We’ve received lots of helpful user feedback lately and we’re excited to take some very initial steps in response to it.  Very broadly, the larger initiative (of which today’s changes are just a small first step) involve:

• streamlining the site (particularly its data structures) to make it easier to use and more flexible for external applications including mobile
• creating faster, easier ways to contribute to Hunch that don’t require burdensome initial ‘training’ of new results
• a greater emphasis on helping you discover and share new things you’d probably like (as opposed to just confirming stuff that you already know about)

Here are some of the initial changes you’ll notice starting today:

1) Transitioning of topic-specific questions to a tag format:

We’ll be taking down all of the topic-specific (also called “refiner”) questions on Hunch.com and moving to a model where topics are navigated by tags. This should make it much faster and easier to browse and filter results. At the same time, it will speed up the contribution process since you won’t have to train every new result you add against all the existing questions in each topic.

We understand that for a lot of contributors this is a big change and will take time to get used to.  As we release major new features over the next few months we think you’ll appreciate even more why the flexible tag model works better than the former rigid question format.  For more details about this, check this separate blog post.

2) Stars replace Like, Dislike, and Favorite buttons

We’re moving to the familiar Netflix model of a 5 star rating system for predictions and ratings. Any past ratings you’ve made will be converted to the new format as follows:

• Anything you’ve disliked will show up as a 1 star rating
• Anything you’ve liked will show as a 4 star rating
• Anything you’ve designated a favorite will show as a 5 star rating

Predicted ratings are shown in red stars and your actual ratings are shown in yellow.

We think this new format will make it easier to understand Hunch’s predictions and also to rate items in an intuitive way.

3) New visual formats for ‘Browse Topics’ and ‘See all results’ pages

The ‘browse topics’ page has been redesigned from a text-only list to a matrix of visual images that help you find and discover topics of interest.  We’ll have to admit that even we were struck by the visual power of this; it reminded us of all the great content that Hunch’s contributors have made to the site. Hope you like it as well.

Similarly, the ‘All Results’ page will now show a matrix of image results, making it easier to see (and rate) the results at a glance.  They’ll be ordered by the star rating that Hunch predicts for you. You can click on any image to see the familiar Hunch result page which contains more information about each item, including pros/cons, descriptions, pricing, and purchase links.

The left side of the ‘All Results’ page (where the topic-specific/refiner questions used to be) will now show tags associated with the group of results being displayed. You can click on one or several tags to filter by them and create a new subset of results.

Again, this is just a small first step.  We’ll be announcing more very soon — particularly regarding ways that Hunch can help you discover new things and then share those things with other users.

As always, we welcome your suggestions or comments in the forum.

As part of a broader effort to streamline Hunch and make it easier to use, and based on lots of user feedback, we’ve just transitioned topic-specific questions (also called “refiner questions”) into a tag format on results pages.

We understand that for a lot of contributors this is a big change and will take time to get used to.  At first, the reasons behind this change won’t be so obvious, but as we release major new features over the next few months we think you’ll understand why the tag model works much better.  Some details:

1) This change does not affect THAY (“Teach Hunch About You”) questions. We often hear users describe THAYs as fun and even “addictive.”  They will continue to be a core part of Hunch even as we transition to a tag format for topic-specific questions.

2) How this change affects users looking for recommendations: We had about 1.5M visitors come to Hunch last month seeking recommendations. While the topic-specific questions our contributors provided the system were excellent, our technology that attempted to choose which question to ask in what order never really worked as well as we wanted.

A common complaint we received was, for example, from a user looking for a new car recommendation and the only features that mattered to her were price and that the car is made in America. In our old model, she might have had to skip over 5 or 6 questions before the relevant questions were asked.  With tags, she can just click on a price and “made in America” and then see a personalized list of recommendations filtered by those tags. (Note that right now we just list tags on the left by frequency of occurrence – in the near future we plan to group them more logically).

3) How this change affects future contributors: For the thousands of active contributors to Hunch, the largest change is that when you add results you’ll no longer have to ‘train’ the results to apply to all the topic-specific questions.  This should make contributing to Hunch a LOT easier. In a future release, contributions will largely come via our Hunch Bookmarklet.  Once you have the Bookmarklet, you’ll simply enter the name (what you are recommending), a short commentary (why you are recommending it) and tags.  This will reduce the work required while also making more explicit that by adding something you are recommending it to others.

4) How this change affects past topic-specific questions: Over the past few weeks we’ve used a combination of automated processes and old-fashioned human sweat to convert as many topic-specific questions as we could to the new tag format. This worked for many, but not all topic questions. You’ll keep any banjos you’ve earned from past topic-specific question contributions, whether or not the question was able to be converted to the new tag format.

5) What this change enables going forward: Tags will let us greatly simplify the organization of the site.  For example, there are over 250 topics on Hunch today related to getting a recommendation for a movie. We have nearly a dozen unique listings for the movie Fight Club alone. Having so many topics full of movies and multiple listings of each one makes it confusing for new users to know where they should add a movie they’d like to recommend. Merging of topics is very difficult when each has different questions. With tags, we can easily merge topics to streamline the site’s taxonomy and further streamline contributing to the site.

6) How this change affects our API. Tags allow the Hunch database to interface better with both mobile platforms and other sites across the web.  Most sites organize their data through some sort of tag or labeling system. Using tags as the primary way we organize information will make our data fit better with partners and make the Hunch API more accessible to developers.

While the transition will take some adjusting to, we hope that long term you’ll think it’s worth it.  We know certain things are rough around the edges right now (using tags to filter by price doesn’t work that great, for example).  That’s why we invite you to please leave any questions or comments in this forum thread.  Thanks for all your help and contributions.

Gretchen Rubin, author of the New York Times bestselling book The Happiness Project, considers making one’s bed each morning significant progress toward happiness:

Happiness is a lofty aim, and making your bed is such a prosaic activity. Why does it boost happiness so effectively?

From my own experience, and what people have told me, I think there are two reasons.

First, making your bed is a step that’s quick and easy, yet makes a big difference. Everything looks neater. It’s easier to find your shoes. Your bedroom is a more peaceful environment. For most people, outer order contributes to inner calm.

Second, sticking to any resolution — no matter what it is — brings satisfaction. You’ve decided to make some change, and you’ve stuck to it. Because making my bed is one of the first things I do in the morning, I start the day feeling efficient, productive, and disciplined.

And yes, last week we found that Hunch users who like their jobs make their bed each morning…or they pay someone else to.

We know there’s a difference between correlation and causation. Straightening up the sheets and covers alone does not make someone happy. But people conscientious enough to make the bed are starting the day with a routine of organization. They’re attending to a small task that makes a big difference. And once they do, they’re probably not getting back in bed for a while.

Out of more than 68,000 Hunch users,  a mere 39% start the day with a made bed. For the purposes of this report, we’re only going to focus on the 27% who make their own beds and the 60%  who don’t. If you’ve got someone cleaning up after you, we’ll assume your life is going pretty well.

There are a lot of messy-bedded Hunch users, so we know that not making the bed isn’t exactly the mark of a loser. Hunch users are a well-educated, politically active bunch. They have friends and jobs and dreams. If you tire them, do they not yawn?

Hunch users are made up of an even male/female split. Unfortunately, many people would still associate keeping a nice, neat bed with being a woman. There’s a reason for that, you know.

Female Hunch users are more likely than their male counterparts to make their own beds. But they’re less likely to have someone else, like a spouse or housekeeper, do it. So females are slightly more likely to leave the house each morning with an unmade bed. How do you like them apples, Mom?

So are people who make their own beds really that different from the lazy wrinkled sheet variety? Let’s see:

Making your bed is one of those examples of how a little effort makes a big difference. Who isn’t pleased to retire to a nice, neat bed at night? It’s also common sense that a small success at the start of a day can have a positive impact for the rest of it.

And it’s not that making the bed really puts anyone out, either. People who don’t make their beds every morning usually say they don’t have time. It’s not that making their beds is taxing or a matter of personal taste. (You show me the man who prefers getting in a mess of tangled sheets at night, and I’ll show you a liar).

Hunch users who make their beds do tend to care more about appearances, but they’re not necessarily fastidious. More importantly, they consider themselves happy.

They’re also more likely to say that they’re proud of where they are in life.

But again, we have to remember that causation and correlation are not the same thing.

Hunch users who make their beds are happier, and it might not be from that alone. They tend to do other little things that contribute to happiness, like exercise, support charities, and make time to read.

Older Hunch users are more likely to make their beds, and age accounts for a lot. Older people have advanced in their careers and make more money. They tend to like their jobs, which has a significant impact on happiness. They often have families of their own. Interestingly, research has also found that older people tend to be happier. Now that’s something to look forward to.

Other groups that tend to be happier: conservatives, men, marrieds, and people who attend worship services.

Last year, the three-part PBS series This Emotional Life explored mental health and emotional well-being. The third episode focused entirely on happiness. The producers didn’t explore making the bed, per se, but they did find that 40% of our happiness level is affected by our choices and actions. Genetics and temperament make up the baseline at 50%. Life circumstances beyond our control account for a mere 10% of our happiness level.

So you do have quite a bit of control over your happiness. And once you’ve made your bed — or not — you don’t have to lie in it.

Is it important for you to take steps to increase your happiness? How would you start?

Have you figured out what you want to be when you grow up?

Finding the right career isn’t as simple as exploring a few internships and choosing which ladder you want to climb. It’s often a process of trial and error or as much of an accidental discovery as Silly Putty.

The sometimes arduous journey is worth the struggle, though. In 2009, the OECD found that Americans spend 1,768 hours at work each year. Only a few countries –  including Greece, Mexico, Italy, and historically, Korea — beat these numbers. But even if you’re lucky enough to live in the Netherlands, where most people work a mere 1,378 hours annually, that’s a lot of time to hate your job.

Some people say if you love what you do, you’ll never work  a day in your life. We don’t have any official Hunch data, but we’re pretty sure those people are retired or something. Even work you like isn’t something you’d necessarily do for free.

The majority of Hunchers enjoy their jobs at least sometimes. We don’t want to jump to conclusions, but we’re guessing that people who skipped this question are retired, unemployed, or identify way too much with Office Space.

Interestingly, many more Hunch users have chosen to share more detailed feelings about work. This could be related to question order or the fact that it’s easier to share a philosophy than to conclude that you either like or dislike your job.

Out of more than 57,000 Hunch users, 48% consider their personal life their top priority and 35% believe that sometimes work has to come first.

The concept of a work-life balance always goes back to gender norms. We don’t have the data to dive into a discussion about the glass ceiling or family roles, but you’ll notice that women most often describe work as something that pays the bills. Men overwhelmingly view work as an important part of their identity.

But let’s get back to basics. What can we figure out about people who like their jobs and why? For the purposes of this report, we’re not going to consider Hunch users who sometimes like their jobs. Instead, we’re going to focus on the groups that both generally like and dislike going to work.

Cubicle culture gets a bad rap, but you’ll notice that it doesn’t preclude an enjoyable job. Unsurprisingly, people who enjoy what they do are more likely to have an enclosed private office. Did they advance to an office of their own, because they enjoyed their jobs and performed well in the first place? Or is work behind closed doors just that much sweeter?

Other differences between those who like and dislike their jobs also force us to consider how much work environment really has to do with one’s attitude about work. Surely, some people would be unhappy at work no matter how cushy their job. Research shows that money does indeed buy happiness, but the benefits cap out at an annual salary of $60,000.

Here’s what else we know about those who happily go early and stay late, and those who are watching the clock for an entirely different reason:

Much of this is intuitive. Of course entry-level workers aren’t as happy as the more senior staff they report to. They’re paying their dues in a tough economy. They’ve probably got thousands of dollars in student loans coupled with an infinitely smaller earning potential for most of their early adulthood. Many people cite the sense of entitlement among younger adults in the workforce, but can you blame them for worrying so much about advancement and compensation?

Education means more employment options. The people most likely to enjoy their work are doing something they studied in college, often holding positions requiring advanced graduate degrees. (When you invest that kind of time and money into higher education, you’d better like your job).

People who like their jobs tend to be older and often have other assets that might make them more positive people in general. In many cases, they don’t need their jobs the way a younger person does. They’re not on their own. They have partners whom we can assume are emotionally and financially supportive. They have kids who say the darndest things. They’ve got…fruit bowls?

Well, yes. It looks like people who like their jobs put more thought into what they put on their tables and presumably, in their bodies. Paying attention to the small details makes a difference. Maybe people who are more positive about themselves are naturally inclined to feel more positive about other things, including their jobs. (And yes, it could be easier to pay attention to the little things when you’ve got a dual-income household).

The takeaway: Wherever you are in your career, attitude determines altitude. Having a positive attitude and investing in yourself on your own time makes you happier from 9-5, which makes you more likely to advance at work. Being happier at work then functions in a feedback loop to make you happier outside of work.

Do you agree? What makes work work for you?

Active contributors may have noticed a recent change in the ‘descriptions’ field for some of the results on Hunch.  Over the last couple of days, we’ve removed descriptions which are near-identical copies of Wikipedia entries.  We’ve also stopped using Wikipedia as an available source for the descriptions in the ‘add topic’ wizard. Here’s why:

• Many of the descriptions from Wikipedia were either overly general, overly technical, or very out of context for the specific result on Hunch.
• Search engines tend to penalize sites that have a significant amount of what they consider “non-original” content. Thus, by having many results with Wikipedia-like descriptions, we may have been limiting the visibility of those results in search engines and thus reducing the number of people who could use a search engine to find relevant information on Hunch.
• Note that when a Hunch description originally came from Wikipedia but subsequently underwent a lot of meaningful user edits, we kept it.
• We have also generally kept links to Wikipedia, even when we’ve removed the descriptions.
• Our hope is that this change will both improve the visibility of Hunch results in search engines and also encourage users to add more original and relevant descriptions to Hunch results to make them even more useful.

If you’re a Hunch fan (and our prediction is that there’s an 87% likelihood you are), we’d like to humbly, grovelingly, ask you to vote for Hunch for the “2010 Best Technology Achievement” Crunchie.  We’re in category #6, halfway down the page.

If you think the nomination is good news, then check out this added stunner: you can vote for us not just once, but once per day (per ip address, restrictions apply, offer not valid in Tazmania, etc.)

So set that iPhone alarm or repeating calendar invite to remind you for this most important of tasks: a daily vote to tell the world that you dig Hunch and the gee-whiz technology behind it.  Our sincere thanks.

Here at Hunch we’re intrigued by the big (and not so big) either-or questions in life. And who’s to say that the question “Boxers or briefs?” isn’t as important as “Democrat or Republican?” After all, President Bill Clinton was asked this very question on an MTV political special in 1994.

More than 32,000 Hunch users are just as unabashed to share their underwear preference, and it looks like looser, less revealing boxers win.

The issue really only applies to men, but we don’t need to tell you that most women have a preference, and it’s not all that different from what men prefer:

If we adjust the preference figures above to compensate for the people who skipped the question, it becomes clear that women have even a stronger relative preference for boxers than do men. 69% of women who answered the question prefer boxers and 33% prefer briefs, a 2.1:1 boxer win. Of men who answered the question, 63% prefer boxers and 37% prefer briefs. That’s a 1.7:1 relative boxer win.

Mind you, this question leaves out the boxer-brief hybrid many men and women hold dear. When asked to choose between boxers or briefs, we can’t be sure which Team Boxer-Brief would choose. (We can guess, however, that they’d tend to default to boxer).

It’s safe to say that we’ve all filed away some stereotypes about men’s drawers. Little boys tend to graduate from diapers to cartoon-character printed briefs, transitioning to more modest boxers when they get older. Then they go back to briefs. My long-held conspiracy theory: Men waive the right to wear boxers once they become dads or turn 40, whichever comes first.

But let’s look at the data:

Yep. The 18-34 age range looks like the boxer sweet spot. Older Hunch users (men and women) are more inclined to prefer briefs.

These differences between the two underwear camps further illustrate the correlation between age and underwear choice. We’ll be the first to acknowledge that many of these seem to be secondary correlations tied to age. Also, a lot of the differences are statistically subtle and close to the margin of error in some cases. But that didn’t stop us from having some fun with the findings:

So think back to that 1994 MTV special, and take a wild guess about what President Clinton said he wears. If you guessed briefs — or rather, “Usually briefs. I can’t believe you asked that!” — you’re right.

Originally, we wondered if underwear choice had something to do with fitness. Perhaps men who exercised more regularly would wear briefs to stay better err, supported? Not really. Men who prefer briefs exercise about the same amount each week as those who choose boxers. However, men who wear boxers are more active outdoors.

Are you an outlier, or do you have any insight into why a typical man’s underwear life cycle can be summed up as briefs-boxers-briefs? Don’t keep it under wraps.