Calm before the storm ?

First version of Deliberation map was successfully implemented. So, we thought of moving forward and adding new features for the 2.0 release. The following are the features that we thought might make it a useful pedagogical tool :-

  1. Zoom functionality. The user should be able to view the map at different zoom levels to get a better view of the map.
  2. Color coding the edges so that we know the type of the reply to the post by looking at the color of the edge connecting the post to its reply.
  3. Login screen : So, that different users can login and have their own list of deliberation map. That is, one user can be “enlisted” in many deliberations. As of now there is only one deliberation map, so we need to make separate instances of the deliberation map for this usecase.
  4. Time slider : The user should be able to slide to a point of time in the past and be able to see how the deliberation map looked at that point of time. So, by using the slider the user should be able to track or visualize the evolution of the deliberation.
  5. Number of replies, agrees or disagrees, the color of the node should be changed. One cool idea for this was to make the node look like a pie chart to represent the statistics for that node.
  6. Support for Image and video to be added in a post.
  7. User Interface at 2.5 D : When a user highlights a node, the sub-tree below that node should get highlighted and the rest of the deliberation map should “fade”. Thus, giving us an illusion of 3-D, while it still being 2D.
  8. As of now, the nodes in a level are arranged in chronological order. We wanted to change it to a view wherein the children of a node will be present under the node and in chronological order. So, if node 1 is to left of node 2 in a level, then in the next level all the children of node 1 come before any child of node 2.
  9. There should be an option for the user to specify a specific user and see all the posts made by that user. So, its a filter of the whole map based on particular user.
  10. Administrator screen: There should be a control panel, for the administrator, through which all the instances of deliberation map and the list of users who can login can be maintained. Further, the assigning of users to a deliberation map is also done by the administrator.
  11. Last but not the least, we need to host the tool on a server so that people can login and test it and suggest new features or modifications to the existing system.

I hope this gives a perspective on the things to come. I am excited to have got a chance to do this project and look forward to the day it can be put into actual use. Please do feel free to suggest any new ideas that might help the evolution of the tool.

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