think-progress

What is this?

This repository contains a reimagining of progress bars in the light of the principles of good thinking and good map making.

This progress visualization is intended known out of known step counts with uniform step sizes. It isn't intended to be a visualization of all types of progress, but for progressions like those produced when reading a book. A book's length is known. The number of pages that have been read in that book is also known.

The progress visualizations produced here communicate not just the current amount of progress, but the whole history of progress. It uses that history to make educated guesses as to how progress will proceed in the future. So in the case of reading a book you would be able to answer questions like given I've been reading three pages a day I will finish the book in thirty days.

If that sounds a little confusing, just look at an example progress widget and things should become clear:

<ThinkProgress datset={dataset}>

Why

Traditional progress bars tend to look something like this:

Take a moment to try to answer questions using the progress visualization like:

• How much longer will it take to complete?
• What is the recent history of progress?
• How is progress momentum developing? It is getting faster? Slower?
• Should I hold my breath?

If you had trouble answering those questions then imagine your difficulty when giving a more modern approach to letting people know about progress. A traditional time in which progress visualizations are shown to people is when something is loading, but lately the trend is not even try to communicate progress in these situations.

Implicit in their failure to communicate information about progress the current standard for communicating progress is asking us to think about progress for ourselves. However, there is reason we should hesitate to do so.

For one, research shows that people tend to be pretty bad at estimating how long things will take. Even our worst cast estimates tend to be optimistic. Moreover, this holds even when we know it is the case. Since we know that this is an error we make frequently and one which is little cured by experience we probably shouldn't be confidently producing wrong estimates.

For another, even giving this estimate is an act of hard work. To give a reasonable estimate we need to think about how progress has been, what is remaining, and extrapolate. This involves math. Worse it involves accounting for situations that are unrelated to the topic we are dealing with that may come in to distract us. It isn't just difficult to get this answer, but is a form of the halting problem. It is both hard to answer and also impossible to have a correct answer.

Theoretically, we can never guarantee that we have the correct progress extrapolation, showing the wisdom behind a loading visualization that doesn't even pretend to help a person think. In practice information about when things will complete is actually valuable enough that people really want it. So we have to think about it anyway.

Or do we?

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copybooks and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which can be performed without thinking about them.

• Alfred North Whitehead

These progress visualizations try to take cues from lessons on good visualization and good thinking found in books on the topic by Edward Tufte. They do this with the intention of creating something which does good thinking on behalf of the person using it.

Installation

Usage

To create a dashboard which renders many progress visualizations:

import ThinkProgressDashboard from "./think/progress/ThinkProgressDashboard";

function App() {
  let datasets= [<your dataset>, ...];
  return (
      <ThinkProgressDashboard datasets={datasets}/>
  );
}

export default App;

To create a single progress visualization:

import ThinkProgressDashboard from "./think/progress/ThinkProgressDashboard";

function App() {
  let datasets= [<your dataset>, ...];
  return (
      <ThinkProgress dataset={dataset} selected=true />
  );
}

export default App;

Available Scripts

In the project directory, you can run:

yarn start

Runs the app in the development mode.
Open http://localhost:3000 to view it in the browser.

The page will reload if you make edits.
You will also see any lint errors in the console.

yarn test

Launches the test runner in the interactive watch mode.
See the section about running tests for more information.

yarn build

Builds the app for production to the build folder.
It correctly bundles React in production mode and optimizes the build for the best performance.

The build is minified and the filenames include the hashes.
Your app is ready to be deployed!

See the section about deployment for more information.

yarn eject

Note: this is a one-way operation. Once you eject, you can’t go back!

If you aren’t satisfied with the build tool and configuration choices, you can eject at any time. This command will remove the single build dependency from your project.

Instead, it will copy all the configuration files and the transitive dependencies (webpack, Babel, ESLint, etc) right into your project so you have full control over them. All of the commands except eject will still work, but they will point to the copied scripts so you can tweak them. At this point you’re on your own.

You don’t have to ever use eject. The curated feature set is suitable for small and middle deployments, and you shouldn’t feel obligated to use this feature. However we understand that this tool wouldn’t be useful if you couldn’t customize it when you are ready for it.

Learn More

You can learn more in the Create React App documentation.

To learn React, check out the React documentation.

Code Splitting

This section has moved here: https://facebook.github.io/create-react-app/docs/code-splitting

Analyzing the Bundle Size

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Making a Progressive Web App

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Advanced Configuration

This section has moved here: https://facebook.github.io/create-react-app/docs/advanced-configuration

Deployment

This section has moved here: https://facebook.github.io/create-react-app/docs/deployment

yarn build fails to minify

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