User Manual
User registration
First, you need to create an user account. Click on the menu link "Register".
On the registration form, fill in your e-mail address (please ensure, if it is correct) and desired username.
Optionally you can fill in your personal data, if registering as company, you can fill in also your company details.
Click on the "Create new account" button.
You should receive confirmation e-mail that your account is created.
Please complete registration process by clicking on the one-time login URL in the confirmation e-mail to set your password.
Please remember that the one-time login URL is valid only once!
Once your password is set, you have successfully registered your user account!
Participarting in event
If you are participating in some blind testing event, please login and click on My Events menu item.
All the activated events will be listed there.
If the event has been marked active by the host, you can open the form and start the blind test.
If you don't see anything there, don't worry - maybe the host has not activated the event yet?
If so, you need to just wait till the event has been activated.
Generally, form works in a way that you can pick the item number from the list, fill in all the fields and press Submit.
After submission, the same form will open again, and you can rate the next item, and so on.
You can submit the form for each item only once. Once all the items are rated, the form will be closed for you.
Form will be closed also, when the event state is changed to closed.
Creating your own blind testing event
Subscribing
To initiate your blind testing event, start by subscribing:
- Click on the "Pricing" menu link.
- Click on desired subscription period.
- Press the "Add to Cart" button.
- Navigate to your cart by clicking on the "Your Cart" link.
- Click on the "Checkout" button.
Once in the checkout section:
- Enter payment details and provide your bank card information (used for payment processing via the secure Stripe payments system).
- After entering all necessary information, click on the "Continue to review" button.
- If all data is entered, press the button "Pay and complete purchase".
Upon successful payment (confirmed by Stripe), premium features will be automatically unlocked.
If premium features not unlocked automatically, please contact our customer support via e-mail support@blindmetrix.com.
Adding a team
After subscribing, add a team by entering a freely chosen team name in the "Team Name" text field and click the "Add Team" button. Please notice that you can create multiple teams if you need to.
Adding an event
Select the newly created team from the "Team:" dropdown menu.
It is possible to choose from three different types of the event:
"Private, with user auth" - Private blind testing event with extended functionality (most secure and moste precise results). Only registered users can participate. You can add quizzes (questions and answers) to event with this type.
"Public, with item names" - Public event. Everyone with the event form URL or QR code can participate.
Product names are not hidden during an event - it means it is not blind testing event. Ratings are anonymous and ratings count is not limited.
"Public, with item numbers" - Public event. Everyone with the event form URL or QR code can participate.
Product names are hidden during an event - it means it is blind testing event, but the ratings from participants are anonymous and ratings count is not limited. Product names will be revealed when the event is closed (event state is changed to "Closed").
Proceed by choosing event type, then enter event name into the "Event Name" text field and click the "Add Event" button.
You will then see the newly created event listed under events table (in an editable state), where you can begin customizing the form
Event Settings
Items
Refers to the selection of the products being rated.
Participants will rate the products according to the same ordering as presented in the item list - so, please keep the ordering list in secret!
Additional parameters (price, currency, barcode) are optional.
"Publish this item to public scoreboard?" - provides opportunity to publish product rating and comments to public scoreboard (Explore -> Tested products).
Choosing a category for the product is also optional.
Parameters
Custom criteria used to rate each product.
In addition to the parameter name, it is also possible to choose a preferred rating system, meaning users can give ratings on a 3-point scale, 5-point scale, 10-point scale, or 100-point scale.
It is important to note that user-provided ratings are added to the database converted (ensuring comparability of products) based on the following scheme for the 100-point scale:
3-point scale:
Rating 1 -> 1 point
Rating 2 -> 50 points
Rating 3 -> 100 points
5-point scale:
Rating 1 -> 20 points
Rating 2 -> 40 points
Rating 3 -> 60 points
Rating 4 -> 80 points
Rating 5 -> 100 points
10-point scale:
Rating 1 -> 10 points
Rating 2 -> 20 points
Rating 3 -> 30 points
Rating 4 -> 40 points
Rating 5 -> 50 points
Rating 6 -> 60 points
Rating 7 -> 70 points
Rating 8 -> 80 points
Rating 9 -> 90 points
Rating 10 -> 100 points
In the case of a 100-point scale, no conversion takes place, and the user's given score is added to the database without conversion.
How the average score is calculated:
Example:
If a product has two assessable parameters (lets say scent and taste) and there are 2 participants in your event:
First participant:
Scent (on a 10-point scale), participant gives score 5
Taste (on a 10-point scale), participant gives score 10
Second participant:
Scent (on a 10-point scale), participant gives score 1
Taste (on a 10-point scale), participant gives score 1
The obtained scores 5, 10, 1, 1 are converted to a 100-point system --> 50, 100, 10, 10, and then added up, resulting in a total of 170. After that, this result 170 will be divided by the count of the ratings received to get an average score. And finally, to get score in 10-point scale, the result is divided by 10.
There were a total of 4 ratings, so the sum of the obtained ratings (170) is divided by 4, resulting in an average of 42.5. To get final score, the result will be divided by 10. E.g 42.5 / 10 = 4.25.
In formula:
COUNT = 4
SUM = 50 + 100 + 10 + 10 = 170
AVERAGE = 170 / 4 = 42.5 / 10 = 4.25
Quizzes
Questions and answers to incorporate quiz elements into your form.
Adding a quiz is optional. Quiz is a set of a questions and answers about the rated products.
There are two types of questions you can choose from:
First are item based questions, those will apply universally to every item being rated.
For instance, if you create a quiz for blind tasting wine, you can add a question like this: "What sort of the grapes are used?".
Next you need to define correct sort of the grapes for each wine, by linking the correct answer with the correct wine.
You don't need to add incorrect answers for each item separately, because all potential answers, including incorrect ones, are displayed simultaneously in a dropdown in the form, enabling users to guess the correct answer.
You can add multiple correct answers for every item - please notice, that if you link the answer with same text to multiple items, the same answer will be used for both items - it means that if you would like to rename or delete one of the answers, both are renamed or deleted!
The second type of questions are general questions.
Those are like traditional quiz questions, which are shown after the user has completed the form.
General questions are different from the item based questions - you need to add correct answer and wrong answers as well.
There are only one correct answer allowed for every general question - wrong answers count is not limited.
To add a quiz, click on the "Quizzes" link for the corresponding event. First, add the quiz by pressing the button "Add Quiz", and then you can add questions and answers.
Event state
Here you can change the event state from editable to other states and configure various event parameters.
States for an event are:
Test - For testing the form appearance and elements. Settings are not editable in this state. If you test your event and find that the form is not behaving like it is planned, close the form tab and switch event to Editable state, to correct the settings.
Also the QR code with the form URL will be displayed for easier access.
Editable - Editable state. For changing all the settings for an event.
Deleted - Event will be marked as deleted and will be removed from your events list.
Active - Event is active and open for form submissions. From this state, you cannot go back to editable or testing state anymore. Only possible state change is to close an event. Also the QR code with form URL will be displayed for easier access.
Closed - Event is closed for submissions. From this state, you cannot go back to active, editable or testing state.
Archived - Event will be marked as archived and will be removed from your events list.
You can also add logo to your event, just enter your logo URL (allowed filetypes: png, jpeg, jpg, gif) and press the button "Attach Logo".
Attached logo will be displayed in user form and also in statistics and scoreboards.
To remove the logo, don't add anything into the Logo URL text field and press the button "Attach Logo". The logo will be removed.
Optionally you can define the planned starting and ending date and time for the event (those will be also displayed on the "My Events" section for the user). Please notice that this is for informational purposes only, and doesn't automatically start or end your event.
Adding team members
Please notice, that before you can add an user to your team, user needs to be registered user in our platform.
Otherwise the error message will be displayed. Adding the users to the team can also be done at the beginning of your event, but then your event should begin with an user registration for every participant.
To add an user, go to Control Center
Select Team from dropdown
To the User name text field enter username
And press Add User button.
User can also join the team by entering the shared team code (displayed in the Control Center above the Events table, if team is selected) to this form: My Events -> Join The Team.
If users will join, using this method, their role is set to "pending" first and creator needs to select the role for each user.
The roles can be set on Users table, if the Team is selected in the Control Center.
There are three possible User roles:
Creator - Added automatically for you, when the team is created. If you create some event, you will be the creator.
The team creator has administrative access to manage the team and event settings, and is also able to change state of the events.
Editor - User with this role can edit the settings without having an active subscription on their account, however, the user with the creator role for the corresponding team should still have an active subscription. Please notice also, that only one editor is allowed per team.
User with editor role cannot create new teams (if not separately subscribed) or change an event state.
Participant - Users with this role can participate in the event but cannot modify any settings.
Please note that users are linked with a team (not with an event), allowing every user in the team to participate in all the events for that team!
Users can belong to multiple teams.
Users with the participant role will see all available events (for every team they belong to) by clicking the menu link "My events". After clicking "Open", the corresponding blind testing form appears, allowing the user to start blind testing by submitting the form.
Activating your blind testing event
Last step is test the user form and if all good, activate.
For this, go to Control Center, choose team and then click on "Event State".
Click on Test.
Event state is switching to test mode.
You can click on provided URL to see how the form will look to the user.
Form submission in the test mode is not possible.
Also you cannot change the form settings in test mode.
If you need to edit some settings, you need to switch the event state back to Edit mode.
To start your event, activate the form by pressing "Activate" button in Event State section.
Note: It is advisable not to activate the event until it officially starts.
If the Event State is active, the users can start submitting their answers.
Closing your blind testing event
If all the users are submitted their answers for every item, then you must close the event to see final scoreboards and statistics.
To close an event, go back to Control Center, choose team and for the corresponing event, click on Event State.
Click on the Close button.
Event will be closed and all the scoreboards and statistics are then available, also all the blind tested item names will be revealed!
Once event is closed, you cannot reopen it!
Competitions and scoring
During an event there are several automatic competitions ongoing between participants.
Statistics and scoreboards can be found on My Events -> Statistics & Results.
For every participant, the overall score will be calculated, by adding all the points of correct answers of each competition.
Guess the item
Participants can guess the correct item which will be currently blind tested.
Every correct answer gives 1 point. Every wrong answer 0 points.
Quizzes
Can be added to your event, if you wish:
Quiz related to items (Item Based questions)
For every item in the blind test, there is additional question about the item.
Every correct answer gives 1 point. Every wrong answer 0 points.
General quiz (General questions)
If all the items of the blind testing event are rated, the separate quiz opens.
There are choice based questions.
Every correct answer gives 1 point. Every wrong answer 0 points.