I've been thinking about the idea of rating any experience, inspired by TrackYourHappiness. Many questions arise, like how to make it inclusive and track data. It's challenging, but I'm excited to see where this concept leads us.
Rate anything
The idea of rating any experience, anywhere, at any time, has really started to grow on me lately. Etan and I discuss the idea regularly, and are totally intrigued with the possibilities, as well as the questions that arise as a result. Gord over at Out of My Gord got me thinking even more about the rate anything movement, and threw up in the air a lot questions. Here’s a smattering:
What would we rate? What would we not rate? What kind of rating scale works across all experiences? What qualifies as an experience, anyway?
How do we make a system that’s inclusive, so that anyone, anywhere can rate anything at any time? Is it an iPhone app of sorts (maybe)? A twitter hashtag (possibly)? A website? A desktop app (probably not)?
How about some kind of conversation/phrase, like “Wow, John, I rate our interaction a 4.6 right now.”?
How do we track the data? What exactly are we tracking? How to do display the information? Do we even display it? And to whom?
And most importantly, what’s the point? What do we do with all the data?
Inspiration
My inspiration for the rate everything idea came from my experience with www.trackyourhappines.org, brainchild of Matt Killingsworth out of Harvard. While trackyourhappiness certainly was fulfilling for me, I found it lacking in interactivity – I couldn’t track what I wanted, when I wanted, and it was tough to create some kind of system around the experiences I regularly have.
Further, I found the sliding scale a little arbitrary, and think we can do better (hopefully). So whether we track experiences just for the heck of it, or perhaps from some broader happiness goal, I can’t wait to see where it goes.
