Subsurface Statistics Panel

[Dirk Hohndel]

Hi Davide,

On Sun, Feb 08, 2015 at 05:15:51PM +0100, Davide DB wrote:
> 4.4 is out so I thought to gave my input on some new features could be
> implemented in the 10.0 release :)

Excellent!

> Obviously I do not pretend this is the design. My wire-frames are just a
> starting point, few ideas where users and developers could start
> brainstorming.

So far your wire-frames have been the best things people have contributed;
without you we wouldn't have the really nice filter implementation we have
today!
So let's see what we got this time around.

> *Multi-filter*
> 
> First of all I will try to continue where we left with the multi-filter
> component. I remember Tomaz wrote that is easily extensible with new
> filters.
> 
> It's easy to see that right now it's not complete. The most important
> filter missing is a date range control. Moreover, we do not have filters
> for the most important dive parameters: depth and duration.
> Hence my try at it:
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/tix3ImE.png
> 
> 
>    - Date range filter
>    - Depth slider
>    - Run-time/duration slider
> 
> I used a slider because it saves a lot of H space hence we could fit more
> controls ;)

I like all three of them. I think space will get tight even with the
sliders, though. Especially on smaller screens.

> Requirements:
> 
> - All three filters should be initialized with min - max values taken form
> the logbook.

Makes sense

> How many dives I filtered?
> Another important string missing is the:
> 
> *"You selected/filtered XX dives so far..."*

It is missing? I don't think so. At least I can see it in Subsurface 4.4
Did you check?

> because if you select a large number of dives (probably bigger than the
> dive-list table vertical space) it's not easy counting them.
> If there is no filtering in action the string is:
> 
> *"You have 523 dives logged"*

THAT we don't have. But we do show "Filter shows 123 (of 381) dives". It
shows up above the filters...

> *Statistics*
> 
> You access to Statistics view from:
> 
> 
>    1. "Statistics" button on the Multi-filter panel
>    2. Key combination (Crtl+XX)
>    3. View menu item.
> 
> 
> Statistics view is always linked (displayed) with the Multi-Filter panel.
> By default the panel in actions #2 and #3 opens the statistics panel
> initialized with the full logbook.
> In action #1, it initializes itself with the data filtered by the
> Multi-filter component *(*)*

OK, that makes sense

> As you saw in the opening wireframes  the "dive info" panel lacks of the
> "stats" tab. It's not a mistake. I removed it. It will be substituted  by
> this new panel.

Good. I hate what we have today - it's confusing and inconsistent and
annoying.

> Moreover I always found it misleading because it's a tab of the dive info
> panel but it could contain stats for several of them if they are selected
> form the dive list. No please.

Agreed

> Designing the main statistic panel we can have two approach:
> 
>    1. Tabbed pane: a classic but maybe somehow obsolete design. It gives
>    the maximum horizontal space, wasting very few vertical space.
>    2. Master details pattern: modern UI but it waste a lot of horizontal
>    space.

I like what you have in http://i.imgur.com/GdH6psp.png better, so what you
call the "Master details pattern", but I agree that it wastes space.

> Both approach have the benefits that you could implements statistics in
> several steps (adding tabs/items) and the UI seems complete.

Yep.

> Master details pattern:
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/GdH6psp.png
> 
> On following attempts I used the tabbed pane.
> 
> 
> *Statistic views*
> 
> In the last weeks I tested several desktop and online logbooks. When it
> comes to statistics most of them have an "All you can eat" approach
> displaying tons of charts although only few of them being meaningful.
> Here I selected those I find more useful (IMHO). A rose is a rose hence
> it's difficult to be original on some of them.

The biggest problem to me is that more is not always better. Every new
tab, every new graph, every new statistic adds more code, more bugs, more
testing...

> *Overall/General/Outline*
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/sDGavon.png
> 
> Nearly all logbooks have a Overall view giving general statistics on the
> logbook owner so we can't be different on this :)

Actually, yes we can, but I'll go along with you...

> Actually it's similar to the current "stats" tab.
> I did not try to layout labels right now. It's just a list of what we could
> have here:
> 
>    - Num of dives (where/when)
>    - Total  time diving (where/when)
>    - Max / Min duration (where/when)
>    - Max / Min depth (where/when)
>    - Max / Min temperature (where/when)

What does "where/when" mean in all of those?

>    - Most dove spot/location
>    - Average depth & average time

Define average depth, please. Is this the mean depth of all the dives, or
the mean of the max depths of all the dives? We've had this confusion
before...

>    - How many trips
>    - Most used tank
>    -
>    - Total amount of gas used:
>       - Air: xxx
>       - He: yyy
>       - O2: zzz
> 
> Based on space available we could use the lowest part of this panel view to
> draw a chart...(the time goes by chart described later)

I think this is already a ton of information... and I worry about text
only information as we have it on the stats tab. This often results in a
very hard to absorb UI. So that's why I said above "we can decide not to
have this 'overview'".

> *Grid view*
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/zWiKVCq.png
> 
> a grid showing number of dives for a particular month in a given year.

I think for 90+% of all divers this is pretty useless. The vast majority
of divers does not dive every month. Most people go on 1-4 dive trips a
year. So most of the grid will be '0'.

Not saying no, just voicing a concern.

> After laying out the grid I realized that months are always 12 so we could
> swap Years and Months on X/Y axis to avoid scrollbars...
> 
> *Map View*
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/o8IP4Ho.png
> 
> 
> I took this idea form an online logbook (diveaboard.com) and I saw this
> bubbles in other google maps based projects. (a local newspaper here in
> Italy use the same bubbles to display news location).
> Basically it gives you the concentration of your dives. Each color bubble
> indicate/aggregates a number-of-dives range. I do not know if this is
> possible with Marble/Openstreetmap.
> Bubbles scales according to the map zoom. I can give you more examples if
> you are interested.

This is a very cool visualization. I really like it. Definitely want this
one.

> Once you zoom-in after a certain scale you get a single dive spot view like
> our current Marble map.

Yes!

> We are not editing dives here so it would be nice that once I hoover on a
> given dive spot I get a small box with main dive details.

What happens if there are many dives at that spot?

> Inside this small box I could have a link/button to the real dive info.
> Of course, once I click I will abandon the statistics view and I go to our
> classic view.

OK.

> I could try to make a wire-frame for this.
> 
> *Time goes by view*
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/ybpmZ2e.png
> 
> Despite of the funny name I gave it this is maybe the most classical
> statistic view: number of dives through the time.
> 
> I saw many logbooks wasting screens using two separate graphs for months
> and years.
> 
> I would like having just one chart which mimics sparklines charts: micro
> columns/bar charts.
> I show two examples of what I mean. (one is the Soundcloud chart).
> 
> Our chart would have:
> 
> - Each mont is one bar., one year 12 bars
> - Months are grouped by year using alternate colors: (two shades of gray)
> 12 months light gray and 12 months dark gray.
> - Max/Min values (month with most/least dives and year with most/least
> dives) are indicated by special colors as in the example.
> - We could give extra info just hoovering on bars and having a info box
> like the current dive profile.

WOW. That's a lot of work to implement. And except for people who dive
every week... who would really get much out of this? Maybe I'm mis-judging
our average user, but I'm not convinced this is all that interesting and
it would be a lot, lot, lot of work and a lot of bug fixing and what not.

> - Some of overall stats tab could be moved here and indicated by a bar of a
> special color.
> - This chart could be moved in the overall tab lowest position.
> 
> *DDS view (Depth, Duration, SAC)*
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/7uXP6qS.png
> 
> Most of logbooks use have 5 charts (at least) for this view plotting depth
> and duration both on x and y-axis...
> 
> IMHO having depth and duration on y-axis is completely meaningless while
> having them on x-axis is useful.
> 
> SAC is the only stats is worth having on x-axis showing evoluton os gas
> consumption through experience.
> 
> I would like having just one chart. On the wireframe I draw two charts just
> to show the difference on X-Y axis.

I'd like to see more example pictures of what you want here... this has
often been requested, and certainly the depth and duration charts seem
obvious and easy to do.

> *Pie view*
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/D0fAH8I.png
> 
> Whatever can be represented by a pie chart should go here.
> I found:
> 
>    - Deco/Curve
>    - Ripetitive dive Y/n
>    - Sea/Fresh water dive
>    - OC/CCR/PSCR/Free dive
>    - DC Model
>    - Countries
> 

Umm, I need a lot more examples to understand what this is supposed to be.
What does "Deco/Curve" mean? A lot of these seem like "fluff". I don't
mean this in a bad way, I just think that the incremental use vs.
incremental effort don't look promising.

> *Buddies view*
> 
> http://i.imgur.com/hB2T8qa.png
> 
> You can get buddies and dives from the list-box control in the multifilter
> but this table it's nice (IMHO)

Also a bit redundant, but I can see the appeal to some people and it
doesn't seem like it would be all that hard to do.

> It's all for now :)

Amazing work. Seriously. Just awesome. Thank you so much for all these
ideas and for the amount of time you clearly have invested.

> ***
> Based on filter selection some statistics charts could be impossible to
> calculate or display.
> UI should take care to disable that views that lacks of meaning.

Can you give examples?

Again. Thanks.

/D