Ideas (proto-proposals)
Matthew Bartlett
Public
Seen by 98
I start a discussion
… and choose a title and write a first comment (I've ditched the context panel). I could have also inserted a picture here. Then I press 'Start discussion' (or Done, which Safari on the iPhone provides)
Other people add some comments. I've flipped the discussion order, so new comments get added at the bottom. When you land on a discussion, the top comment is the first one you haven't yet had a chance to read. 'Show earlier comments' does what it says. Now I've had an idea for a possible solution, I'll click 'New idea':
... and write it up:
Ideas show up at the top of the discussion. There can be more than one at once. People can indicate their support for the idea. You may have to swipe down a little into the comments section before you see the commenting ('Say something...') box.
... or they can support more than one idea:
Clicking an idea lets you read the detail, and from their you can add your support, or turn the idea into a proposal. It might be good to require say two supporters (a bit like seconders in Robert's Rules) before an idea can be elevated into a proposal. I'll click 'Promote to proposal' now
... which fills in the idea details into a new proposal form. I may want to flesh out the idea, or edit a little for clarity at this point.
The current proposal lives at the top of the page. You can still have only one proposal at a time, but people can continue to add & support ideas. At times one of the other ideas might be obviously much more popular than the current proposal. Perhaps the proposer will get the hint and close it early?
Click on a proposal to get the full detail, and to state your position on it.
An attempt at mobile-first design.
Simon Tegg Fri 21 Feb 2014 8:04PM
This article could help inform the design of the 'ideas' feature http://positivesharing.com/2014/02/kill-suggestion-box-heres-much-better-way/
Alanna Irving Fri 21 Feb 2014 10:56PM
@mixirving and I have been riffing lately on what it it would be like to incorporate and anti-groupthink component to ideas. Meaning, you are asked to give input before being influenced by other people's input. Then later everyone shares.
mix irving Fri 21 Feb 2014 11:58PM
I really want to try that out too. 'Decorrelating Errors'
like Alanna says, studies suggest people express more diverse ideas if they aren't hearing others ideas before they communicate.
I think we could trial this before building the feature.
Joshua Vial Sat 22 Feb 2014 12:18AM
I love the line of thinking around reducing group think - as someone who facilitates quite a few digital groups I feel like I have a tiny handful of tools compared with in room facilitation - being able to create a proposal where comments or votes weren't displayed for 24 hours, or couldn't see what the decisions were until you had voted yourself or a modal questionnaire you had to complete before you had access to the comments section would be pure awesome.
Alanna Irving Sat 22 Feb 2014 1:00AM
I think "facilitation modules" is a neat framework to think about this in for Loomio. It's critical we keep the basic experience dead simple. But I think optional facilitation tools would be excellent.
Jon Lemmon Wed 26 Feb 2014 9:53PM
Great idea. Yeah, it'd definitely be a discussion plug-in.
Jon Lemmon Wed 26 Feb 2014 9:55PM
Also, @simontegg amazing how similar that article is to our proposed workflow for ideas!!
Mads Ringblom Mon 13 Oct 2014 8:02PM
@matthewbartlett pointed me in the direction of the idea feature in another discussion, so I just got an idea for this and thought this might be the right place to put it :)
Instead of a seperate section with ideas you could add a type of comment called "idea" and allow to sort comments.
It's just because sometimes you get the idea while reading the discussion and you don't want to scroll all the way to the top to add your idea. (I've previously suggested a 'type-of-comment'-feature elsewhere but as a more complex feature)
The mockup is partly stolen from the idea-feature mockups:
http://blog.loomio.org/tag/ui/
Matthew Bartlett Mon 13 Oct 2014 8:16PM
I'm sorry all the images in the context panel have died — my host went belly-up and I'm having trouble getting my domain back :( But yours @madsringblom & @jonlemmon's mockups are better anyway :)
Robert Guthrie · Thu 24 Oct 2013 4:27AM
@christaklis - we're doing a bit of a cleanup. Right now that means removing all longer term items from pivotal. We'll be filling up the backlog with way more descriptive and thought out tickets over the next few weeks.