A better way to compare, select and consider submissions

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Stay tuned for the launch of Quirky v3 this Fri, Oct 15. We've been listening to all the great feedback from the community, and the new site redesign will pack a ton of features that Quirks have been clamoring for!

I hope this will be one of the new added features or something similar.

Thanks for the reply

A member may not have time to go through all entries in a week or maybe is particularly interested in a certain type of product. It would be great if I could see all the bath products submitted this week. You can use the same categories as you have under Shop to save yourself wome work. Or altenatively, Quirky can allow users to add tags to ideas for more specialization and then other users can just look at the tags they are interested in. It is fun to browse but it might be more efficient with categories

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Segment the new ideas for product evaluation phase by product category.

We're testing and debating ideas for making it easier for everyone to participate in eval. The ability to sort by product categories is one of the possibilities.

Meanwhile, we now have unlimited voting in eval rounds and the ability to filter ideas by My Votes so you can go through the round, vote for what initially interests you, and then go through just those ideas. You can take back a vote at any time while an eval round is open.

Yes, the selection / voting process seems like it needs fine tuning

Dear Q-Team,

I would give you 5 gold stars and a lollipop if you gave us a way of simply bookmarking an idea... so that after we're through rating an eval round, and we're ready for voting... we could just sort by bookmarks.
...and I could put the pad and pencil away.

Thanks!

P.S. On any suggestion to using the unlimited votes as place markers to then sort by... I really do hate taking someones vote away later on. Seams mean.

In response to the lengthy suggestion above... and in keeping more on topic with 'A better way to compare, select and consider submissions' within an eval round I repeat...

A way of simply bookmarking an idea to return to later, or as Aaron Bryant suggests, a 'Considering' check box would be a big help.

Solutioneering, FTW!

Sorry to jump in on this thread (Shirley's gonna kill me) but I had to agree 100% with this sentence:

I believe a better way to compare, select and consider submissions within an eval. round is to move to a new system rather than revamp the current one.

That's exactly what we're trying to say! We're trying to find a longer term solution, versus a quick fix.

Solutioneering... yes, I welcome much more of that instead.

Jess... Shirley...
As far as this new system that's in the works...

Any officially planned roll out of Quirky 3.1 in the near future? ...estimates of course. ...and will it be piecemeal, or all at once?

Just though I'd asking, hoping more specifics may go long in relaxing the fears, anxiety, and suspicions of some among us.

Clinton's suggestion of scaling resonates with some of my thinking about evaluation. I would honestly rather see 20 ideas instead of 100-360... I think if each user were given a random group of products to evaluate there would be much more attention given to each item. Furthermore, it would produce a much more honest assessment of ideas and alleviate "popularity" and "friend" voting.

I have posted this already once in the forums, but found that it may belong better here.

I've been thinking that "the top 5 votes" is a poor way of ensuring the best ideas make it to DMV. Why? because what makes a person vote is not connected strong enough to D, M or V!

In response, I had an idea, and I'm really liking this idea :D
Scrap “top 5.” Start a new voting system whereby the goal is not to filter up the top voted - but to filter up the most interesting and exiting as they relate to DM&V, as that is really the only thing that matters!

We would do this by creating various award categories (i.e. the invention award). How would this work?

Imagine the following: You are the first to make any actions in the round. The round opens up, you see a summary page unlike what we see currently. This summary page has all of the award categories at top. You can click on the different categories if there is a product/s that qualify, otherwise it is grayed out. You are the first person to take any action so far this round, so all award categories are grayed out. Additionally, there are no idea summaries to view at this point. The only thing you can do at this point is click the huge button "Start Reviewing For Influen$e." You can "rate" or "skip" to see the next submission at random. Once you rate one submission, the "next" button is no longer grayed out, and the idea submission can be reviewed on the summary page (where it says "1 of 104 submissions reviewed") as we are now accustomed to.

You do this, and soon enough you come across a submission (that may be good or bad on other measures, but) deserves attention by one measure as it is potentially patentable technology. On the product page, you click "nominate this idea." There you nominate it for the "New Invention" award. Now, it's been nominated - you cannot take back a nomination and maybe you should get a limited number of nominations. Another user logs in, and stumbles on this same submission after you submitted your nomination. They don't see that it has been nominated and think it should be, so they follow the same steps you do. They happen to be unknowingly "seconding" your original nomination. After a submission has had two nominations (or how ever many QS decides should be required) they get an award icon represented on their page. At that point, you can vote “aye” or “nay” (for or against) on that award on their submission page. Additionally, this idea activates the once grayed out "New Invention" award category on the summary page. Now you can click on that award on the summary page to skip to the summary list of all those under the “New Invention” award (where you can also vote for or against the awards but not the idea as submitted and can't rate).

All awards would be assigned DM&V attributes. For instance, the "Design Opportunities" award would be attributed to D and "Want to Buy Now" would be M. These awards plus the general "vote for this idea" would make up the new Quirky Community Score. This way, if something gets tagged as "Innovative" it wouldn't slip through the cracks, the QS would see WHY an idea is getting attention. An additional unintended consequence would be that users would get a more intuitive grasp about what the ideation round is about and how to properly utilize it. I have too often seen people make uneducated comments about the process, not realizing this is just the idea phase and etc.

Why do we currently not make a QC score that mirrors the QS evaluation scores. In the future, these votes and nominations could become more intelligent. As someone who voted for "Design Opportunities" on a product that ends up with a real design award, would get higher weighted votes when it comes to voting on ideation awards that relate to D relevant award categories.

I also see this as a way to get members involved in promoting good ideas and what they like about an idea other than just promoting their own. If you nominate something, you want others to vote for it too because it benefits you. So the person doing the nominating would all the sudden have motivation for making a case for why someone else's idea is awesome (and in what way).

Then, the Quirky Staff would evaluate the data and pick what they want to go through DMV

Also, there must be a “Quirky!” award if we go with this data-collection/decision-making scheme. When voting on Quirky award, it should mean you're voting for something innovative, unique, and solves a problem. In other words, it should be the most desired award...

Also, awards are fun!

Apologies if this has been covered before. I see plenty of suggestions for this kind of topic but wasn't able to find exactly these - but that doesn't mean they've not been suggested before! :)

My concern is that with so many ideas submitted - and only 5 to choose from (plus a wildcard or 2), many great ideas could simply not make the cut. This is bad for inventors as well as Quirky. Of course, they can be re-submitted, but having to spend another $10 plus the disappointment may make many inventors shy away.

I have 2 suggestions to hopefully help this:

1. When one clicks on the submit button for a new idea (not a Brief), there should be a counter showing how many ideas have been submitted so far. That way, the person can decide if they want to submit their idea (and $10!) this week or possibly the following week if there are too many ideas already submitted.

2. In addition to selecting top 5 for review (plus wildcard), there should be some kind of notation by the Quirky team for potential good ideas. Maybe 5 or 10. These ideas would then be automatically re-entered the following week, maintaining their vote count and comments and not requiring an additional $10. This way the good ideas are still maintained without overwhelming the deep dive process with *too many* projects at once.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Idea for improved submission process.

It's hard to go through all the pages in the entries of new ideas, it would be great if the order of entries could rotate every few hours so that there is even exposure of all products

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
product exposure.

I like that idea to rotate the order - nicer than just being random! I still feel that there should be a way to *easily* see all the ideas at one time in a big list - more simple & compact than what you get when doing a "show all" - and have it load all it once instead of requiring constant scrolling downwards.

PLEASE do something about this soon! With 300+ submissions it gets very frustrating when I can't just click through the ones I voted on to leave comments / rate. Seems like it should be an easy fix.

Voting and rating is one area that should not be left to the surfing of the voter. It should be automated and systematic and serve the need of the system to obtain statistically valid ratings in the shortest practical time, and yield the most practical and meaningful result.

An 'exhaustive' implementation, the fairest of them all, would rate every idea against every other idea. The system tracks and tabulates comparisons, not standalone ratings. What use is fifty ideas all tagged equally fabulous and awesome? There are ways to cut this number down if necessary, but the most seamless, painless, fun and productive way is for the system to randomly pitch out as-yet unrated sets of two ideas (anonymous as per Alice) until all possible sets are exhausted. Repeated rounds of verification of the best results might follow for the rest of the week, all transparent to the community, as people do have individual reactions.

How to to stimulate this participation? Simple. One Quirky cent in available balance for every vote. It costs nothing, it feels classy to show appreciation, it produces cohesion and a sense of purpose and a better and more valid result.

Idea for grouping similar items is here:
http://support.quirky.com/quirky/topi...
vote if you agree

Whatever can be done to help us process the huge numbers of idea submissions needs to be put in place ASAP.
'
Now is better that later on this.

A quick temporary solution would be a 'for later reference' button that will let you skim rapidly in a first pass and go back to the much smaller list when you have time. Some people say they accomplish this by commenting and then choosing their 'commented' list but that takes time and you may have nothing to say in a comment and the numbers are beyond that.

I like the idea of this two pass method. Skim through first, indicating the ones you want to put more detail into.
It would speed up the process and give a better quality result.

Suggestions to make Quirky better:

1. Now that more people are using Quirky, it would be great to be able to sift through the ideas quirky. One way to do this, is to add a "bad idea" button or "dislike" or simply a "make invisible" button. That way if you look at 20 submissions in the morning, you do not have resift through all the ideas in the evening. I find this annoying.

2. Bigger thumbnails. I am not big on using the download button, it would be better if the image could simply become larger.

3. The tagline submission is overwhelming in the least. It needs to be fixed. Maybe it can be broken down into chunks, 10 at a time say. Something similar to say how Aardvark organizes there questions.

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
New at Quirky, suggestions to make it better.

Love the concept of Quirky. Participation, however, is far too time intensive. Consider :1. breaking the process of picking and influencing products into much smaller groups, then narrowing by the top in each group until you are at the top 10, then allowing the whole community to pick one (assign each community member a group color or number when they start). 2. Add search capability to the influencing stage - if you have a design, name, or tag line idea, you should be able to quickly search by key word to see if it has been suggested. In the meantime, at least allow alpha sorts to be ascending OR descending. 3. Select a name first. Tag lines come more easily once a name is picked, and they often go hand in hand. For instance, "Your stuff's best friend" is great for a product "Window Buddies" that is a solar powered stick-on USB power charger for windows, but doesn't fit the product if it ends up being named "USB Green Up"

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Quirky is fantastic, but platform and processes are too time intensive and can be improved..

I have two ideas for easing the process of product eval for the community:

1. We need a way to mark the ones we have read (or put them in a "Yes, Maybe, or No") folder so that we know what to go back and look at, what you have seen and don't care for and what is unread. Every time you log in the order is random and most of us don't have time to sit through 500-700 ideas at once.

2. We should be able to see responses to comments we make. If I ask a question, odds are I will not be able to remember/find the product later to see if they responded.

Just some thoughts!

Meghan Stockman

This reply was created from a merged topic originally titled
Organize Community Evaluation.

Hello everyone! I've just submitted my Idea a few days ago. After reading your comments here which I thoroughly enjoy and have learned valuable information. I've been contacted by one inventor who read my submission and the review went something like this, "Like your product idea. Please check mine out. I could use your help" This is sort of how I perceived this.

I like the idea of categories. I would like the signing up process to include 5 areas of personal interest. Because I am an electrician and general handyman my interest would be very much focused on products that I could use in my craft. My wife is a professional cook and I love to cook which means products that are related to cooking are essential. By doing this it opens up the door for infinite possibilities of organizing and rating peoples influence and groupings. Groups and individuals can then be rated and rewarded base on the accuracy and involvement. Everyone who signs up based on their categories gets put into 5 starter categories for new ideas. A set number of new product ideas are filtered though them from their starter categories. Each product that is reviewed gives options to rate as well as joining a group of influence for this particular product. Another option is to give the reviewer a chance to go on and review more products in that same category if desired. As individuals prove their effectiveness in identifying quality products, they move up the chain of influence and could be placed in groups on different levels to evaluate products. Give an inventor a way to track their ideas progress as well as ways to interact with reviewers especial when groups are formed to review his/her type of product. Quirky probably cannot afford to have expertise in all these areas of product knowledge and development. Having such a new massive influx of ideas and no way to manage them effectively will be its downfall unless an effective and efficient way is constructed. My idea here is one of many that I hope they will have "Ears to Hear!"

Dave