Temperature checks
Nicolas Wormser PublicSeen by 59I just had the need for this today. For now we can only use proposals, but I think at some point it might be useful to differentiate between formal proposals and temperature checks.
One might want to do a temperature check to see on how people feel about a proposition/an idea before a formal proposal is made.
The main difference with a proposal would be that a temperature check would have no outcome and you would not be expected to justify your choice. Also I think the 4 buttons would be replaced with a scale from -2 (very bad idea / I refuse to do it etc…) to +2 (sounds awesome / looking forward to it / count me in etc…). We could also use colours, emoticons etc…
It would be very similar to a poll tool, but I think it is important that the tool permits people to show dissent to what's being proposed (a classic poll tool doesn't necessary allow to do this).
I've added that feature to the Loomio functional overview (that will be migrated to Trello at some point)
+1 for fuzzy color spectrum
Emoticons are becoming very popular in apps and can add some character to the app. It is very easy to convey feeling and are also updatable or even customizable like in the mobile 'line' app. Maybe I spent too long in Japan, they love cute emoticons.
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@nicolaswormser, I really really like this idea! I've been harping on about exactly this feature for months (I've even been referring to it as 'temperature check' too).
If this was designed elegantly I think it could be a really nice first step to cracking the problem of concurrent proposals.
Definitely agree with @richarddbartlett that the key is to keep it fuzzy, so it doesn't turn into a quantitative adversarial poll. I like the idea of a fuzzy colour-slider (maybe generating a cumulative colour for each idea based on the summed collective preference), presented in a context that makes it obvious that the feature is to get a very rough gauge of how people feel.
Maybe this is one of the things we could workshop at the UI re-design session in a few weeks (optimistically)?
In my head, FWIW, I'd called these 'suggestions' and they'd accumulate in the right hand panel, be likeable, and the most-liked of a bunch of suggestions would somehow be promoted to being a proposal.
@matthewbartlett , the worry is that it would end up being used as a poll. What would be the advantage to having the level of preference quantifiable?
I was imagining an expression of preference that was sortable but not strictly quantifiable.
@benjaminknight I guess I'm not yet terrified of polls (perhaps I should be). It's not the quanitifiable-ness that's attractive to me, it's that I think it would be easier to implement, simpler for users to understand (likes are already part of the loomio vernacular), and give slightly more information (who likes the suggestion).
@matthewbartlett I made a mock up with @richarddbartlett in our balsamic library which went down this line, but calling suggestions 'ideas', but we decided it would force a particular user flow and remove the organic nature of discussions.
@aaronthornton Mind posting a link to that? Couldn't find a search function in balsamiq.
Maybe temperature checks & ideas/suggestions are both candidates for future plugins?
@matthewbartlett https://loomio.mybalsamiq.com/projects/ideas/grid
Great idea a plugin feature of this nature would work once we improve our main app interface and apis more. Although I think we are going to need a built in temperature check as a self moderating facilitation tool.
@aaronthornton Alack I don't seem to have access to that particular mockup.
@matthewbartlett you should now
I think the idea of temperature check and a sliding scale from red, orange, yellow, green where you choose a colour and write a comment would be perfect.
I think it would be better to have this always available though as a mood gauge where people can answer the question about 'how are you feeling about this discussion'. As more people vote the colours would get brighter and as they atrophy over time the colours would fade (css transparency filter or something).
That way it feels more living and less static than a vote and would provide a place where people could post meta level comments which you can see when you hover over the mood chart.
We've been talking about doing a pretty serious overhaul of the UI. As part of this I think it could be a good idea to include some designated space for experimental ideas that we can deploy in specific groups. Possibly not true 'plugins' per-se, but proto-plugins. Decaying colored mood sliders for instance, or my XY scatter plot (agree <=> disagree vs care <=> don't care).
It would be nice to have a place for developers to play with ideas.
I'd realliy like to see this feature too. In some cases I really want to be able to do dotmocracy-style proposal/ idea brainstorming before making a formal proposal.
Totally agree. I think the trick to making this feature work really well and not devolve into a majority-rules polling feature is to make the outcomes fuzzy. E.g. maybe a slider from 'Agree' to 'Disagree', or a colour spectrum or something.