Group 28 - Global Cost of Living

[Arushi282]

DSCI532-peer-review

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To complete by the group

• Name of the app: Global Cost of Living
• Link to the repo in milestone2: https://github.com/UBC-MDS/Cost_of_living_py/tree/v0.1.0
• Link to the proposal.md file where it is the description of the persona and scenario: https://github.com/UBC-MDS/Cost_of_living_py/blob/v0.1.0/doc/Proposal.md

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To complete by the group reviewing:

Persona

• Provide 3 pieces of constructive feedback that could help the app to be better suited to the scenario it was designed for
• Provide 3 pieces of constructive feedback that could help the app to be better suited to the user(persona) it was designed for

Frontend / layout

• Is the text (plot labels / titles / subtitles) easy to read?
• Are the plots selected appropiated for the data? Can you think of other alternatives or improvements for the plots regarding interactivity/reactivity or plot selection?
• Was the dashboard organized in a way that was easy to read (columns / rows) or you would suggest a change in this sense?
• Would you prefer including tabs / navbars to improve the navigation or you think it is better to visualize everything in one screen by the nature of the content?
• Are the plots or other images described properly for the persona described?

Backend

• Are the options that you can select in the widgets working fine or have you found some cases where it is not working?
• If there are interactive plots: are the labels clear and easy to understand?

Documentation

• Was the documentation easy to understand from the README.md how to use the app? How could the documentation be improved?
• Was the app intuitive to use without reading the documentation? What information could be good to include?

Indicate something you would like to include in your own app after reviewing this one

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[kphaterp]

Group 27 Review of Group 28: Global Cost of Living

Overall, your dashboard looks excellent. Many of the discussion points that we bring up are small details and personal preferences of ours. Personally, we think your dashboard is already very complete barring a few technical bugs that are easily fixable.

Persona

Provide 3 pieces of constructive feedback that could help the app to be better suited to the scenario it was designed for

• When we select a region on the map, the circle becomes highlighted (other circles on the map become faded). This is cool, but it's not immediately apparent to us if this is interacting with anything else on the dashboard and whether this is necessary
• One alteration we would make would be to allow the user to select multiple 'monthly cost' options, so that they can see the cumulative cost of many different expenses (this would allow them to plan their future even better)
• Potentially could include the true monetary value as text above the bars in the bar plots to indicate the precise monetary value at a glance. This could be an important piece of information for users, although this is a minor point since you've already provided the tooltip to view the precise monetary value.

Provide 3 pieces of constructive feedback that could help the app to be better suited to the user (persona) it was designed for

• For graduate students who are not accustomed to using dashboards, some text providing instructions about how to use the dashboard would be helpful!
• Something that you may want to clarify is how the 'Average property price per square meter' chart ties in with the selected 'monthly cost' drop down menu bar. It may potentially be confusing if the user is prompted to select a monthly cost category, but then sees the 'Average property price per square meter'. This is a small detail and is just a personal preference for us.
• Although it is quite obvious what the drop down for geographical locations is, maybe you could include text title above this drop down menu just to make it even easier for users to navigate.

Frontend

Are the text (plot labels / titles / subtitles) easy to read?
Yes, they are formatted very well and are very easy to read. One note is that the map requires us to scroll right and left to view the entire map. Is there a way to fix this? This could just be related to our computers as well....

Are the plots selected appropriate for the data? Can you think of other alternatives or improvements for the plots regarding interactivity/reactivity or plot selection?
The plots are more than appropriate and are very informative for users. Potentially alternatives is to find a way to make the click interactivity on the map plot interact with other plots in the dashboard.

Was the dashboard organized in a way that was easy to read (columns / rows) or you would suggest a change in this sense?
Yes, the dashboard was organized very well and looked fantastic!

Would you prefer including tabs / navbars to improve the navigation or you think it is better to visualize everything in one screen by the nature of the content?
We believe that the way that this group has set up the dashboard, is completely fine, if not perfect, for their project.

Are the plots or other images described properly for the persona described?
The plots are described properly for the persona described. One note is that the y-axis of the 'average property price per square meter' doesn't indicate the right units we believe. Moreover, the y-axis units should be (Property price/m^2)

Backend

Are the options that you can select in the widgets working fine or have you found some cases where it is not working?
The multi-selection of the geographic location drop down menu doesn't seem to function as intended. Moreover, when you select multiple geographic locations, the map only filters for one of these specified locations. Something to look into in the future.

If there are interactive plots: are the labels clear and easy to understand?
The labels are very clear and easy to understand.

Documentation

Was the documentation easy to understand from the README.md how to use the app? How could the documentation be improved?
Documentation read well and created a detailed picture about how to use the app. If you could include a table of contents at the beginning of the README that would be fantastic!

Was the app intuitive to use without reading the documentation? What information could be good to include?
Their app was absolutely intuitive without needing to read the documentation. Perhaps some information on the dashboard about how to use the app could be included, although we don't believe this is necessary.

Indicate something you would like to include in your own app after reviewing this one:
We really loved your use of the sidebar on the left hand side of your dashboard. This is not something that we included in our own project, but we think it looks aesthetically beautiful. The colours you have selected also look very professional and is easy to look at.

Group 27

[Affrin101]

Thank you Group 27 for the wonderful feedback. We really found those feedbacks very helpful and constructive and tried to implement as many as we could.
Following are the changes that we implemented which can also be seen here

Feedbacks incorporated:
Persona

• When we select a region on the map, the circle becomes highlighted (other circles on the map become faded). This is cool, but it's not immediately apparent to us if this is interacting with anything else on the dashboard and whether this is necessary
  We have removed the opacity feature as also felt it did not add much value

• One alteration we would make would be to allow the user to select multiple 'monthly cost' options, so that they can see the cumulative cost of many different expenses (this would allow them to plan their future even better)
  Extremely helpful suggestion. We have added feature of multi-selection of different categories of expenses and linked it to the plots

• For graduate students who are not accustomed to using dashboards, some text providing instructions about how to use the dashboard would be helpful!
  Added a new tab to explain how the app works for new users.

• Although it is quite obvious what the drop-down for geographical locations is, maybe you could include a text title above this drop-down menu just to make it even easier for users to navigate.
  Even we had this on our minds, hence implemented it by adding appropriate placeholder

Frontend

• One note is that the map requires us to scroll right and left to view the entire map. Is there a way to fix this?
  Fixed the size of the plot and the card to accommodate the map without the need to scroll
• One note is that the y-axis of the 'average property price per square meter' doesn't indicate the right units we believe. Moreover, the y-axis units should be (Property price/m^2)
  Made it more interpretable by changing the y-axis label.

Backend

• The multi-selection of the geographic location drop-down menu doesn't seem to function as intended. Moreover, when you select multiple geographic locations, the map only filters for one of these specified locations. Something to look into in the future.
  We were trying to fix it in Milestone 2 but due to time constraints we couldn't but we were able to achieve it in this milestone

Changes not incorporated:

• Potentially could include the true monetary value as the text above the bars in the bar plots to indicate the precise monetary value at a glance. This could be an important piece of information for users, although this is a minor point since you've already provided the tooltip to view the precise monetary value.
  We feel the tooltip already does the needful, adding monetary value on top would make it clumsy, hence we did not include it

• Potentially alternative is to find a way to make the click interactivity on the map plot interact with other plots in the dashboard.
  We feel that the dashboard is quite interactive now, Additional features might not be needed.

• If you could include a table of contents at the beginning of the README that would be fantastic!
  We feel README looks fine as is so we did not feel the need to add the TOC.

Once again, thank you for your valuable feedback as it helps us improve, keep them flowing in.!!