This is a story about my unclosed gestalt, a personal utopia about the social Internet that I wanted to see. This problem has become a fascinating intellectual puzzle that I have been trying to solve since 2006 and which remains a challenge for me with a perfect solution that has yet to be found.
There will be a lot of text and to achieve the maximum immersion effect, it is better to absorb it from beginning to end.
introduction
This story is very personal, subjective, mute emotional and even chaotic. It's definitely not about historical accuracy, science, or incredible expertise. But on the other hand, it is about guesses flying on the air, about a constantly changing understanding of the world and about my personal growth.
I end my introduction with this and let the story finally begin ...
It all started with Digg ...
It was 2006 . I don't remember the exact date, but my quest to create something truly new and interesting began for me from digg.com.
I was a young self-taught web designer who recently graduated from a technical university, with all the ensuing consequences at that time: ambition, exorbitant amateurishness in all matters and a small baggage of life and professional experience.
Web 2.0 was happening before my eyes and my personal synonym for this miracle (and new kind of success) was Digg.
Does anyone remember that Digg? Kampai for it!
On Digg, each user could add links to content from other sites that they found interesting. Any user could do this. Also, Digg users could vote on what they liked (and later on what they didn't like).
An exciting game at that time in digg or bury .
Digg users would add links to an article on another site and the rest of Digg users “digg (digg)” them if they liked the article and “bury” them otherwise.
And the most valuable part about all of this for everyone was that posts with a lot of digg ratings ended up at the top of this site.
Digg users themselves added links to content, rated it themselves, and it was the user rating that seemed to be the most significant part of the algorithm for calculating what content is most interesting.
All these things were a revelation to me in those days.
I don't really know who was the first to come up with such a rating / voting mechanism for content, but as we can see, in one form or another, it exists almost everywhere ...
I want to be a rock star!
At the same time that I discovered Digg, I began to notice how a whole new era of the Internet began to manifest itself in front of my eyes. The era when social networks began to appear and develop.
The era of internet startups of all stripes, when all this still looked very romantic.
It seems to me that many in those days dreamed of implementing a successful project and I was one of them.
Picture taken from an excellent article: https://mashable.com/2014/08/16/kevin-rose-north-technologies/
I romanticized the founders of successful startups, imagining them as rock stars of a new type and god ... how I wanted to be one of them
And I started thinking about what I can do to get into the illusory Hall of Fame.
I really liked Digg. It was a turning point for me. I watched him develop, collect his subjective "plus" and "minus" and in the background in my head the thought constantly sounded:
What kind of super Digg can I do?
I've also watched other startups and social media, trying to analyze how people use them to come up with their own unique idea , on the basis of which I will build my super project.
The more I watched and studied, I began to notice some kind of strange puzzle lurking behind all these "likes" and "dislikes".
It may look like a pure stream of consciousness, but at that moment the following thoughts were running through my head:
- What does it mean when someone puts Like under some scandal or tragedy?
- Is it definitely not the same Like as the Like that the same person put on this funny picture?
- How to distinguish one type of “like” from “another”?
- How can I find content with a specific type of likes?
- I want to see content with a lot of "likes" about fun things ...
Here's an interesting example. What do you think each of these likes might mean?
Do I like this post? Do I like this scandal? I love what this post is about? Do I like the fact of being removed from power? Do I like that justice is done? Or did I click on Like on autopilot?
The number of "Likes" was the only measure of interest in those days (and not much has changed in 2020). And it all boiled down to one single request:
How to find the most interesting content on the Internet as much as possible?
My process of analyzing this issue continued for some time until I came to the following conclusion:
"Like" is too general and vague a topic.
Like was not good enough for me!
Let's take a break ...
Let's relax for a second and imagine youtube from an alternative reality, where you can easily find videos based on the following criteria:
I want to see what makes people in Russia angry at the moment ...
I want to see what surprised and shocked people in this trendy tech channel ...
I want to see what people in Japan were most sad about in 2016 ...
Wait, don't run away ...)
Maybe this is not the best example. We now have "trending" items, channels, subscriptions, and a bunch of other convenient mechanisms that help us in finding interesting content.
The key things in this example were the words:
Angry, Surprised, Shocked and Sad
And this...
Emotions
Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash
Returning to my desperate search for a way to create something truly new, I narrowed my focus to a "better than just Like" mechanism for finding interesting content on the Internet. Soon I began to think that the key to everything is emotion. I believed that emotions are what makes content interesting to humans.
If you see something on the network and it captures you, has a strong emotional impact on you, this is the kind of content you want to evaluate and share with your friends (and maybe with the whole world).
I began to look at things in such a way that if some content (picture, video, article, etc.) has a strong emotional impact on you, that is “good”! And the stronger the emotions, the better it became even better!
But emotions are different and very subjective.
Do you love to hate? Or do you hate to hate?
Photo by Mark Daynes on unsplash.com
I started to look at emotions in such a way that no matter how strong the emotion you feel, it is “good”, and this is just what my ideal content rating mechanism needs, which began to loom in my head ...
I began to believe that the worst grade is absolute indifference to some content, because indifference is the absence of emotion and sometimes reminded me of death.
Therefore, I began to analyze various human emotions and try to organize them into a kind of system. A system that must be simple enough to be used in a rating / rating mechanism for any type of content. A system that would better solve the problem of finding truly interesting content on the Internet ...
2007. First Steps
Here is my first sketch made on October 22, 2007:
I tried to organize all strong emotions into 6 simple categories.
Then I tried to find shapes for strong emotional ranges (or spectra): The
date of the original image is October 24, 2007. Numbered circles have been added for convenience. In the center is a group of visual forms (icons), which I have chosen as the best options to represent the corresponding emotional spectrum.
As you can see, I have come up with 6 different emotional spectra that express:
- Happiness, Joy, Fun, etc. [ there was a bunch of emoticons here ]
- Curiosity, Dream, Desire, Love, Support, Attraction, etc. [ there was a bunch of emoticons here ]
- Anger, Irritation, Hatred, etc. [ there was a bunch of emoticons here ]
- Disgust, Rejection, Horror, Shock, etc. [ there was a bunch of emojis here ]
- Sadness, Sadness, Compassion, etc. [ there was a bunch of emoticons here ]
- Surprise, Astonishment, Brain Melting, etc. [ there was a bunch of emoticons here ]
These 6 emotional spectra were incredibly interesting to me and the main problem was to create the best visual forms (icons) for each of them.
It's a shame that emoji weren't that widespread and rendered so well in 2007. And were they called emoji then?This was a very important step for me.
Another interesting and interesting iteration of my thought process:
October 31, 2007 - distinct colors began to emerge for each emotional spectrum, icons, relative position to each other.
A glimpse of an entirely new content rating and rating system began to emerge.
6 emotional spectra (I began to call them "emotional tastes"), each with its own unique visual form (icon), its own unique color, meaning, location relative to other "tastes". I've already started calling this my emotional rating system.
Fantasies about how cool it would be to easily filter the content on my super site and see everything that surprises, angers, saddens (and so on) other people seemed incredibly interesting at that moment ...
I tried to improve the emotional rating system and, at the same time, create a better application for it - my own super Digg (a project I called YUMMM).
In the meantime, ordinary life flowed in parallel: work, family, fun times and its own bunch of problems, just like many ordinary people.
I end this part with a sincere gratitude to Digg for lighting a flame in my soul that still burns and affects my life!
2009. YUMMM v.1
The mistake in the word YUMMM is a persistent taste of that strange time.
I somehow got to the point where I had the first YUMMM design using the emotional rating system.
You can see these designs in more detail in my Kunstkamera , but this is not necessary.
The important thing here is that I had a more recent and thoughtful version of the emotional rating and rating system for any content ...
The last iteration of what emotional tastes looked like in 2009:
The emotional rating and rating system was supposed to provide the following capabilities:
- Vote any User Generated Content with an emotional taste
The possibility that each user could vote with six different emotional tastes hinted at some play factor in this rating and rating mechanism.
- Content rating is based on the number of votes for different emotional tastes
And the most important thing is that any YUMMM user could filter (and find) content based on emotional tastes (and the number of votes for each of them), which would give such opportunities as:
- Show me all the pictures that make YUMMM users happy now ...
- or videos that made users angry last week ...
- or audio that made users sad last year ...
- or torrent files that surprised users the most ...
- or what surprises my friends and makes them happy ...
Many funny combinations seemed possible, but more importantly, the fact that thinking about it brought me real joy.
I end this historic moment with a picture of the filtering functionality as planned for this iteration of YUMMM:
The main detail here is the "emotional tastes" on the basis of which each user could filter content, ie. filter it based on emotions:
Just choose what you are interested in, apply the filter and get a stream of content (pictures, videos, torrent links, articles, etc.) with the desired emotional tastes, and the most “delicious” of them in the top.
There was something pretty damn hilarious about fantasizing that I could easily see what really pisses off YUMMM users at the moment.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) I was never able to bring this idea to the end, let alone a working prototype.
For a while, all activities on the idea of emotional rating and YUMMM stopped due to a lot of things that sometimes happen in life.
My last attempt to think over UI / UX for the evaluation mechanism is dated May 26, 2014:
I put all my ambitions, plans, hopes and dreams in a "secret box in my head" and forgot about everything until the moment when ...
2016. Facebook introduces reactions
Source: https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/blue-sky/ct-facebook-reactions-20160224-story.html
When I saw this I was really upset.
The first thoughts were that I was right all this time, emotions are the key and that Facebook was able to implement the idea with emotions in some kind of complete professional form.
I tried to live a normal life despite constantly thinking about it. I also used Facebook extensively. After a while, my stress level dropped to normal and I began to notice "flaws" in the system from Facebook.
These flaws were important to me in the key of the idea and those goals that I pursued all this time.
My personal complaints about the Facebook rating and rating system
Detailed research here ...
No possibility of simple filtering by reactions
There is no easy way to see posts ranked based on a specific reaction (let alone a couple of reactions).
For example, I cannot see the most “loved” posts from a certain group of people. And sometimes something really fresh and interesting is located in distant places and "circles" of people.
Generalized and vague "Like" remained the main reaction
The problem is that "Like" is too vague and sometimes does not convey any emotions. The English word generic suits him very well.
Back in 2009, finding a post with a lot of likes did not guarantee anything, because you could still remain completely indifferent to it for personal and subjective reasons.
All optional reactions were too simple
Facebook shows the reaction with the headline:
You can think it's good because it is as clear and understandable as possible. I thought and still believe that this text minimizes the possible use and game moment.
Can I have the inscription " Thank You " on this icon please?
In my 2009 version of the emotional rating system, there were no textual descriptions, because each "taste" represented a range of emotions.
Ultimately, I concluded that Facebook, and its reactions, were far from the ideal content rating and rating system (and its ideal application) that I wanted to achieve.
So I opened the "secret box in my mind" and continued the journey that I thought was already completed ...
Here I want to sincerely thank Facebook for being a constant source of innovation and especially for bringing me back on the path of finding the perfect content rating system and its ideal application.
2016–2018 Wanderings
I went many ways in an attempt to finalize the emotional rating system and its practical application, but they all led to the conclusion that I simply do not have the resources to pull it out.
I found myself in a situation where it seemed to me that I was alone with my strange ideas, which had already begun to seem crazy even to me.
Therefore, the only thought left in my head is to turn to professionals (and in this case I am not talking about psychiatrists [ there was a smiley face ])
Trying to find a "cure"
I decided to contact the guys from the teleport agency . The projects they did were full of innovation and visually I really liked. Getting some kind of professional feedback seemed like a great opportunity to break through some barriers and bring something new to my ivory tower.
By <a href=« photo unsplash.com/@averye457> Avery Evans on <a href=» unsplash.com> Unsplash
I felt like I had reached some kind of barrier in my brainstorming session, which had already dragged on.I didn't hesitate, grabbed all my files on the emotional rating system and YUMMM, a summary of the idea and project, got in touch with the guys from the "teleport" and went to the meeting.
The result of this rally was the understanding of the simple fact that creating a practical and professionally created emotional rating system (and a modern website with its application) costs more in monetary terms than my annual salary at that time.
And understanding this fact alone was very valuable.
« » , , … widget , YUMMM .
YUMMM v.2
After the guys from the "teleport agency" I learned in my own skin how refreshing it can be to look from the outside and bring something new from the outside into my long-term construction. Interesting conversations that we had with the guys gave me a lot of good insights and caused another shift in my point of view about the project.
Financially, I could not afford their level, but I felt the need to see a modern and professional take on the idea of emotional rating and the YUMMM project of 2018 level. I looked among my acquaintances and quickly found a good designer who helped me to the best of my ability and my small budget.
You can also study these mockups in more detail in my Cabinet of Curiosities .
Even though I had a modern YUMMM design in my hands, I was never able to get to the real prototype due to a variety of reasons, including the high level of "raw" idea, despite all the work done.
But the main obstacle, which I continued to bang my head against, remained the same. It all came down to a lack of resources.
Resources can be different and it seemed to me that I lacked all of them: time, effort and energy, optimism and talent, knowledge and luck, connections and money.
In the meantime, normal life continued to happen to me and, in part to increase the chances of finishing the project on my own, I became a front-end developer.
YUMMM + flickr = Love [ there was a smiley here ]
At the end of 2017, I found a new job and tried to become a good front-end developer as quickly as possible practically from scratch. My good old friend, who supported me and my idea as much as possible, suggested that I come up with a task for myself, close to a real project, and do it in order to quickly pump my skills.
I thought about it and tried to combine my ever-evolving and unfinished idea with emotional rating with a small real project. The result was a simple React / Redux SPA that gave anyone the ability to filter flickr photos with a simple algorithm that tried to use emotion as the main driving force behind this mini-project.
So in one weekend "yummmr.com" was born:
This video is still available on my old Instagram account .
For a while, I thought about taking some more serious steps in this direction with Pinterest and Google Images, but the API (and my skills) had limitations that did not allow me to do something really funny.
2019. Further down the spiral
The period of "letting go" of many outdated things. A period of observing the world and technological trends in search of new insights.
Smartphones are now superior to computers in many ways, giving us new vectors of freedom and opportunities.
We are overloaded with information and entertainment content for every taste. Every web service or social. the network provides us with many different tools so that each of us can find something that is most interesting and relevant for himself: filters, likes, channels, subscriptions, etc.
The success and proliferation of messengers such as WhatsApp and Telegram has introduced many new possibilities for distributing and even evaluating content through endless emoji and stickers.
You know my mom now has a couple of favorite emoji too [ there was a smiley here ] ;Observing in which direction Telegram is developing, how it is moving away from "just a messenger" towards a social application with a deeper level of sincerity and trust. And, in my humble opinion, sincerity and trust are disappearing from global social networks. With each new day, the bitter taste of truth in Pavel Durov 's vision becomes more and more distinct.
A Telegram post from a famous Russian designer and blogger on his personal channel shows the direction of the development of social interactions and the possibilities of new types of content assessment.
Watching Instagram experiment with hiding Likes leads to thoughts about attempts to fix some fundamental problems, the legs of which are growing out of the naive past of global social networks.
Now. Result
Finally, we got to the point that I can call "now" and I would be happy to share with you the result, but I'm afraid it may disappoint you.
The perfect emotional rating and content rating system that I've so much wanted to achieve all these years is still unfinished. And is there a complete form?
I still see this idea as something with tremendous possibilities and applications. As an interesting alternative to what we see now in different (but somewhat similar) rating and content rating systems on different sites and services.
I hope that you too can clearly see all the possibilities of applying such a system by the end of my story.
The basis
Since emoji are now widespread and used by almost everyone on any device, I ditched the idea of using custom icons for emotional tastes.
The current schema of emotional tastes (i.e., emotion spectra) is the closest I've been able to get close to so far in trying to create an ideal system for rating and evaluating emotion-based content.
You can use emotional tastes to tag, bookmark, and upvote any type of content.
Check out a simple example of how this diagram can be interpreted by a UI / UX designer as a solution to evaluate some content:
Emotional tastes (spectra) and wide possibilities have become as clear to me as possible (and I hope for you too) since the beginning of my journey.
If you are experiencing real strong emotions about some content, you put one of six emotional ratings and have the opportunity to slightly adjust the emotional tone of this rating to your liking.
Emoji customization comes to mind first as an opportunity to add even more interest to this story.I hope that the only rule is always to choose one of the 6 flavors, if something really touched you emotionally, now it seems logical. Because everyone who uses such a system like this will automatically be able to search and filter content based on emotions.
I can only fantasize about the wonderful things that can be done based on the ideas that I tried to describe in my slightly weird story ...
Conclusion
The first thing I want to say is sincere thanks for your patience. I hope you are not very disappointed that at the end there is no link to the AppStore and Google Play leading to a super new and cool app.
I tried to tell this story as interestingly as I could, so that as many different people as possible could enjoy reading it. I hope that my story had some kind of emotional impact on you, because as you already know, the worst thing is complete indifference.
The Internet has given us a lot, but the most important thing for me is the ability to connect all kinds of people. And it gives me a chance that something interesting might still happen ...
And in the end, it would be cool to get a rating based on the emotional rating from the readers so that as an author I can see something like this:
Maybe another time!
You can contact me electromail and say "it was worth it or not?", But it may take longer to answer because I just need time to let it all go.
NB
Special mention are given to:
Ilya D., Vladimir M., Roman G., Roman A., Oleg B., Maxim M., Maxim A. and many others who supported me as best they could on my journey.
Thank you!
December 8, 2009. How happy I was to receive a present with the alternative YUMMM logo in physical form from my old friend.
PS
[ there were emoticons ] - means that we had to remove emoticons, which were really necessary to illustrate the idea and enhance the effect. You can see how it would look with the necessary emoticons in the English version of the article on Medium .