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  • Aislinn 4:21 pm on September 17, 2015 Permalink  

    Feature Update – *shuffle answer options, add *default text, and create CSS *classes 

    With *shuffle, you can more easily randomize the answer options in a multiple choice, checkbox, or slider question. *default allows you start any question type with a pre-populated answer. The especially computer-savvy can also add custom CSS using *classes.

    *shuffle the answer options in a question

    Did you know that people select the first option in a multiple choice question more often than any other brilliant answer you could have given them? Is it out of laziness? Subconscious beliefs that the first option is best? Reckless captivation of the heart? We don’t know. 

    What we do know, is that you can now remedy this problem by randomizing your answer options so that your results aren’t skewed by position bias. 

    It’s rather easy:

    In the above example, users will either see the sneeze option first or the latter possibility. 

    Just indent a *shuffle beneath any multiple choice, checkbox, or slider question (numeric values excepted) that you’d like to randomize. 

    Note though, that *shuffle is probably not useful for answer options that lie on a continuum (e.g. cold, cool, warm, hot). Shuffle these only if you want to annoy your users.

    Provide *default answers to questions


    Giving users a little boost in answering a question, or allowing them to revise a previous answer, is now possible with *default.

    You use *default when you want to pre-populate a question text box with an answer. Or, when you want other question types to have pre-selected answers.
     

    Text and paragraph questions

    When a text box is clicked by your users, your default text won’t disappear (it’s not hint text), but rather your users can submit the answer as-is immediately by clicking submit or edit the text before submitting.

    Here’s how the code might look:

    And here’s how the above code would look to the user:

     

    Checkbox questions

    To use default with a checkbox question, just add all the options you want selected to a collection.

    Here’s how the above code would look:

     

    Multiple choice questions

    To give a default answer to a multiple choice question, just write the exact text to the one answer you want preselected.

    For example:

    Here’s how this would look:

     

    Variables

    You can also use variables with *default, like so:

    Add custom css with *classes


    CSS smarties can have hoards of new fun with GuidedTrack by adding custom *classes beneath individual elements of GuidedTrack.

    For example, if you’re embedding a GuidedTrack program and want just the *header on the first screen of your program to match those of your website, you can define some classes on your website and then do something like…

    By indenting *classes under just about any individual elements (buttons, questions, headers, even text), and adding the CSS code, you can snazzify your program so that specific elements look just the way you want them. The classes you create will appear in the HTML that GuidedTrack generates. Then, you can include rules for these classes inside the CSS of your website.

    Of course if you want to change all the buttons, headers, etc., you can always override all of GuidedTrack’s CSS on your website. But, if you want just one button to be rebelliously unique, or a specific set of GuidedTrack elements, *classes has got you covered.

    Downloading data just got faster

    Thanks to some handy work of our developers, you can download the csv of your data at even quicker speeds! 
     

     
     

  • Aislinn 1:01 pm on September 14, 2015 Permalink  

    Feature Update – *share your program, set *min and *max values on a *chart 

    Here’s what’s new:

    Entice users to *share your program

    Users will be able to easily share your program via Facebook, and pretty soon we’ll be adding a Twitter option as well.

    Here’s how the button will look to users:

    Here’s what they’ll see when they click the button:

    And here’s the sample code:

    These posts will automatically link to your program and can be customized with three pieces of information:

    • *description: (required) the text description of the program to be shared.
    • *title: (optional) the larger title that will display across the user’s post.
    • *picture: (optional) the image that will appear in the post.

    A couple tips to keep in mind:

    • You can use variables in any part of your share data.
    • The ideal image size is 1200 x 630 pixels, or, a 1.9:1 apect ratio.
    • Facebook doesn’t know quite what to make of certain symbols, such as a %. These may need to be written out (e.g. writing “percent” instead of using a % sign), as we’ve done in our example.

    Add *min and *max values to your chart


    By default, the x- and y-axis of a chart will stretch to a size relative to the largest and smallest bits of data you’re displaying.

    You can customize the size of your chart though with ease. For instance:

    Setting a *min of 0 won’t be necessary if your chart data is always in the positive, but it can be useful when you have very specific ranges you would like to set.

    You can additionally customize the *xaxis with *scatter charts.

     

    Update: use .shuffle instead of .randomize

    Let’s say you have a collection like so:

    If you wanted to randomize the order of a collection, you would previously type >> .randomize

    However, a new update requires you to shuffle your collection like so:

    Why this change? There was some confusion over the difference between *randomize and .randomize. *randomize still functions as it always did, allowing you to randomly provide one of several possible bits of text or code to the user. With .shuffle though, you don’t just randomize one item in a collection, but shuffle all of them around. You’ll see shuffle used again in another soon-to-launch feature that shuffles question answer options. 
     

     
     

  • Aislinn 1:39 am on April 30, 2015 Permalink  

    Feature Update – *experiment and *navigation 

    Here’s what’s new:

    The *experiment keyword, for smarter randomizations

    The *randomize keyword is great. It let’s you randomly assign participants into different groups, but because it’s totally random, you could end up with groups of different sizes.

    The new *experiment keyword operates just like *randomize, except it keeps groups balanced. So if you have groups A, B, and C, the first participant to take your study could randomly be assigned any one of those, let’s say they get assigned group B. The second participant could only be assigned A or C, since B was just taken. If they get assigned C, then the third participant will be in group A. The fourth participant once again has an equal chance of being assigned any one of the three groups. This ensures that the difference in the size of the groups is never more than 1.

    Unlike *randomize, it doesn’t make sense for *experiment to choose more than one group. So, instead of using the inline text to specify how many things to randomize (e.g. *randomize: 3, *randomize: all), *experiment uses it to name the experiment so that the CSV is much easier to read. We also allowed *group to have the same capacity, so you can now have code that looks like this:

    So when should you use experiment over randomize? In most cases, when you’re running an actual experiment (where you want to see how a change in one thing in the program effects some other thing) you should use *experiment. When you merely want things to be random (but you’re not conducting an experiment) *randomize is probably the right choice.

    Add *navigation to the top of your program

    Let’s say you were bored one day so you wrote a GuidedTrack program entirely about squids. You can now use the *navigation keyword to provide permanent links at the top of your program that will allow users to jump to different sections of your work.

    With navigation, your programs can be a lot more like full-fledged apps. Maybe you want to use *navigation to help users access different programs of a comprehensive tool you’ve made, or revise their settings in your well-being program. There’s a lot you can do with navigation and adding it is easy. Here’s an example of how the squid code might look:

    The program above begins with the navigation keyword, which will be visible immediately when the user starts the program. Each of the four navigation items are indented beneath the navigation keyword. Indented beneath each option is the content users would immediately see if they clicked on that option.

    Once users are done viewing content from a navigation option, they return to the place they were at before they clicked the navigation.

    Navigation content can include all other GuidedTrack keywords, not just text. For example, you can add icons to your navigation program, which could look like this:

    You can even use the *goto keyword to redirect users to other parts of your regular program, as this example does.

    In this program, the navigation options don’t appear until the user clicks the “Begin” button and the navigation is activated. Once the user clicks “Begin,” the program called “Stache Styles” will also immediately start. Users can go through this program regularly and then begin the next programs in sequence. At any point, the users can also click one of the navigation options to easily review content they may have already seen or to jump ahead to new content that come later in the sequence.

    If at any point you want to hide the navigation, you can do so by typing *navigation: hide

    An update to *icon

    Do you remember when we told you that multiple choice and checkbox questions can now get new pieces of flare? No? Good. Because the code for this changed a touch when we upgraded to a new version of Bootstrap.

    To add an icon to an answer choice, find the icon you like from this NEW link: https://getbootstrap.com/docs/3.3/components/#glyphicons

    Then, indent the keyword *icon beneath the answer option and type in the full name of the icon. Below is an example:

    Displaying a user’s paragraph answers retains line breaks.

    There are times when you may want to save a user’s answer to a paragraph type question (using the *save keyword or *tags, for example) and display it back to them. Now, if users create line breaks in their answers by hitting the enter keyword (while typing out a list of their favorite foods, for example), when they see their answer displayed back to them, the line breaks will be preserved exactly as they had them (previously, it would have looked like a mucky, cluttered mess).

    Here’s an example of how preserving line breaks might look:
     

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