Consider Quality

Addressing Roadblocks

As we narrowed the combination of measures that would be fed back to the user, we found that we needed to create guidelines for some the measures (for instance, how far back would the barometer measure from the current date). We hit a number of obstacles that could hamper its success, and did our best to troubleshoot these problems and create a remedy:

A lower Daily Cost means better performance, but this does not seem rewarding. We could use “Savings Earned” (the difference in Daily Cost from other similar purchases), but this would not be feasible without comparing products’ functionality. Over time, this may become possible as the system grows and encompasses more products, but at this time, we will have to find another way for the user to immediately grasp that a lower number means better performance.

The review section will become a running inventory of everything I own- that’s a lot! To prevent users from being swamped with recent purchases, products in the review section would need to be rotated each time the user logs in. Once a product is deemed “No Longer Using” or “Busted”, it will be removed from the review section and put into a backlog of the users’ purchases. If a product is reported to be “Working perfectly” or “Beginning to Break Down”, it will be removed from the rotation for a few weeks. Rotating the products could also encourage consistency with reviews by bringing up new items each time the user logs in.

Products with a really long lifespan will not have feedback for a long time.

Some product testing would be done before the database is public, but initially it will work best with products that have a lifespan of 1-5 years. However, it is possible that even just seeing that a large number of people have purchased a product and are still finding it to be “Working Perfectly” could be enough to allow others to trust it.

These issues, plus many more, will require innovative solutions to ensure that they do not interfere with the system’s ability to connect with users and influence positive change. However, we feel that by acknowledging such issues now, it will be easier to move forward in a responsible manner without overlooking potential downfalls that might result in failure or inconsistencies.