Crypto “investing”

Portfolio graph on Coinbase showing one day movement as default period
Default portfolio graph on Coinbase

The portfolio screen in the Coinbase app always opens on the “1 day” view. For all the talk of Crypto as an investment asset class, this one design choice exposes the reality.

Investors don’t look at a one day trend, or intra day lows and highs. Traders do.

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Switches and checkboxes

tldr: Say no to switch toggles. Say yes to checkboxes. (Unless you are Airbnb)

Switches

Switches can be ambiguous about their state and their intent.

IRL, they are usually vertical

Which side is on?

Or labeled for choosing modes

switch_mode

They don’t do RTL well

Using an RTL language? Which is the on side—turned to the right, or to the left?

The accent colours on the switch are a helpful clue.

But the colours can’t help when Digital Wellbeing turns on the grayscale mode.

switch settings rtl grayscale
Grayscale turned on by wind down mode. Which switch is ON, again?

But Google uses them

Yes, they do. They also appear to be learning the folly of their ways. Check out these screenshots from upcoming Android 12:

Checkboxes

If it’s filled, it’s on. If it’s empty, it’s not.

There’s no right, left, up or down. Language doesn’t matter. Colour doesn’t matter. No ambiguity1. No confusion.

rtl_gmail_checkbox
Gmail. No colours for hint. No RTL support on an RTL device. Yet, no confusion. Checkboxes FTW!

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Stacked chart—order of data series

womenInCongressEconomist
The Economist’s stack

This chart in The Economist bothered me. It’s not a bad chart, but it could convey the data so much better if just the order of columns was reversed.

moc_area_1
My reversed stack

Once the data is reversed, it’s much clearer to see the relatively stagnant number of Republican women in Congress, along with the increase in Democrat women in Congress.

Continue reading Stacked chart—order of data series

Pretty, and pretty confusing

00100dPORTRAIT_00100_BURST20190731161426921_COVER.jpg
Escalator stop buttons at Waterloo station, London

They look pretty, in a industrial chic kind of way.

The idea is interesting—

  • Red action button in the middle,
  • Operation instruction around it—‘Push to stop’, and
  • Warning around that—‘Penalty for improper use’

And the execution is precise—the button’s radius, the width of gap around the button, and the width of ‘Push to stop’ ring appear beautifully aligned.

Every time I pass them, I get attracted to these buttons.

There’s just one problem. On every attempt, I read the message around the button as:

Penalty for push to stop improper use.

The clarity of message has been forsaken at the altar of design.

Humans don’t read in concentric circles. We definitely don’t read inside-out.

We read from left-to-right, or right-to-left, and top-to-bottom.

In an emergency, when this button would be usually used, we follow instinct—read as we usually do. Not as the designer wants us to—inside out, concentric circle at a time.

This button would be much simpler, and not much less prettier, if it just said ‘Push to stop’ up top, and ‘Penalty for improper use’ at the bottom. (My ugly sketch is below the fold)

Continue reading Pretty, and pretty confusing

Premier league table 2018-19 – some trends so far

Time to revisit the excellent BBC chart from last year. Here’s how things stand in the premier league after 21 matches:

Premier League table after 21 matches

Observations (relative to last year):

  1. There’s no runaway winner at the top,
  2. The middle is again crowded (8 teams within 9 points) but not as much as last year (13 teams in 11 points),
  3. The bottom 6 are scattered as well, with Huddersfield struggling the most (more on them below).

aditya

Should we use multi-year, moving-average of income to calculate tax & benefit payments?

Income tax rates are based on current/last year’s income. This makes them easy to calculate and implement.

This immediacy of taxes also makes them painful, and makes the tax slab thresholds as artificial barriers to income mobility. An example of this is when we get a raise which pushes us from near the top end of one tax rate bracket, to the bottom end of a higher tax rate bracket. This frequently means that even though the employer is paying us more after the raise, we are actually taking home less money due to a higher tax rate.

Government benefits work similarly. For example, the unemployment benefit / social support payments cut off (or reduce dramatically) when we start working. However, after accounting for taxes and loss of benefits, the take home income from pay is often lower than the unemployment benefits.

Continue reading Should we use multi-year, moving-average of income to calculate tax & benefit payments?

About those exorbitant hospital parking fees

I had an appointment at the hospital today, and was thinking about the rates at the hospital car park. The parking area at big NHS hospital in my town has the highest parking rates around. They are probably more than double the rate at any other paid parking zone in the town.

At a first look, they seem extortionist. At most places, high parking rates are a nudge for users to either take an alternate means of transport, or to curtail their visits. At a hospital, however, few people visit by choice. Also, the visitors are more likely to use a car – comfort for the ill and all that. By charging these, probably ill, visitors these extraordinarily high rates, the hospital/NHS/council are just heartlessly milking the already suffering.

Unjust!

On a second thought, however, there is a valid reason behind these high rates – consumption tax. They are not just parking rates, they are an indirect tax on the heaviest NHS users.

Continue reading About those exorbitant hospital parking fees

Premier league table – the trend continues

Follow-up to the last week’s post.

Premier League table - spread by points - week 21 - 2
Premier League table – spread by points – week 21 – 27

All the trends from the previous week continue…

  1. Manchester City (blue) continue to run away with the title, West Brom (slate) continue a lonely run at the bottom.
  2. The 2nd and 5th placed teams are now just 4 points apart (red) – Manchester United lost, while Chelsea, Tottenham, and Liverpool all won.
  3. Arsenal (slate) continue to be in the middle of nowhere – 7 points behind 5th, 9 points ahead of 7th.
  4. The mid-table / relegation pack (light grey) got even tighter – only 11 points between the 7th and 19th placed teams.

Continue reading Premier league table – the trend continues

Premier league table – some trends this season

That chart from the BBC got me interested. Looking at the Premier league table distributed by points makes it lot more interesting than distribution by ranks.

So, I downloaded the Premier League data for current season from Football Data, and created some graphs1.

Weeks 1-8: Mixed bag, except for Crystal Palace

Crystal Palace's dismal start to the season
Crystal Palace’s dismal start to the season

7 straight defeats! Crystal palace really had a crap start to the season!

Continue reading Premier league table – some trends this season

Chart of the day: Premier league table

Premier league teams on a linear scale of points after 23 matches
Premier league teams on a linear scale of points after 23 matches

The usual Premier league table gives a good idea of the ranking, but the gaps between teams aren’t immediately obvious1. I love how this visualisation shows both the rankings and the gaps with one simple line.

Source: BBC sport

Continue reading Chart of the day: Premier league table