Let's say I have a brand new fancy model on some asset class (calibration porcedure included over a set of vanilla options) in which I truly believe I made a step forward comparing to existing literature (a phantasmatic situation I recognize).
Which criteria should be in order so I can claim that I am in a position to "validate" this model?
PS: We will assume that the math are OK and that I can prove that there is no bug in the model implementation
When you’re editing content and have links to organizations or frameworks that has many words, the link might exceed an entire row or break a row. These lengthy links look ridiculous and could probably effect readability. A few examples would be:
So how do you solve this? Link the abbreviation only, or put links at the bottom of the page or something else?
Answer
I would not link the abbreviation only. The abbreviation should be placed in brackets after the first (and only) use of the full phrase which is abbreviated. The abbreviation is therefore in brackets as an advisory of the contraction and of its subsequent use in exchange for the full term. The abbreviation is not in itself the item that requires linkage, it serves a different purpose.
If you link the abbreviation and not subsequent uses of the abbreviation, the first (linked) instance of the abbreviation looses the visual relationship (font, colour, appearance) with the subsequent uses when people look back for the first use. It obscures the mechanism.
In addition, for those following content with automated readers, the abbreviation would become the focal point or node of the link and that seems incorrect, although the title text of the link could re-expand the text.
Nor would I put the links at the bottom of the page. To do so would be to extract that particular item from the content as being of importance to the whole story, and one which you may wish to follow up on for related information. That's fine if that happens to be the case but to do it because the phrase is long is inappropriate and unnecessary, misleading even.
I think you are trying to resolve a problem that does not exist. I believe the correct thing is to link the full term. It only looks odd if you have very few words in addition to the long phrase, and to say it looks ridiculous is being harsh.
I would add that appropriate link colours reduce the need to even look for a 'solution'. For example, dark blue links among black text makes the phrase stand out less, aids readability and flow. Of course it has to be distinguishable as a link, so there's not that much scope for messing around with the colours. Darkening visited links also helps.
In addition paragraph width plays an important part in not making the content look awkward. Narrow paragraphs are inherently going to have links that break lines - maybe even several lines. Neither does this require a 'solution' - I mean what do you do? Deliver content optimised for link length based on a media query that takes into account paragraph width and changes what's linked when the user flips a device for landscape to portrait. Of course not.
By way of an example: A website which has a huge amount of content and is very particular about their manual of style, Wikipedia is quite happy to link long terms or phrases without considering it a problem. For example in their article on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), they include a number of long links, some of which are abbreviations such as United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO). Others, however, are terms which may not even have an appropriate abbreviation, such as the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. To use an abbreviation purely for the sake of making a link shorter is obviously doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason.
No - the only actions that fit all situations are:
We're in the process of developing an application that makes use of modals to provide the user with extra functionality without having to go to a separate page. I have two questions related to this:
1) How complex is too complex? At what point do you decide that the modal really should be a separate page after all?
2) Should modals be new functionality or extensions of the current page contents? (like editing a record on the page verus a whole new action)
I am trying to find examples of user behaviour research that combines both quantitative and qualitative data. It seems to me that most of the research leans heavily or exclusively towards one approach or the other. So you often see a large-scale survey study drawing some very specific conclusions, or heat-map or eye tracking studies that make some very general conclusions. The extent to which you can interpolate or extrapolate these results surely depends on if you are able to link them to a specific context. Considering that there are obvious advantages and disadvantages to each approach, what is the major concern with researcher running studies to collect both types of information? I don't by the argument of cost or time, because if the information being collected is not accurate or cannot be put into context correctly then it is a much bigger waste of time.
One of the key take-home messages for UX practitioners from Comparative Usability Evaluation 8 is to:
"Combine qualitative and quantitative findings in your report. Present what happened and support it with why it happened."
Because by applying qualitative and quantitative research methods you are able to treat a problem by linking the symptoms (what happened) to the root cause of the problem (why it happened).
Why isn't quantitative and qualitative data collected at the same time in more UX research/studies?
Answer
You’ll find a taxonomy and descriptions of different ways of integrating qualitative and quantitative methods in the “Mixed Methods Procedures” chapter in John Creswell’s (2013) Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (SAGE Publications). The chapter includes examples of actual studies. The book is intended for social science field research, but the chapter can be applied to UX work too. For example, Luke Swartz’s thesis Why People Hate the Paperclip: Labels, Appearance, Behavior, and Social Responses to User Interface Agents is an example of a “sequential exploratory strategy.”
To summarize, you integrate the qualitative and quantitative results by:
Using the qualitative data to explain what you found in the quantitative data.
Using the qualitative data to decide what to manipulate and measure quantitatively.
Use one method to validate the results of the other (where one makes up for the weakness of the other).
Use whichever method is most suitable for each component of your theory you’re testing.
Qualitative and quantitative methods have different needs, so they are often conducted separately, almost as if they were separate studies. They often use different samples or sampling procedures. However, you can do mixed-methods in a single round of usability testing:
You encourage the user to think aloud, which (I’ve always assumed) has little impact on the relative quantitative performance (e.g., time to complete task, number of errors, eye-gaze durations). To get accurate quantitative results, avoid interrupting the user, perhaps doing so only if they get stuck for standard period of time.
At the end of the test, you can use a quantitative survey (e.g., SUS). After that you conduct a qualitative interview/debrief (which may involve going back into the app to discuss what happened at various places).
You perform qualitative analysis of the video tapes, the eye-tracking data (which may also be analyzed quantitatively), and interview results. Because qualitative analysis is time-consuming per user while quantitative methods need a relatively large sample size, you may want to perform qualitative analysis on subset of your users.
You integrate the results from the methods using one or more of Creswell’s strategies.
I want to write a novel, but I want to write that novel using my best idea currently... it's just that, I don't have an idea, at least not one that I deem worthy of the time and effort involved in producing my first novel draft. Is brainstorming the best way to generate ideas? What are some questions I could ask myself? Questions about what I want my novel to be? What message I want to provide to my readers?
I want to write a story that I would want to read... should I start there, and just come up with everything that I would want to visualize while reading/writing it?
Please tell me your thoughts on this, idea generating business...
I don't mean give me ideas, and I'm not asking for a secret map that leads to me discovering the iridescent sap of the legendary idea tree, at the end of the lucid dream spiral dimension... lol.
Just what works for you.
Thanks.
Answer
Often, it is not the questions about a potential story idea that we ask ourselves to invoke inspiration; it's the questions about life we ask ourselves that tend to want us to create an answer. What if this murder was being solved by this type of person, in this environment? What would happen if I put this in space, but instead of the void, space was ruled by these people? How would vastly different teenagers (with these personalities) interact when left in a confined area for an hour or two?
Overuse of italics aside, it's very difficult to write something with a lack of enthuse. Any idea you produce should be one you're excited to write – one you're excited to produce every ounce of detail for. Even ideas that have you thinking, "Man! This idea is stubborn/weird/different. I want it out of my head and on paper." are often subliminally approached by the hidden enthuse to see them come to life. And remember, linking back to what you mentioned: any novel you write you will read, sometimes more than any book you'll ever encounter, so make it something that sparks your interest. And by this, I don't mean write a story that incorporates your hobbies, interests and opinions in one large book (unless this is something you want to do).
Ensure your idea evokes some sort of emotion in yourself other than boredom. Writing a character you hate, writing a relationship you long for, writing about a job you're curious about – all these things will stir up a reaction within you. But also, don't expect to keep this emotion through the duration of your book: the passion for a certain character or situation may fade, but it's up to you to persevere such emotion through plot or character development to keep your writing alive. Remember that writing a novel is similar to reading a novel, and the rollercoaster of emotions and opinions (if present) are a huge part of writing.
Don't let that stop you from developing ideas, however! There's a common misconception that an amazing, best-selling idea for a novel is a gigantic revelation: something that just hits the writer out of nowhere and prompts them to begin writing immediately. In a sense, this could happen and probably does. But an idea is perfectly valid without it coming about in a momentous occasion. Sometimes just the way someone says something, or the way something looks, allows for the same questions I mentioned earlier to arise within a writer. Said writer thinks more about the question, mixes various elements together and the idea is there.
Some writers get their ideas through reading other books, watching TV shows and movies, playing video games, etc. Usually anything you voluntarily surround yourself and interact with will evoke some questions about said thing that may spark an idea. One thing I'd like to bring up is about reading what you want to write (the inverse of writing what you want to read). It's a great idea that can allow questions regarding theme to arise and thus, bring about an idea. However, you may tend to find yourself forcing an idea to come out by doing such, and because this has happened, such an idea may be a strained 'duplicate' of the story you can't notice yourself emulating.
This all falls down to the fluidity that generating an idea comes down to. Forcing an idea out leads to disinterest, strain in writing, stress, and the eventual scrapping or abandonment of a story. The ideas you deem 'not good enough' to write are ideas that you came up with by yourself, and unless they were forced in such a way that didn't lead to concluding appeal, they were produced with the fluidity that is generating ideas. Often, many writers write their best novels out of an idea that they wouldn't deem the most utter sensational. But, they had an idea, it interested them, and there it went. And even further, I think it would be extremely helpful to understand that the first novel isn't always the best. Your view on life, your writing, and the themes you plan to write about, may change immensely in the next couple of years. It's why many writers read their past work and prefer to never go back there again; in the moment, it was the best and only thing they knew.
Some writers treat their ideas like their babies; they only deserve the best and first placement among all. Others get an idea and just go with it. I think this might be an aspect that is holding you back. Every idea is worthy of being written – it doesn't have to be momentous in any form to be 'good'. As long as it's something you are interested in, whether it be out of appeal, anger or curiosity, it's worth being looked into. And that being said, ideas are natural! Really, the best ideas are the ones that pop up randomly (with or without the 'huge revelation'). If you want to get some creative juices flowing: do some writing prompts, watch a new show that looks interesting, read a different book of your favourite genre, listen to music, dabble in aesthetic photography – do anything that evokes an emotion in you. You could even look into the questions other people have about certain things and themes; see their take on the issue. (And if you're really stuck after doing all these things, do a brainstorm of every theme and genre you've ever enjoyed, why you've enjoyed it, and how you can challenge the idea of it/make it better.)
But most importantly: Don't rush your art!
I remember reading recently some studies (lot of them pretty old) that claimed that in general it is better to go with wide and shallow information architecture rather than narrow and deep. However now I can't find, can anyone point them to me? I even remember reading chapter in some book about this, which referenced several of the studies.
Edit: Thanks for the tips. I misremembered, it wasn't a book and it was more about menu structures. The article I was searching for is http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/apr032.htm
We are using a hamburger menu on the mobile view of our responsive website, http://edmdesigner.com
There's a debate going on in the team:
a) Should the hamburger menu close if you click/tap outside of the open hamburger?
b) Or should it only close if you click/tap on the actual "hamburger icon"?
Answer
Some facts:
The image below is from the article How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices?. You can find plenty of other articles on the web about how users use a mobile phone. The data was collected by observing thousands of mobile phone owners remotely.
Dark Orange / Red - percentage of people who use their phone using thumb alone
Violet - Percentage of people who use their phone in cradle position
Magenta - two hands
Others were engaged in a call or other activities (see the article for details).
The above results show that 60-70% people use a single thumb to use the phone. Mobile phone devices are getting larger and larger these days. The reachability of a single thumb is mostly on the lower part and towards the right.
The following image shows the areas where that thumb can reach: 
In case of a hamburger menu, it would be an extra effort for the user to move his/her fingers to the position just to close it.
So it would be better if they can close it by tapping anywhere outside it.
Another point is the user expectation. Most users are familiar with the hamburger menu these days, and they will expect it to close if they tap outside the menu (just like a pop up box).
Edit
Adding the suggestions from the comments-
A swipe to close/open option is also highly recommended.
Users are used to swiping it in and out , this can be done independent of the screen positions - so highly recommended.
Is there a way, maybe a script, that would help me cut an image into say 50 images?
I have a massive panorama I would like to print on normal stock photo paper and I am using Photoshop.
The output of this operation needs to be images, not PDFs, not printer. There is still work to be done with each of these cut-outs later.
How can I slice a large image into many smaller images with an automated, or relatively fast method?
Answer
No need for a script (yet), I found a simple way. Hope it helps someone else too.
If you want all the cutouts / slices to be of same size and cover whole image, resize or crop base image accordingly.
We are building a data import feature in which our users will open an arbitrary CSV file and define a one-to-one mapping of its fields to a list of known fields in our database. The list of fields is very long (around 30 known fields and an arbitrary number in the CSV [though likely between 20 and 50 in the CSV).
A naive implementation would be simply laying out all of the discovered fields in a vertical list paired with combo boxes for selecting the known-field mapping.
[discovered 1] [combo]
[discovered 2] [combo]
etc
Or horizontally,
[discovered 1] [discovered 2] [etc...]
[combo] [combo] [combo]
The issues here are:
Possibly a better approach would be similar to the above, except with draggable boxes for the known fields that can be positioned adjacent to the discovered field.
Another issue to consider is CSV files without header rows: how to identify each discovered field?
Are there existing examples out there of a good solution to this interaction?
Answer
A lot hinges on what "The list of fields is very long" actually means. Can you clarify your question by giving an actual number? both for number of fields in the CSV and number of fields in the database. Also are the field names relatively short or are some descriptive long names?
Grids can display more information easily than lists. Have a grid for the fields found from the CSV and a grid for the fields in the database, both shown at the same time. Drag and drop to match them up. There is then visual feedback on what has been used and what hasn't been used, from both points of view, and there's a vary natural way to make changes.
To have more than about 200 fields in the database you will need ways to hide some of the fields and only show fields that are of interest. A tab control with 8 tabs, based on alphabetic sorting, is one straightforward way to fit more on.
Another issue to consider is CSV files without header rows: how to identify each discovered field?
There is nothing wrong with calling the discovered fields 'Field 1', 'Field 2' etc...
To be nicer - helping the user to actually identify the field - there should be an info-box on the screen that has more information for one field, for example 'Field 1: Appears to be a date; values between 9/Jul/1066 and 01/Apr/2035; 17 blank entries; 2 entries not in a valid date format; View'. This can show information for the first unmapped field, or the information for a field that has just been clicked on or dragged over.
This will help whether the user chooses to drag from discovered CSV field to database field or from database field to discovered CSV field.
Something to consider, you asked for optimal interface, in the case where you do have field headers for the discovered field. If your software is able to make an educated guess about what field from the database matches based on name and type, that can be shown as 'suggested match' in the info-box. Checkbox to confirm. You could also have a screen that shows all suggestions and allows them to be reviewed/accepted in bulk.
Problem: the user has a list of about 5-20 uncategorised items and needs to categorize them into 2-4 groups. The tricky part is that the same item can be placed into more than one group (this is an edge case but needs to be supported).
From what I can see there are two design patterns that apply:
Drag-and-drop:
Basically user is provided with a list of drag-able items which he/she can then bucket inot groups
The main issue with this pattern is that because the same item can be placed into more than one group it means that it's not really a 'move' interaction, the item has to stay in the uncategorised list in order for the user to be able to also place it into another category. Another consequence of this is that the uncategorised list never shrinks so it's not immediately clear which of the items in it have been grouped and which remain unassigned
Here is a possible design that tries to handle the above issues. Items which have been assigned to groups appear darker. Also I use color (coloured dot corresponding to the group label color) to help the user see which group(s) the item has been put under.
Checkbox table:
A table-style UI where each item can be assigned to a group by checking the checkbox for that group's column. Checkboxes rather than radio buttons are used because of the multiple group assignment per item requirement. Here is an example:
The main disadvantage I see with this UI is that it's not immediately easy to see what items belong to a given group. Also it's a bit more clumsy to move items between groups once assigned (2 step action: user has to uncheck one checkbox and check another one). This can be remedied by providing a separate listing of the items in each group beside the assignment table UI. This list can either be non-interactive or support drag-n-drop for moving items between groups. Example:
To be honest I'm not completely satisfied with either solution. I'm wondering if anyone has any better ideas or improvements to this design?
I am not very sure, if this question fits in here.
I have recently begun, reading and learning about machine learning. Can someone throw some light onto how to go about it or rather can anyone share their experience and few basic pointers about how to go about it or atleast start applying it to see some results from data sets? How ambitious does this sound?
Also, do mention about standard algorithms that should be tried or looked at while doing this.
Answer
There seems to be a basic fallacy that someone can come along and learn some machine learning or AI algorithms, set them up as a black box, hit go, and sit back while they retire.
My advice to you:
Learn statistics and machine learning first, then worry about how to apply them to a given problem. There is no free lunch here. Data analysis is hard work. Read "The Elements of Statistical Learning" (the pdf is available for free on the website), and don't start trying to build a model until you understand at least the first 8 chapters.
Once you understand the statistics and machine learning, then you need to learn how to backtest and build a trading model, accounting for transaction costs, etc. which is a whole other area.
After you have a handle on both the analysis and the finance, then it will be somewhat obvious how to apply it. The entire point of these algorithms is trying to find a way to fit a model to data and produce low bias and variance in prediction (i.e. that the training and test prediction error will be low and similar). Here is an example of a trading system using a support vector machine in R, but just keep in mind that you will be doing yourself a huge disservice if you don't spend the time to understand the basics before trying to apply something esoteric.
[Edit:]
Just to add an entertaining update: I recently came across this master's thesis: "A Novel Algorithmic Trading Framework Applying Evolution and Machine Learning for Portfolio Optimization" (2012). It's an extensive review of different machine learning approaches compared against buy-and-hold. After almost 200 pages, they reach the basic conclusion: "No trading system was able to outperform the benchmark when using transaction costs." Needless to say, this does not mean that it can't be done (I haven't spent any time reviewing their methods to see the validity of the approach), but it certainly provides some more evidence in favor of the no-free lunch theorem.
I am writing a story and I have these 3 sentences that elaborate on the ending of a first page. This way the reader will continue to read my story.
My question is, am I allowed to place paragraph spacing in between these sentences to create spacing?
Are there any other stories that do so? Is it correct or will it be a waste of space?
By spaces, I mean the following.
Sentence 1....
(Space here)
Sentence 2...
(Space here)
Sentence 3....
(Space here)
I would like to estimate the market price of stochastic volatility by forward looking methods, such as option values. The stochastic volatility model I have in mind is the Heston model or some other similar ones. I am advised to look into the shorting positions of variance or volatility swaps and the return of the delta hedged SPX option positions. What are the relevant reference for these methodologies? Other suggestions are welcome.
I was reading some questions and answers on this site about writing for video games, when I stumbled upon this answer that mentions some things I am not familiar with.
In an ideal world, there would be a lead writer but this is not always the case.
and
In such a huge project, the writer is just a very small cog. The writer may answer to a lead writer and the writing team will answer to a director or project manager
As a programmer this sounds quite familiar. Writing code in a team is normal for me, but I am not sure how this would translate to writing.
For example I know that you normally would have coding guidelines, such as (simplified) "variable names adhere to certain principles, an example of which is that boolean values start with 'is'". There are also abstract concepts of how you want to design the overall software that are often designed by others than the ones who implement the small details. Basically everything is broken down from completely abstract requirements to manageable tasks (ideally).
How does this work in the writing industry, preferably in the field of writing for a videogame, where apparently multiple people are writing for one project?
Are there guidelines such as "We only write sentences that are no longer than 15 words for character [x] because he wouldn't use that." and "Character [y] has to use the words 'Like, totally' at least two times per paragraph." for individual writers?
And are these writers supposed to write different scenes? Or are they working in groups and each one has "his character"?
How is a "Code Review" done? Is the lead writer doing all the editing so that the final product feels like it's written by one person and there are (not as many) incongruities?
I'd imagine this to be quite a different modus operandi from other kinds of writing projects, such as writing for a TV series where you would have some guidelines on how each episode should be structured and some general character traits and at the end the character should still be basically the same as in the beginning, except for some major episodes, such as the first or last one of a season. It's also different from a novel that is normally written by one person and then edited by one other person.
This may be a silly question but...
Im pretty new to Illustrator and I have the number 12 and i need to type text inside each number without it going outside the lines of the numbers. How do I do this? Thanks
As we know, in UX design it is important to care about pixel level details in addition to the big picture. Meaning that all UI elements are perfectly aligned, correct colour, etc.
However, from time to time I get comments like "is this really important, maybe users will not notice this?" from other dev team members.
What would be the best way to get people understand the importance of pixel precision and small details? Or better yet, is there any good literature about this subject?
Here's a hypothetical question partially inspired by a real scenario.
Assume that you have a table with many rows of data. This table isn't static; rows can be dynamically altered, added and removed based on user actions. To make rows appearing/disappearing feel more intuitive, a brief animation plays that expands/collapses the row from/to zero height. (Also of note is that the rows aren't necessarily of uniform height.)
Would there be any (reasonable) way to add zebra striping to such a table? The big concern is that whether or not a row is odd or even can change over time, which probably means that either a big chunk of the table can suddenly change color (which would probably be distracting) or one must allow two neighboring rows to have the same color (which would partially ruin the point and also potentially become a mess as more rows are added/removed).
Does anyone have a clever idea how something like this could be accomplished without being annoying to look at?
My target audience are users that are not familiar so much with computers so i try to simplify the UI elements in use as much as possible.
For instance I try to avoid drop down menus and use big radio buttons instead (when possible).
Now I have to provide a multiple select option list. I could use check boxes but there are just too many properties. It seems that there is no simple component to allow such an action.
Here are several options:
Regular Multiple select element
Custom made scrollable box with chekboxes
Multiple select drop-down with checkboxes
None of them seem simple enough for me. The 1st one is the worst I believe as it asks the user to press ctrl to multi-select. Are there any other options you have in mind? Is there any research on the subject ?
Answer
Go with check boxes for multi-select inputs. It is a norm in implementation since the first GUIs and it a standard practice in UX too. Nielsen's article confirming the use of check boxes: http://www.nngroup.com/articles/checkboxes-vs-radio-buttons/
Checkboxes are used when there are lists of options and the user may select any number of choices, including zero, one, or several. In other words, each checkbox is independent of all other checkboxes in the list, so checking one box doesn't uncheck the others.
And as for your question regarding how to implement in a good way.
Use subheads to break up a long list of checkboxes into logical groups. This makes the choices faster to scan and easier to understand. The risk is that users might view each subgroup as a separate set of options, but this is not necessarily fatal for checkboxes — each box is an independent choice anyway. A list of radio buttons, however, must always appear unified, so you cannot use subheads to break it up.
You know how Excel has the function "Autofit," where you select a whole row or a whole column and it resizes the entire thing to the height or depth of the largest content item? I want to do that in an InDesign table, but with one click. (I know I can drag the column out until the overflow box goes away, but I want to know if there's some automated function I'm overlooking.) Does this automatic function exist anywhere?
Answer
InDesign will happily expand the vertical dimension of a row (use the "At Least" setting for row height in the Tables > Cell Options > Rows & Columns dialog). Horizontal (column) autofit isn't built in, and off-hand I don't know of a plug-in that supports this, either. [Pause] Couldn't find one after searching InDesign Secrets or the usual plug-in suspects, either.
There are good reasons why the column width autofit isn't implemented, of course, but there's no reason not to put in a feature request for it. If enough people ask, it will bubble up in the priority list for the engineering team to work on. Chris Kitchener (the InDesign Product Manager) is very responsive to requests.
Does the standard fiction disclaimer (... any resemblance to persons living or dead...) have any legal effect?
I am most interested in citations of reasonably authoritative legal opinions. Especially summaries written for a lay audience.
I am not interested in speculation. There's plenty of that on the internet.
I currently have a local volatility model that uses the standard Black Scholes assumptions.
When calculating the volatility surface, what causes the difference between the call volatility surface, and the put surface?
Answer
The reason for put and call volatilities to appear different is that the implied vol has been calculated using different drift parameters than those implied by the market.
Let's take everything in the model as given except the interest rate $r$ and the volatility $\sigma$. For European options we have the Black-Scholes formula for put and call values $V_{P,C}$
$$ V_{P,C}=BS_{P,C}(r,\sigma) $$
Now, although it is common practice to run this equation backwards to "imply" the volatility $\sigma$
$$ \sigma_{\text{Imp}} = BS^{-1}_{\sigma}(r,V) $$
we can see that from a mathematical point of view we could imply $r$ instead
$$ r_{\text{Imp}} = BS^{-1}_{r}(\sigma,V). $$
Obviously, using a different $r$ affect options prices and therefore implied volatilities.
Consider now the consequences of receiving prices from someone using the Black-Scholes model. For concreteness I will take $T=1, K=S=100$ and no carry cost. Let's say you think $r=1\%$. I give you put and call prices of $7.95$ and $11.80$. You will get a put vol of $21.3\%$ and a call vol of $28.6\%$. Seem familiar?
That's because I actually generated those prices using $r=4\%$. If you had used the same drift parameter $r$ as I had employed, you would have computed both volatilities to be $25\%$.
Generally, risk-free interest rates are not too hard to pin down, but we have other effects on drift where the parameters are not so obvious. This includes dividends, borrow costs and funding costs. Each of these terms is typically treated as a deterministic "carry cost" but even in the simple case of European options it is not necessarily clear what values should be used for them.
So to your answer your question, the difference between put and call volatility surfaces is a symptom of your drift parameters failing to match those of the market.
I want to generate a mock price series. I want it to be within a certain range and have a defined correlation with the original price series.
If I choose, say, oil, I want as many time series which have some similar characteristics in terms of correlation but not exact. I do not want the data to wander off in a completely different path from the historic path taken. It is not necessarily co-integrated, correlation will suffice. I would also like these to adhere to the original price range. The series should be random, e.g. each new realization should take a different path.
Answer
Further to my comments to Samik R's answer above, here is the link to my blog post where my attempts to recreate the method linked to in said answer are given.
Edit to include more information per Tal Fishman's comment
Octave .oct function code
#include
#include
#include
#include "MersenneTwister.h"
DEFUN_DLD (permute_vector, args, , "Input is a vector that is to be permuted once")
{
octave_value_list retval;
int nargin = args.length () ;
int vec_length = args(0).length () ;
// check the input arguments
if ( nargin > 1 )
{
error ("Invalid arguments. Input is a vector that is to be permuted once") ;
return retval ;
}
if (vec_length < 2 )
{
error ("Invalid arguments. Input is a vector that is to be permuted once") ;
return retval ;
}
if (error_state)
{
error ("Invalid arguments. Input is a vector that is to be permuted once") ;
return retval ;
}
// end of input checking
ComplexNDArray input_vector = args(0).complex_array_value () ;
ComplexNDArray output_vector = args(0).complex_array_value () ;
int k1;
int k2;
MTRand mtrand1; // Declare the Mersenne Twister Class - will seed from system time
k1 = vec_length - 1; // initialise prior to shuffling the vector
while (k1 > 0) // While at least 2 left to shuffle
{
k2 = mtrand1.randInt( k1 ); // Pick an int from 0 through k1
if (k2 > k1) // check if random vector index no. k2 is > than max vector index - should never happen
{
k2 = k1 - 1; // But this is cheap insurance against disaster if it does happen
}
output_vector(k1) = input_vector(k2) ; // allocate random pick k2 from input_vector to the k1 vector index of output_vector
input_vector(k2) = input_vector(k1) ; // replace random pick k2 content of input_vector with content k1 of input_vector
k1 = k1 - 1; // count down
} // Shuffling is complete when this while loop exits
retval(0) = output_vector ;
return retval; // Return the output to Octave
}
Octave script code
clear all
contract = input( "Enter contract symbol e.g. sp: ","s") ;
data = load("-ascii",contract) ;
n = rows(data)
index_begin = input( "Enter index_begin: ") ;
index_end = input( "Enter index_end, value not greater than n: ") ;
close = data(index_begin:index_end,7) ;
% detrend the close vector prior to applying the fft
slope = ( close(end) - close(1) ) / ( length(close) - 1 ) ;
v1 = (0:1:length(close)-1)' ;
detrended_close = close .- ( v1 .* slope ) ;
close_index_begin = close(1)
detrended_close_index_begin = detrended_close(1)
detrended_close_index_end = detrended_close(end)
% create zero padded vector for fft
L2 = 2^nextpow2( length(close) ) ; half_L2 = L2/2 ;
y2 = zeros( 1,L2 ) ; y2( 1:length(close) ) = detrended_close ;
% apply the fft
transform = fft( y2 ) ;
% permute the first half of the transform vector in "chunks" of 10
max_ii_value = floor( half_L2 / 10 ) ;
for ii = 1:max_ii_value
transform( (ii*10):(ii*10)+9 ) = permute_vector( transform( (ii*10):(ii*10)+9 ) ) ;
endfor
% take the inverse fft
ifft_vec = real( ifft( transform ) ) ;
% retrend the ifft_permuted_vec
retrended_ifft_vec = ifft_vec( 1:length(close) )' .+ ( v1 .* slope ) ;
% statistics
correl = corrcoef (close, retrended_ifft_vec)
spear = spearman (close, retrended_ifft_vec)
tau = kendall (close, retrended_ifft_vec)
plot( close,'b',retrended_ifft_vec,'r' ) ; legend( 'close','permute' ) ;
More information and charts in my blog post.
What do you call this type of image in design term?
I am using cs5 layers to modify and then exporting layers as files. While saving CS5 automatically adds some number sequence at the end thereby modifying my original filename.
It automatically embeds a number sequence prefix to the exported layers, thus rendering my own file naming convention useless. Is there a fix for this? Is there an option somewhere called 'dont auto-renumber my files' or 'use layer names as file names"?
I DO NOT want this numbering. How to prevent this ?
Answer
To add in words, Since Export Layers to Files is run by some script all I had to do was find that script, then find the function which saves the layers to files, find which part of the function does the numbering prefix & comment it out.
So here are the steps -
Applications > Adobe Photoshop CS5 > Presets > Scripts > Export Layers To Files.jsx (in windows it's pretty much the same directory just in "program files/Adobe"fileNameBody += "_" + layerName; to fileNameBody += layerName; deleting the underscore and parenthesis.Save and close the file. This should get the job done. Below are the forum source links.
http://forums.adobe.com/message/3006825
I made a book in Illustrator, and I would like to replace a word with another word (e.g "Bread" into "Rice"). If I was using MS Word, I could simply Ctrl+H and do a word replace. How about in Adobe Illustrator?
Answer
Go to "Main menu > Edit > Find and replace".
It's exactly the same as other applications, just without the keyboard shortcut (it's a less commonly used feature, and those keys are used for other things: CTRL+F for Paste in Front, CTRL+H for Show/Hide Edges).
Incidentally, making a book in Illustrator is quite unusual. It's more common to assemble the book in InDesign and use Illustrator for illustrations, which are then placed into the InDesign file.
I'm writing a story that has a medical condition as a central plot point, and now I have questions to ask a doctor. The problem is, I don't know one. I could make up the details, but I feel like the narrative will suffer for it.
It occurs to me that this is not a unique situation. I vaguely remember hearing about a site that connected writers with subject matter experts, but now I can't find it. Perhaps I was only inventing it.
Where do I find experts to consult? Is there such a site, or can I expect to call my local hospital and be able to talk to someone? What about experts in other fields?
Answer
I had to do the same thing for my novel only instead of a doctor, I needed a vet. It was only one scene but it was very detailed so I needed to get the information bang on.
I think the key to consulting experts is to respect their time.
To that end, I started with Google and did as much research myself as I could so that when I approached professionals I wasn’t asking clueless questions that wasted their time.
Next, I went into veterinary chat rooms (and there are Health and Biology Stack Exchanges you can post to) and formulated educated questions based on my own research. This raised information I hadn’t thought of during my research, and also, inevitably, highlighted problems with my scene which raised further questions.
Next, I signed up for a paid online consultancy with a qualified vet and posed my (now well-informed) questions to her. She was incredibly helpful because she was being paid to do that.
However, none of these routes really gave me a ‘feel’ for the scene I was writing. That took meeting professionals in person at their place of business. I called around three local vets and asked if I could come when it wasn’t busy. One vet was amazingly helpful and booked out a consultancy period free of charge at the practice.
Before meeting her, I put together my list of well-informed questions, took notes during the meeting and kept it as brief as I could.
With respect to health, I would try a private consultant in the field. If you’re UK-based you’ll find that NHS doctors are pushed to their limits and less likely to give you their time. You can use a Bupa search to find a specialist in your area and then contact them via email to see if they’d be happy to do an interview (UK based, but there must be a similar US site):
As I say, the key is to respect their time. Do as much of your own research as you can so that if you can organise a face to face interview, your questions are well-informed and to the point.
Good luck!
I'm starting to work through some ideas with a book I want to write. The protagonist is computer science genius that finds flaws and breaks through the security of several major companies. I'm not sure if I can legally mention real companies such as Netflix, Facebook, Google, or others. I know I can't defame or say bad things about a company or try to promote their products, but I'm not sure if having a character steal sensitive data from these companies would be defamation or anything like that.
Answer
I am not a lawyer, so do some legal research. The following is my opinion and not legal advice.
They may well regard this is defamation, if your character can break into them it means they have lax security and their customer's information is not safe with them. It means they are not safeguarding their customer's information (credit cards, birthdates, passwords, answers to security question, etc) from hackers.
That is why author's nearly always use fictitious companies that they make a point of saying are NOT Netflix, Google, Facebook or any other known company. You CAN claim anything you want about our government agencies, that falls under free speech and they cannot punish you for defamation. The same is supposedly true about elected officials (but be careful about naming people, because I think you can defame an unelected government employee).
In general, do not use the name of any actual corporation or actual person, and if your character is very similar to one, make a point of NOT using anything that uniquely identifies that corporation or person, and make a point of distinguishing your corp/person from the real one by saying they have done something like "they became the next Facebook", or your guy is a competitor of Google, or friends with the founders that went his own way, or whatever.
I've recently published an Android app that is intended for use as a board game currency (think Monopoly etc.).
Because it is intended for multiple types of game, and because even within Monopoly the order of magnitude of transaction values can vary, I allow users to quickly choose multipliers of 10^6 and 10^3, to save typing the extra zeros.
One bit of feedback I've had from several users is that the way these options are presented is confusing. It has lead users to mistakenly send transfers of e.g. £2 when they meant to send £2M -- because they thought the 10^6 multiplier was selected when it wasn't.
I want to improve this bit of the UI but I have limited screen space to work with and am unsure what would be best.
The screenshot below is how it currently is. I show the current multiplier as either an M, K, or nothing at all to the right of the value field ("£2.4M" in the screenshot). The radio buttons to the far right are how it is changed. I should point out that unfortunately radio buttons in Android only allow the label to be shown to the right of the button itself.
How can I make the multiplier selection clearer without cluttering the layout?
Answer
I think you're over-complicating it. Typing a few digits then tapping the multiplier elsewhere on the screen takes a shift in focus and some amount of figuring out. You can avoid that by just letting users type in the entire number on just the numeric keypad.
You'll want to automatically add commas (or spaces or whatever the local divider is) to help with readability.
I am developing a mobile application that has a persistent nav bar at the top with no tabs or footer at the bottom. However there is one screen of this app where I would like to use tabs.
Would it be better to try to put the tabs for this page as a sub-header at the top, or can I conditionally show a footer like this example?
I'm mostly asking which is more common practice or user-friendly, as I realize both are acceptable options.
Answer
I wrote a huge answer, deleted it and got to the point: sub-header
Mixing navigation styles isn't a good idea, you will likely confuse your users.
The key to good navigation is a clear structure and consistent behaviour, so if you can try to make it as simple and easy for your users then you'll find that they will appreciate it more. Same thing with answers too!
Is it possible for a writer to describe realistically a never felt emotion?
For example I have never experienced faith, or being truly in love. I've never physically hurt anyone and have no idea of how someone feels when attacking/maiming/killing someone.
In some cases it is possible to use a somewhat close experience (like building on how I feel when I have no access to cigarettes or coffee for a few days to write about drugs withdrawal) ; but sometimes it's not an option.
For now, my solution is to rely heavily on the "Show, don't tell" rule and describe how a character looks and acts, but not their exact emotions. I don't know if it's enough.
Answer
No writer can experience everything. Most of us haven't died, and yet we write about death all the time. Likewise, when we write about grief, we may draw on our own personal experiences, but oftentimes, we let our imagination take control.
Perhaps you can boil down the specific emotions you want to describe into more general emotions: you may not have ever been angry enough to kill anyone, but there may have been times when your anger caused you to behave in an irrational fashion. Likewise, you may never have had an addiction to drugs, but you have probably felt the desperation of needing something so badly that you obsess about it, that can feel your brain twitching from thought to thought, always back to thing it needs. The physiological details can be added through careful study (although in the instance of drugs, avoid just watching Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream: these films have spawned dozens, if not hundreds, of copycat representations of addiction and they're pretty easy to spot). Do real research into the scenario you want to portray: the more you read, the better.
"Show, don't tell" is a good rule of thumb regardless of how much research or imaginative exploration you do. Readers are very good at filling in the blanks and can empathize with a situation described plainly as much as one portrayed in lush, agonizing detail. This is where your artistry comes into play.
My English is pretty basic, please don't mind. Wondering how to make the liquify wave and distort color effect in Photoshop? I'd tried using distort>shear/wave/zigzag, but still can't make it similar like the photo below.
This started happening when I recently updated to Adobe Illustrator 21.0.0 (2017 release). Simply, if I select an object and then move over to another area of the document:
and then try to zoom in or out to inspect that area,
it brings me right back to the area with the selected object. This is already annoying, but it becomes a real problem when I want to move several selected objects at the same time.
For example, if I want to adjust the position of every object within an artboard, I would select all of the objects and start to move them with the up, down, left, right arrow keys.
As soon as I try to zoom in on an area to see if the objects are lining up within the artboard, it brings me back to a random area in the selected group (in this case, an area at the bottom and opposite end of where I'd like to zoom in).
Trying to move back the area I'd like to zoom into....
Zoom in (command +)
and I'm brought back to the area at the bottom. Even if I deselect all of the objects in the area that it keeps zooming into, it still defaults back to that area when I try to zoom in.
And of course I can't select half of the objects if I'm trying to move all of them in unison.
Is there any way to tell Illustrator that I'd like to zoom in on the area where my mouse is, regardless of whether or not something else is selected?
Thank you!
Answer
Yes! I've been experiencing this too and miss the old zoom functionality. There is a discussion on it in Adobe forums here: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2230942
The consensus seems to be that zooming to the selection is a new feature update. And our best option right now is to use the Feature Request/Bug Report form to get this resolved for future releases: http://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html
Now I'm not sure whether this is something that's an accepted teaching with regards to structuring paragraphs, or just something that is commonly used...
I'm talking about paragraphs that are structured as follows:
"Quote," attribution, "continuance"
You see this throughout literature.
My question is, can I break this norm?
"Quote," attribution, "continuance," further explanation, "completion of quote."
Here's an example:
“Dawn once told me about a problem she once had with her step-mother." Wendy cast a furtive glance at Dawn, to check that she allowed Wendy to continue, "The one where she found her step-mother..." she reduced her volume considerably, "with someone who was not her father."
I've emboldened the narrative away from the quotation to illustrate what I mean.
Is this acceptable?
Granted, this is a fairly trivial example, but the the principle of what I'm asking remains.
Answer
You can insert narrative into dialogue wherever a speaker might pause:
"You," she finally looks at me, "have been," her finger touches me on the chest, "much too reckless with my heart." She pushes me away and stands. "Go!" She points at the door. "And don't come back."
Where the speaker pauses will depend not on syntactic rules but on what makes sense in your story. For me even this feels fine:
"You," she finally looks at me, "have been," her finger touches me on the chest, "much too reckless," she leans close, "with," kisses me, "my heart."
Interweaving the description and dialogue in this way makes sense because the behavior and the words flow in unison. You can imagine the speaker pausing for effect when her actions become increasingly contradictory to her words. Still, you might find a clear separation more sylistically elegant:
She finally looks at me and touches me on the chest "You have been much to reckless with my heart." She kisses me, then pushes me away and stands. "Go!"
That is of course not the same chain of events, and you might prefer words and action in parallel. But you must not overuse such a "special effect", because it soon becomes annoying to the reader, as any deviation from the usual.
A lot of blogs or other types of sites with a lot of content use tag clouds, where trending words are shown and popular words are displayed larger. For example
Should you put a tag cloud on your site? Does it have a purpose, other than linking to more content from your homepage so search engines will find it? Does a tag cloud really have something to add UX-wise?
Answer
Some types of sites benefit from tag clouds. An example was an old version of www.torrentz.com. The tag cloud showed the most popular things being currently downloaded. With torrents, the popularity is proportional to download speed, so it's a win-win situation: you get good content really fast.
The reason why tag clouds don't work on other sites, such as blogs, may be a technical reason, not a user experience reason. Nearly all the blogs you visit are built on top stock content management systems (Blogspot, Wordpress). To be flexible and serve any type of blog, these CMSs merely do tag counts to determine the size of the tag in the cloud. The number of times a tag appears is really useless in determining its worth or popularity, so these tag clouds on blogs have really marred the regular user's perception of tag clouds in general.
As an interface designer, and just as a designer in general, I often notice that I feel the need to place things slightly off-center in order to make them appear centered and balanced, due to the items having uneven volume distribution.
Consider a play button which is placed in a box:
Months after asking this question I was developing video controls and realized this was the perfect example. This image is centered geometrically, but in my interface, I pushed the icon about 15% further to the right than its actual geometric center in order to center it based on volume because geometrically centered (as you can observe in the above image) doesn't feel quite right.
I usually just guess at centering an icon volumetrically, but I bet the proper center could be determined mathematically, hence my curiosity as to the name, in case I might find a tool or plugin to help me do this with my design tools such as InDesign.
Off the top of my head I'd call it "Volumetric Centering", but that's just a guess. Is there an official name / term for this technique?
My company bought a vector from Shutterstock and wants to trademark it by adding some words with different colors.
Do you know anything about if this is legal since we purchase the vector art?
Answer
Perhaps you failed to notice "Copyright: PureSolution" on the Shutterstock page.
In 99% of all cases you can not trademark or copyright royalty free artwork.
What you "purchased" was the right to use the artwork in a limited fashion not ownership of the image. You should read the agreement for any stock image service you are using. Reading the Shutterstock agreement (http://www.shutterstock.com/licensing.mhtml) would inform you that you do not own the image or have any legal claim to said image.
So, short answer, No, you can not trademark or copyright an image from a stock image service.
Are there any studies or published de-facto standards on how fast the slides of a carousel should change on the homepage of a website?
Here are some examples of sites that incorporate carousels at varying speeds:
Answer
@Denis is quite correct. The only thing I'd add is that a simple way to see what speed you should rotate is to read all the content on each panel out loud (because this forces you not to go too fast), and time how long that takes. Add a little time, and set that as your speed. EDIT @Rob suggests in the comments below that you take 2.5 times the "read-aloud" time, based on guidelines from TV/movie credits and the like.
I find it very irritating when I'm half way through reading something and it flips. And I'm not an especially slow reader! But I do sometimes get distracted looking at something else for a second or two. If in doubt, slow it down.
You can always add an explicit control to move on if needs be.
All that said, @msanford's comment is a very apt one. I'm far from convinced that carousels are an effective way to present information.
I have two questions about the standards of data loading from an URL (data syncronization).
Here is my first question. I have an application with a slide menu, where each page has different data.
I don't know when to load all the data.
First scenario : separate data loading :
Second scenario :
Which of this 2 scenarios is the standard ?
And my second question is about reloading data when the user is still using the application. The user has the possibility to refresh the data by "swiping to refresh".
But do I have to update the data without his intervention? For example:
I don't know if there is real standard for this question, or it depends on the application.
Answer
Combo questions... what fun!
Question 1: Is there a standard for loading data? Load on demand per section or all together?
This is a "it depends" type of question. The rule of thumb I'd use is to load enough data to be useful for the user but no more. More data can be useful, but it does mean a longer loading time.
So, the question to ask:
As a user, what's my typical interaction within the app? Am I more likely to dive into a specific area in the app and move on? Or am I more likely to bounce between multiple areas because the data between sections are highly related?
If data within each section is fairly discrete and users are likely to only interact with specific sections, then scenario one: loading data on-demand is a better solution because the load time will be reduced.
If data within sections are highly related, and users are expected to jump back and forth regularly, then you may want to consider scenario two with pre-loading all associated data. This make sense because there's a cost in section switching. The longer the wait when moving between 2 related sections, the more likely the user is to forget the connection between data in one section and another.
Question 2: How to deal with refreshing real-time data?
So you have an app that displays real-time data. When should you refresh the data?
Question you should ask: As a user, how important is it to get the most recent data as compared to waiting for the refresh to happen before you can view the screen?
If this is like a stock market app, where only the most up-to-date data has any value, then you probably want the system to auto refresh this for you when you return back to the app. If this is something like a RSS feed. Then having the most recent entries isn't your friend. Not only is the wait annoying, you probably want to return back to the last article you've read and not have the system load in 10 new items and make you lose your place.
What about if the user is currently looking at the data and there's updates?
The user is viewing the data, so you don't want to auto update it on them. What you should do instead is to display a small message indicating data has been updated. This can be dropped from the top just beneath the pull to refresh. This way the user can choose to update should/when they want to.
Following my question here I am still unsure if it is a 'hard and fast' rule to italicise thoughts.
My preference is to use normal quotation marks, so that if a person is thinking in a dialogue situation or description, all the text appear normal. I follow British style.
Example
"Are you Ok?" the teacher asked.
"Damn," John thought as he tried to cover his wounded hand.
"Are you OK?" the teacher asked again.
Answer
It's up to you
I personally like to treat thoughts the same as spoken speech, since they are in a different "voice" from the narrator’s.
For me, it’s not a question of what’s spoken out loud, but a way of identify whose perspective is represented by those words.
If there are no quotation marks the perspective is assumed to be the narrator’s, and that’s the wrong interpretation.
You won’t be wrong, as long as you’re consistent and the writing isn't confusing.
I prefer to avoid italics, since they have yet another pre-existing meaning, but it can be helpful if you find it necessary to distinguish strongly between spoken and thought words.
I am developing a niche social networking iPhone app of my own.
I was wondering if it would be best to allow the user to connect to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter to login to my app (and of course an eMail/Password fallback) or just go with regular eMail and Password login.
Any thoughts would be appreciated! :)
Answer
You should offer both.
When presented with the option of using an existing major account or creating a new account specific to the system, many people will opt to create a new account.
There are pros and cons to each, but there is no reason not to offer them both.
This is what StackExchange does.
I have been looking for a way to bend and animate an object along a path and I stumbled upon the Omino plugin [omino snake to be precise] and after preparing the scene I realized nothing's happening [ :)) ].
I can't get it to work while the plugin doesn't give any errors. Everything is set in place, I have the path as a mask on a solid and the objects that I want to animate inside a pre-comp, exactly as needed.
Almost all of the options of the omino snake plugin do nothing, the only thing that works is the clear background feature.
Is there a way to fix this? Is there something else I need to do? Or is there another way to animate and bend something along a path?
PS: Copying a Mask Path and pasting it over the Position of the pre-comp won't help cause it will animate it along the path but it can't bend it.
PSS: Using the Puppet Pin Tool to shape the pre-comp in the final position and animating the pre-comp contents isn't exactly a nice way to do it cause the Puppet Pin Tool is hard to manoeuvre and often the final result isn't satisfying.
The closest I could get to something decent is using the Puppet Pin tool and transform each pin into a Bone inside Duik and rigging it as a tail. But for some reason, animating this will produce artefacts :
I'm the author of the jQuery Form Validation plugin, which I started writing in 2006. Since then I've put quite some effort into improving the default interaction, without the developer using the plugin having to customize anything. The effort is well spent, as it enabled developers with no education at all in interaction design to get some solid improvements on their forms.
I hope to gather some suggestions here for further improvements. If you're in to that, start by playing around a bit with the default demos.
The behaviour that you'll see there is described here, to quote: By default, forms are validated on submit, triggered by the user clicking the submit button or pressing enter when a form input is focused (option onsubmit). In addition, once a field was highlighted as being invalid, it is validated whenever the user types something in the field (option onkeyup). When the user enters something invalid into a valid field, it is also validated when the field loses focus (option onblur).
The goal of these interactions is to provide feedback as early as possible, while avoid to annoy users. Displaying error messages before the user had the chance to even type something is not helpful.
One issue someone recently noted is this: (Start from scratch, then) focus a field, type something into it, delete that, tab out of the field. In that case, even if the field is required, the plugin won't say so. That someone suggested to change that, and activate the more "aggresive" validation as soon as someone started typing into a field. I'm not so sure about that.
A more complex issue is that of displaying error messages. The plugin can be customized quite heavily, as seen in this Marketo demo. Here inline messages are only displayed for rules other then required, eg. entering "foobar" as the email address would display "Please enter a valid email address, example: you@yourdomain.com" next to that field, but otherwise only "You missed 12 fields. They have been highlighted below." is displayed at the top while fields are highlighted with a red border. While that works well in this specific design, I doubt that its possible to make that the default for generic form validation that works everywhere.
Having a good default is definitely important, as even rather popular sites tend to just copy the demo code and use it as-is.
Looking forward to your suggestions and a good discussion! Let me know if I should put specific issues into seperate questions.
Having an internal search on a web site takes a lot of effort if you should do it “the right way”. You have to handle case sensitivity, visible results query, misspellings, result matches and highlights, tiles and description, the number of results and related taxonomy. The most intense task in the list above is misspellings and related taxonomy.
It will result in a few hundred hours of development and design just to make the internal search “good enough”. How about spending these hours on improving navigation elements instead. There are plenty of work that can be done to make navigation better and leave out the search from my site. Related topics, user driven tags, distinct hierarchical navigation, and top navigation, all driven by usability test results.
Where do I put my development hours to get the best effect? Navigation or Search?
Answer
Good question ! I would say go for the focus of creating a well defined navigation as there seems to be a lot of user data about users greatly preferring to use a clear cut navigation as opposed to a search feature to find what they want.
Taking this article Navigation is more important than search
Recently, we did some extensive task testing with a technical audience. 70 percent started the task by clicking on a link, 30 percent used search.
Similarly Jared spool's article Are There Users Who Always Search?
In our study, we observed 30 users performing 121 different shopping tasks. Each user visited between 3 and 6 web sites, shopping for items they told us they were interested in purchasing; no two users were interested in exactly the same products.
If the search-dominance theory is true, we should've seen a subset of our users always relying on the search engine to find product information, while others relied on the links.
When we looked at the data from our study, we found that there wasn't a single user out of 30 who always used the search engine first when looking for product information. None of the users in our study were search dominant. However, we did uncover some link-dominant users. About 20% of our participants chose links exclusively.
Then, when we looked at the individual sites, we saw that for 21% of the sites, every single user who visited only used search. It seems that these sites were search dominant, not the users. Thirty-two percent of the sites were link dominant (users only used the links on the site) and 47% were not dominant to search or links.
We find it fascinating that on 53% of the sites we tested, each visitor stuck with a single location strategy — the same strategy employed by all the other visitors to that site. This implies that there is something inherent in the site's design that causes users to choose the search engine or the links, not a hard-and-fast preference of the user.
As we talk with the users, we often hear them tell us that they do have a preference for search — that they are search dominant. All the time, we hear, "I always go to search immediately." But none of our users actually did always go to search immediately — yet another piece of evidence to suggest that what users say they do and what they actually do are very different.
Taking inputs from this article Navigation Vs Search on The Web Usability Blog
When we do visitor behaviour analysis we often see that the search feature is rarely used by more than 5% of a site’s total number of visitors. On our blogs the number of searchers is even lower: around 1,5%. On the website of a Flemish province we’re working for it’s just below 5%.
Things we know about search During user tests we see the following happen time and time again:
Most people only use the search feature after they’ve tried the navigation or the content links. Search is seen as the last resort.
If people are looking for something very specific, like a product they know the name of, they’re be more inclined to search.
Programmers and engineers use the search feature more often than ‘normal people’.
Lastly this article Search Vs. Browse On Websites has some interesting data found by using heatmaps to determine the user focus
We've studied many websites and watched as some users use a search first strategy while others go right for the top navigation. We examined the data from nine recent usability studies with 25 tasks involving over 1500 users. The websites were a mix of large ecommerce retail websites, mobile phone carriers, rental car companies and automotive websites
On average about 14% of users started with search. There was a fair amount of variability in the data with a low search percentage by task of 2% and high of 75%.
We noticed the more densely packed retail websites had higher search (>50%) but more data is needed to confirm that relationship. Given the sample of websites and tasks we can be 90% confident between 11% and 21% of users will start with search.
Another study found about a 5% search rate. In 2005, Katz and Byrne, in a more rigorous examination, found that participants searched less than 10% of the time, but searched almost 40% of the time when faced with "narrow, low-scent menus." As expected they found nuances to why users search based on the labeling, information architecture and the prominence of the search boxes
I would really draw your attention to the above line that if your search box is prominent and very noticeable, you might have a larger number of users who opt in for search.
The image above has a very prominent large text box which draws attention and is in a prime location and not surprisingly about 50% of participants in this evaluation used the prominent pick-up location text-box as a search box
Lastly coming to the question, do I need a search box at all ? I am not sure what your site is about but I would recommend keeping it based upon the experience I had while conducting some user tests for a Ecommerce site I recently built.
Though users were able to find what they were looking for really quickly using the defined navigation, not keeping a search bar was a bone of contention for some users as they had very predefined search requests in mind. When we did keep a search feature in the site, we found that the users were happy to have an additional navigation feature though the search results were not really that exceptional (we just enabled the basic search featured offered by the CMS)
When labeling Checkboxes is it bad to use "negative" or "opposite" descriptions? Should a checked Checkbox always mean "do something", or is it OK for it to mean "don't do something"?
For example:
Answer
I prefer positive phrasing but I think this also has to do with default state. In terms of the description I think it should state what the checkbox is to accomplish when checked and that phrasing should most concisely express the behavior that is entailed regardless of positive or negative phrasing.
Naturally positive phrasing tends to be more concise however there are some language dependent cases where a negative phrasing is actually more common or at least better expresses the situation. If the UI is supposed to support more than one language then I would say sticking with positive phrasing as doing so would make translation simpler and reduce possible dramatic differences in the size of the text that the label needs to accommodate.
Check out the Windows UX Guide which has this to say about checkbox labels.
We're developing a new mobile app for premium users. It is basically a content reading app. The content will be updated periodically; we have 3 fixed "topics". These topics are going to be updated weekly. Adding to those 3, we'll have a small number of topics that vary from week to week.
These topics are articles about some products and services. The most important part of the app, in the vision of the business area, is a functionality "Contact me." When it's tapped, one specialized employee (specialized depending on the topic in which the button was clicked) will call the user to explain/try to sell the product.
This "Contact me" button has to be available from all app screen/topics. The current idea is to place a floating button, but I'm not so sure about it; I think it may make the content less readable.
The image below is what we have today, the red placeholder is where the floating button would be:
Is it a good idea to place a floating button on an mobile app? What techniques there are so we place a button on all the pages of an app?
Some alternatives to the main idea of a floating button we considered are:
I am building a widget to merge Records. Lets say, this table is information on Cars. There are variable/data points like VIN, Milage, etc..
Now, there may be more than one entry of the same car in the system and I want to allow users to be able to merge these. Currently we indicate the duplicate entries but we only allow them to merge 2 at a time.
My questions are -
1) How do I let users merge more than two records in this screen? 2) how do I implement "Select all from Record 2" kind of an approach. I was thinking of a radio button in the Column Header as well.
I am skeptic of using a horizontal scroll bar. Yes there may be a vertical scroll since there will be many rows. So I would make the first column sticky and then have both scroll bars. But I know there may be a better way of doing this.
I am also thinking of a 2 column approach like this:
Can there be possible usability issues with the dropdown approach?
