The YSI website is one of a kind. Literally, because it’s being built from scratch by a small company in Copenhagen. Entropy Fox spends the majority of their time building on the online platform that supports our community. Every few weeks or months, the team will deploy an update to the site, sometimes changing a lot in the front-end, making it look better, sometimes changing a lot in the back-end, making it work better. Here’s a peak behind the scenes to show the work process, and a way for you to get more involved:
So how is it decided what gets built?
Determining what features get built is an exercise of impact vs time-required. When discussing new features, the YSI team assigns an impact score between 1 and 10. A feature with an impact score of 9 would be expected to serve as a big improvement to the community. But given the resource constraints we face, it is also important to take into account how much developer-hours a given feature requires. So aside from the impact score, a time-estimate is computed. Naturally, the features with the highest impact-to-time ratio represents the biggest bang for the buck. Those are the ones to put on the top of the list.
And what does ‘building’ look like?
Often times, the first step is a conversation in the INET office, where the YSI team will try to reach agreement on what a feature should do exactly. Recently, the “need to browse all upcoming projects in one place” turned into the need for a “Project Directory,” where users would be able to look through projects, searching by keyword, project type, date, location, and working group. Once there’s some level of clarity around the idea, the team will produce a visual mock-up of what they envision the feature to look like; essentially, a pdf file that shows what the website would look like if this feature were implemented.
That pdf goes to Entropy Fox, who will comment on the feasibility of the specific request, and may suggest modifications to enhance the efficiency of the build, and the experience of the user. With those modifications agreed upon, they turn to their code, and create first iterations of the feature on a parallel test site. YSI’s test site looks just like the real one, but is distinct in that its okay to make mistakes there, because there are no real users who could get hurt. That means it’s a good way to see the feature in action, and learn what needs improvement before bringing it out to the world. Once things look good on the test site, the same thing is deployed to the real one, and tada, the update is done!
I’m a user! How can I get involved?
If you’re a member of the YSI community, the YSI platform is being built to help you. It’s being created to help you connect to peers, do the research you want to do, and transform the discourse in economics. If you have ideas for new features, or would like to be involved in testing new features, let us know by filling the form below. This way, we can get in touch with you to hear about your ideas, or let you know when we could use your help to test the latest build. We are excited to hear from you!