the questions themselves. Do you like the overall design we're at now, and want to run with it and focus on more specific functionality?

[shapironick]

Yessir. Over all design is great. Nice and Clean.

[jywarren]

OK - do we need more input from others before closing this issue and breaking out into the more specific #1, #2, #7 and #8? I'm going to close this for now and if there are unaddressed/unfinished ideas, let's create new, more specific issues for them.

[shapironick]

great!