RFC: Statistics in Subsurface

[Dirk Hohndel]

Hi Chrisof

> On May 14, 2020, at 3:30 AM, Christof Arnosti <charno at charno.ch> wrote:
> Let me give some thoughts from a more-or-less outsider perspective in this discussion.
> 
> From a UI-Perspective, I would prefer the layout to be "Dive List top left", "Filter top right", "Stats selection bottom left", "Stats display bottom right". This is with the reasoning that (in the western world) we work from top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right, and the logical Workflow would be to have the dive list as input, which is then filtered, then the statistics selected and finally the output. This workflow could also be applied as sort of a wizard for mobile devices.
> 

In insulation that may be true. But our existing UI is not up for discussion. And that very intentionally has the information that the user interacts with (information tabs and profile) on top, and the selection of dives on the bottom. Switching that around to show statistics would lead to a horrible user experience.

On mobile these would have to be different pages, anyway, so there the 'layout' question is fairly moot

> For selecting the graph type (the bar vs boxplot discussion): Could this also be implemented as an option in the "Stats selection" section? I think it's obvious that some people prefer the more advanced boxplot version, and some the easier to understand bar/line graph version.
> 

Every time we opt for "oh, let's make this selectable" we significantly increase the amount of code that needs to be written and tested, and we make the UI more complicated by adding more options.
We already have way, way, way too many options. And we constantly find that yet some other feature has bit-rotted and doesn't work anymore. Or that some changes to our code break something else that doesn't have an active developer anymore.

Today Subsurface is de facto maintained by about five people, three of which contribute in very narrow slices that are "theirs", and the other two (Berthold and I) try to keep everything else working.

> Another (third? fourth?) option I just tought of was a boxplot with included histogram, where the histogram is displayed as color (instead of a curve). I have attached an image of a short mockup (Where red means more, and green means less). I'm not sure if that's a good idea, but at least it's an idea ;-) 
> 

It's definitely an idea. It's geeky and cool. I don't think it will help accessibility (in the sense of being easy to understand for the casual user).

> About graph orientation: I strongly agree that the bars (or boxes or whatever) should be vertical, so that the time-axis (or trip axis or whatever) is the z axis.
> 

You mean time / categories should be the x axis, correct?

> This is (at least for me) the natural way to read graphs, and also what's currently done in the dive-display.
> 

Which dive display? The dive list has time as the vertical axis. Do you mean the dive profile? That's a single dive, not a collection of dives. Very different.

> And as a last point a proposal for a little visual gimmick: I would really like to have the value-axis for depth turned around, so that the 0-point is on top of the graph (like in the current dive-graph). With this, the visual representation of the data is the same as in the physical reality, lower means lower.
> 

Yes, that makes perfect sense for a dive plot (which is why we do it that way). For statistics I would find it absolutely painful.

/D
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.subsurface-divelog.org/pipermail/subsurface/attachments/20200514/96fc29b2/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: kijinokeijnnhkpj.png
Type: image/png
Size: 1581 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.subsurface-divelog.org/pipermail/subsurface/attachments/20200514/96fc29b2/attachment.png>