Notes from the recycling center (week one)

A few days into our recycled experiment and there are already some neat things happening. We’ve seen quite a few downloads (500 or so) of the theme both from here as well as from the wordpress theme site.

Some interesting observations:

• It’s really easy to forget how many non-english bloggers there are. Since we personally only read english blogs its easy to forget about the rest of the world. Oh localization, you are so important.
• People are turning the recycled data plugin on (for the most part), this is especially interesting considering it is distributed separately for the version of the theme on the themes.wordpress.net site
• There is a lot of ‘trying’ and a few sticky installs. For the most part the number of people who install the theme to try it is about ten times greater than the number of people who actually stick with it.
• Almost everyone who installs the theme sticks with the default options (textboxes and the light canvas theme). I’m not sure if its simply because these are more popular or (and I think more likely) because these are the default options. To overcome the power of defaults we’re looking at a couple of different options. The most likely one is to set the defaults randomly on the initial install. This will allow people who care to make the changes, and those who don’t (or don’t bother to look) to at least experience the other views. This also keeps the theme of ‘human controlled’ experimental variables while incorporating the idea of random assignment.
• Not every site supports our method of data collection - even with the plugin turned on. We’ve been talking for a while about a method of data collection that is both decentralized and less taxing on the server side. I expect this to be implemented in the following week.

Some people have asked why we don’t release the plugin independently of the theme, especially since its ‘for research.’ This is a valid question. The research is less about mousetracking and more about alternative licensing models and the idea that data is a form of currency. Bundled with the theme the plugin becomes a requirement for the use of the theme, and not a solely altruistic data collection tool. It also explores (through the use of the various view options) the idea of organically controlled experimental variables. Here experimental variables are in a sense determined by the market. If a view isn’t useful it is never selected by the human user, there is no arbitrary random assignment.

We could (and most likely will) release the plugin by itself. At this point we want to focus on the key recycled experiment and not merely data collection. There is also the requirement that releasing the plugin by itself would necessitate a more robust visualization tool (to make it worth while). This is something we’re still working on.