Saturday, May 7, 2011

Rating

We rate or judge all kind of things. Products, services, thoughts, statements, accomplishments or even people. "She is a perfect 10!", "You have got an A+!", "I like this idea best.", "That is the best deal you have ever made!",... .

Rating helps us to compare things within a certain context. Sometimes we define this context ourselves ("she is a 10", so she is the best looking girl I can think of) or it is given by the situation or the environment.

To give a rating a comparable meaning, a range of values must be defined. Mostly this range is connected with the context and again we can (re)define it ourselves (wow, i have just met a 12!) or it is given by the environment.

With some ratings we also need some reference rules for the range values. Most schools in Switzerland for example define a grad 6 as the best, a grad 1 the worst and a 4 as passed. In Germany it is the other way round, a 1 is best, a 5 worst and also a 4 has passed. Other countries bring in letters A..F and +/-... I hope you get the point.

Visually we express rating values in all kind of forms:

CO2 emissions of a car

Hotel classification

Some rating user interface controls I have found on the Web:

In Choosle you will find simple 5-star controls for a quick roughly rating and a green/red slider for a more fine grained input. In the backend data model both controls produce values in the range of -100..100. So they can be switched at any time.

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