Put dynamic filtering back on the canvas view.
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Charles Padgham
The filtering change to the canvas view has had a very negative impact on researchers' ability to affinity map in Dovetail. This idea of filtering then selecting highlights to add to a canvas is antithetical to the way affinity mapping works, forcing researchers to work essentially in reverse. In comparison, the previous method of dynamic filtering was intuitive and a joy to use. Dovetail should roll back the filtering capabilities of canvases (highlight and insight) to the previous version.
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Jazmin Taheri
Merged in a post:
Ability to filter highlights in canvas mode
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Jeffrey Mok
Would be great to filter highlights in canvas mode. This is to help with organising and grouping quickly when all the highlights are on the canvas and to see it all visually.
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Jeffrey Mok
Hi Pat!
- Would be great to have it as comprehensive as your existing filters but just to mention a few data, tag, tag group, tag board etc
- I like to place all highlights on the canvas so I can see everything visually and start sorting from there. I find the canvas tools limiting in terms of organisation and requires a lot of manual effort. Would even be nicer to have auto layout or grid based snapping when grouping. I've attached a screenshot of how I organise things.
- Like on many virtual board tools I would filter specific highlights to save myself on manually clicking all the specific highlights I want to choose. Then I would cluster and group them accordingly. AI clustering is helpful however when the AI gets it wrong or doesn't group it like how I want it. I have to resort to manual grouping and I would very much like to speed that process up.
Hope this gives you more context and let me know if you need more info
Pat Barlow
Hello Jeffrey Mok! I have a few more questions for you:
- What specific criteria would you like to use for filtering highlights in canvas mode?
- How do you currently organize and group highlights, and what challenges do you face with the current system?
- Can you describe a scenario where filtering highlights in canvas mode would be particularly beneficial for your workflow?
Jazmin Taheri
Merged in a post:
Insight Filtering
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Charles Padgham
I'm having the same issue with insight canvas filtering as with highlight canvas filtering. It is easier for me to see everything I have first, then create filters to limit my view, rather than start from a limited view and have to work backwards.
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Alex DeWitt
I'm really struggling to analyse a canvas with 400 highlights on it. It is incredibly slow to zoom in and out and pan around. When I grab groups and drag them, sometimes the highlights move with the group, sometimes they don't.
I want to be able to create multiple canvases for different types of insight like needs versus behaviours, but lack of filtering means I can't do this.
Additionally, I need to know which highlights I've added to an insight already, but this is impossible to do. I have to manually add a text note, or drag them to a different area, or change their colour, as a marker for my memory that I have analysed them and put them in an insight.
Also, I wish I could cluster highlights by tag group and not just tag. As I've done a thorough job or tagging, I already have logical groups which are coloured and I know that in my analysis I'll want for example all of the blue tags together as they are all my user needs, then I can create sub groups if needed. The AI cluster by theme doesn't do a good job.
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Design
Removing the filtering on the canvas has become a great issue making the canvas crash every minute.
While I love the 2 new functionalities about "not in canvas" and being able to duplicate the highlight (don't remove those, they are really useful) I don't understand the decision to remove the filters.
Right now I am doing a research with a huge amount of highlights as we have over 25 interviews. Plus we started the analysis of highlights before finishing the tagging. This means that I need to have all of the highlights in a single canvas to make sure I don't miss the new ones and import them using the "Not in canvas functionality". While I like that new functionality very much it is impossible to move in canvas with this amount of highlights as it keeps crashing (20+ times in a couple of days) plus navigation and zoom in the canvas is really slow. Filtering out the content would allow me to have a more organised structure in different boards.
Aditionally because once you've imported the highlights and start analysing and later in the process realise that maybe some of those should go in a separate board you have no way of selecting those highlights, only manually which is a hell of a process. Also the filters you apply to import your tags aren't saved when adding highlights so it makes it even more complex because you need to remember which filters you had per board.
On a last note, the filtering was really useful to draw conclusions based on the note fields too. Please bring it back, it would make everyone's life easier.
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Faidon Loumakis
Given how big this change is I didn't want to rush and comment on it. Even though I had expressed my worries on slack even before this launched, I wanted to give it a fair chance and comment only after having used the canvas for a while. I also feel that not being able to filter the canvas is a major step back. It has made my analysis slower and more limited. I keep wanting to filter temporarily while I'm working on my findings. For example now I want to create a new category and set some highlights aside. Let me me quickly filter by only these tags, oh no I can't. I'll be honest, and I'm sad to say this, but the canvas is more difficult to use now and even a less useful tool for me know. I feel that in order to make the small improvement (of not starting a canvas with 1000+ highlights) Dovetail made a big sacrifice (of not having the filters). I wish they would reconsider and bring the filters back, even while keeping the new navigation where you add highlights to the canvas.
Pat Barlow
Merged in a post:
Highlight Canvas Changes
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Charles Padgham
The new method of filtering feels so much more cumbersome and limiting. Some of the issues I'm seeing are:
1- I can no longer filter dynamically through all the data from multiple participants on the canvas (this was useful to the see the relative "weights" of evidence in an affinity map)
2- I have to rebuild a filtering system each time I create (or duplicate) a canvas. This means that if I have 4 components to a filter, I have to specify them again from the beginning, rather than just changing variables in the filter.
3- The canvas level filtering felt powerful and fast. I could create an overall affinity map, then add or subtract highlights from one or more participant quickly. I could see the relative weights of evidence per theme amongst participants. Something about this new filtering process makes me feel like I'm wearing blinders.
Pat Barlow
Merged in a post:
No filter on canvas
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Maria Saviste
The new canvas experince is messing with my workflow. I'd like to create multiple canvases based on specific topic etc and need to filter by tag. When I veiw that info as a list, the filters are there, as soon as I convert it into a canvas, the filters disappear. Weird and confusing.