It’s coming along mighty fast. I’ve had friends have a go at the interface in a quick test-session, so let me take you, as rapidly as possible, through some of the new accomplishments… trumpet mode activated.
Firstly, I’m very happy with what I’ve done in the equivalent of three days. I’ve been steaming along at this one, because I want it done before I go back to school next Monday.
Graphic refinements
I’ve got more of these to do, and as I add new things to the app even more refinements are called for, but as you can see the header of the page has been given the ‘Mr. Shaft’ treatment and now looks saucy as anything.
This is a design I intend to propagate thought the site soon enough. Black is in, baby! Slim black, to boot!
You can now take tests
Brilliant. Another key part of the app is ready to use, and fully functional. I’m hearing that it’s a dream to use and to me it looks really, really simple - which is exactly what I want. One column here, no distractions… you’ll get that test done in no time.
My name is… important!
You may notice the very tastefully highlighted orange box asking you to put your name in. Some of us put in our first names, others the whole thing - it seems an international thing at the moment. But whatever is put in, a fantastically useful ‘respondent’ record is created. More on how amazing that is later. Don’t put anything in, or try “.” or ” “, and you’ll be bagged as ‘Anon’.
As I’ve said, a select few of my friends (those who were but a mere IM away) have been giving it a little go. Let’s see what happens when people actually submit data to the clever, clever system.
Results on steroids
This page is probably going to be a favourite when it comes to My Buster Tests - it’s mine already and it’s only been around for 12 hours! (And I’m not even finished yet!)
It’s a lovely bit of simple design and it lets you see exactly what’s being said very quickly indeed. The results are totalled up and percentage popularity is given to each discrete answer there is. Answer count in blue, percentage in orange, and actual answer right there next to the figures. Big, easy to read test and all.
There’s more to come on that front, and I have a feeling it’s going to be very cool indeed.
But what about text responses?
Fear not! God has a plan for all of us!
The display is simple as anything - essentially a bullet point list of all text answers that people gave, and of course nothing is shown when people don’t choose to answer.
Lovely and simple! But hang on a mo! What are all those names littered about the place?
Attack of the respondents…
OR: Imagine the possibilities!
Data becomes interesting, intimate.
With respondent tracking comes some very interesting statistical possibilities (’People who said this tended to say this…’ etc.), but that comes later.
Immediately, however, My Buster Tests gives you direct access to records of what specific people answered on certain questions - allowing you to personally oversee (and, if you like, audit for data accuracy) every single response.
And again it’s totally beautiful to use.. a simple side bar list of all the respondents’ names, oldest responses first. Clearly you can see “What x said”.
Now while I am not actually able to personally say this is a cool and interesting feature (because you can’t actually see what they submitted yet on their own page as shown above), I know it will be. It essentially ads an entirely new dimension to the data. That means that if I ever get the ‘people who said x also said…’ feature going, it’ll be 3D data! Yay!
URL lovelies
I love clean, clever URL systems which look nice, are easy to reproduce off of the top of your head and tell the server everything it needs to know in one go. See flickr for an ideal example, in my opinion.
So My Buster Tests works with some very lovely URLs which are search engine friendly, really simple to remember, quite short and, as much as possible, are easy to read as a human.
That makes me very happy indeed.
I don’t want to write out the URLs here because it’s a live unprotected version, but they’re nice and you can see them in action in the screenshots above.
Roundup
So this latest post brings news of the test page, the results page, the respondents system and the delicious URL system.
Whatever could be next?
p.s. any comments of any kind are greatly valued - it’s really useful and if you’ve got anything to say at all, please do!