184 karma · joined November 24, 2008
Discover new teas, get recommendations, and keep a tasting journal.
Disclosure: I'm a co-founder.
You've given us good food for thought, thanks. My general feeling now is that I think it's important to leave the negative portion of the slider intact (however less it's used) to maintain a solid mental model. Might be something to test down the road though.
But, this is a good point, and I think an important one to consider when evaluating the mechanic that works best for your community/site.
1. Yep, slider implementation is jQuery UI.
2. It is too early to tell, but we're definitely planning to share a follow up. As mentioned in the post, we had a simple thumbs up/down for ratings and were seeing a greater than 90% positive average, so we were definitely experiencing that bias. Just today, albeit with a much too small sample size, we're starting to see a more diverse mix of averages. We still expect to have that positive skew but because we're now operating with a 100 point scale in the UI, we hope the granularity will help users distinguish subtler differences in rating.
Background: Steepster is a community site for tea drinkers to share their tasting notes, get recommendations, and discover new teas.
Feedback appreciated!
Thanks for sharing!
In my defense, I had no idea it would be upvoted so highly.
There are many dangers in redesigning prior to establishing a goal (particularly with commercial sites) -- principal of which is never knowing when and if you've succeeded.