Two familiar “tag clouds” provide an instant overview of the dominant ideas and people in the challenge; the example is clearly about aircraft. To see who’s talking about Airbus (perhaps that’s a competitor), just click the word, or to see what David Taylor is saying, just click his name. Font size reflects topic frequency or participation level.
The largest-font people are often part of the process: sponsors or admins or “cheerleaders” whose job includes general encouragement. The largest-font topics often represent business-as-usual, so it’s the smaller items that may be most interesting (“Why is someone talking about turboprops these days?”). Most telling of all may be topic words that are missing: why is no one discussing Chinese manufacturers? Is this a gap in our thinking and competitive awareness?
Activity at a Glance also has a tab showing summary metrics. The pale green range of each meter shows Imaginatik’s advice based on thousands of challenges in dozens of industries. If Collaboration is low, it may be worth another email announcement to stop new ideas and encourage people instead to build upon what’s already there. If Collaboration is too high, it may be time to stop the challenge and move to review and decisions (time to stop talking and act!).
The green region for Complexity indicates high school reading levels. Higher complexity is appropriate for technical problem-solving challenges, but would be inappropriate if the challenge sought punchy slogans for retail marketing. Diversity measures whether the ideas and comments represent the thinking of a vocal minority or a broad consensus, which is further explored in Measuring Participation.
