The panelist's process, round by round

This guide walks the panel from the invitation to the final results. It is written for the person who has been invited — you is the panelist — and the facilitator who prepares the panel can read it as a description of what their panelists will actually see.

The companion guide, How Delphi Pronoia's two interfaces are built, explains the design. This one is the walk: what is on the screen at each point, in order, and why some things are not there yet.

1. What you are joining

A Delphi panel is not a survey. A survey asks you once and adds you up. A Delphi asks you, shows you what the rest of the panel said and why, and asks again — and the interesting part is what happens in between.

Three things follow from that, and they are worth knowing before the first screen:

• Your reasoning matters more than your number. The rating locates you on a scale; the reasoning is what other panelists read and what the analysis finally works from. A rating without reasoning is half an answer.
• You are anonymous to the other panelists. They see you as a code, not a name: "You respond anonymously — other panelists see you only as {code}". The facilitator's visibility into who you are depends on how the study was set up, and the privacy notice says which arrangement applies.
• Disagreement is not a failure of the panel. It is often the finding. Nothing in the interface pushes you toward the middle, and the results screens show spread as a fact rather than a problem.

If the panel includes AI panelists, you are told so before you start. "This panel includes AI panelists" is stated up front, and every AI contribution is marked wherever it has an effect: beside the argument, and as a hatched share inside the distribution.

2. Before anything opens: the invitation and the consent screen

You arrive by a personal link. It is yours; it identifies you to the study without a password, which is why it should not be forwarded.

The first screen is Before you begin. It states what the study is, who is running it, how your data is handled, and — if the panel includes them — that some panelists are AI. You continue with I have read this and I take part, and Read the privacy notice stays reachable from the menu for the whole study.

This screen is not a formality that the design tries to get past. It is the thing you are agreeing to, so it comes before the content rather than under it.

3. Round 0: the orientation conversation

Most studies begin with Round 0 — a conversation rather than a form. An AI assistant called Kastalia opens the phenomenon with you in your own words before any thesis is rated.

Kastalia says what it is, in its own words, at the start:

"I am an AI, not a person. I help you open up the questions in your own words before the round itself — I don't assess your answers and I won't tell you which view is right. I carry the data; the seeing is yours."

What is on the screen: the phenomenon under study, what the panel design already knows about your angle ("From the panel design, Pronoia knows about you" — correct it in the chat if it is wrong), and a progress line, "Answered {answered}/{total} orientation questions". You write freely; there is no scale.

You end it yourself with I'm done →. Then you land on your own home view, and the theses open later.

Round 0 is skipped in some studies. If it is, your first screen is the one in §5.

4. The frame that never changes

From here on, one thing is worth internalising because it makes everything else easy: the page does not change, its middle does. The heading is where it was, the menu button is where it was, the form is in the same place every round.

Three parts of the frame are always there:

Panel pulse shows process, never content. It tells you that the panel is moving — how many have answered, how many new comments there are — and it deliberately does not tell you what the panel thinks until you have answered. There is no target number in it: it says "27 have answered", not "27 of 40". A target turns a sign of life into a scoreboard, and a scoreboard tells a late respondent that they are late.

5. Your turn to answer

This is the state you were invited for. The main column holds the theses of the current round, and for each one: the thesis, the scale, and a field for your reasoning — "Explain your reasoning:".

Answering, in practice

• The rating and the reasoning travel together. The placeholder says it plainly: "Why do you rate this way?" Some theses are open-ended and have no scale at all; some have two criteria (for example probability and desirability), and then you answer both — they are different questions about the same thesis.
• Some theses are not scales. Depending on the study you may be asked to rank options, choose one or several, place a point on a plane, distribute points, mark a time window ("Earliest" / "Latest", or "Will never happen"), or continue a time series. The pattern is the same in all of them: your position, then your reasoning.
• One at a time, or all at once. One at a time shows a single thesis with "Thesis {i}/{n}" and Previous / Next; Show all returns the full list. This is a reading preference, and it changes nothing else.
• Your work is kept while you write. A local draft is saved as you type and the form says "Draft saved on this device". If you leave and come back, "Unsaved draft found" offers Restore draft or Discard. The draft lives in your own browser, not in the study.
• Saving. Each thesis has Save; Save all ({n}/{total}) submits the ones you have completed. When every thesis has an answer, the view says "Thank you for your answers!"

What you do not see yet, and why. During the response phase the panel's content — the distribution, the average, other people's arguments — is not shown before you have answered. Not because it is secret, but because seeing it first changes what you write. A first answer that has already been anchored to the panel's average is worth less to the study than a first answer that is yours. The condition is per thesis, not per page: answer this thesis, see this thesis's distribution.

Studies can be stricter or looser about this. The round's visibility setting is one of Blind, After you answer, or Open, and the usual setting for a response phase is After you answer.

6. Answered, and the round is still open

Your answer is in. Two things are now true.

You can still change it. "You have answered all {total} theses. You can return to edit your answers during the round." — Edit answers reopens the form. Nothing is locked until the round closes — not even when the study moves into the dialogue phase: a thesis you did not get to answer can still be answered during the dialogue.

The theses you answered begin to show the panel. Under a thesis you have answered, the distribution appears: bars for the responses, a line for the mean, a dashed line for the median, a band for the interquartile range, and your own answer marked with ★ and an orange bar. Beside it, the numbers the panel uses — Md, SD, IQR, n.

If the panel includes AI panelists, the distribution says so: the AI share is drawn in a second colour and hatched, the legend names both groups — People ({n}) and AI panelists ({n}) — and n is given split, "{h} human, {a} AI". Colour alone is never the carrier of that fact, because colour alone fails for part of the panel.

7. Dialogue: the round where the panel talks to itself

The dialogue phase is what makes this a Delphi. "You now see other panelists' anonymous answers and arguments. Explore perspectives and consider if you want to refine your own answer."

Dialogue is open. Here the panel's content does not wait for your answer — during dialogue it is the thing being participated in, and a gate would shut out exactly the panelist who most needs to be let in. (A study can still choose a blind dialogue round; then the interface says so.)

Each thesis card is in one order, and the order is the argument:

1. the thesis
2. your own answer — so you read the others against what you actually said
3. the distribution — where the panel landed
4. the discussion, behind a link with the numbers in its name — "Discussion · {a} arguments · {c} comments"

The count is in the link on purpose: you can decide whether it is worth opening without opening it.

Inside the discussion

• OTHERS' REASONING is the arguments given with the ratings; comments are what the panel said about each other's arguments. They are different things, which is why the link counts them separately.
• Contributions from AI panelists carry the AI marker — the same fact as the hatched share in the chart, from the same field.
• If the study uses role play, the writer's role is shown next to the handle. A role a human wrote is marked self-selected, and a role the facilitator commissioned from an AI AI role. You write your own role and place it in a box on your own page, on the Role play card.
• On your own reasoning you do not reply but clarify: the button reads Add a clarification. Others see the clarification under your reasoning, marked own clarification, but it is not counted as dialogue – dialogue is what panelists say about each other's reasoning.
• You can Reply, and react with Insightful, Agree or Challenge. A comment that another panelist has replied to is locked from editing: "Locked — the comment has replies". Editing it would silently rewrite what someone else answered. Refining your own comment yourself does not lock it. If your position changes after the lock, you say so in a new comment — then the change shows as dialogue, not as history edited after the fact.
• Translate renders a contribution in your language when translation is enabled for the panel; Show original puts it back.

Changing your mind is the point. If the round allows revision, you edit your answer and say what moved you — the field asks "Why did you change your mind? (What argument or information influenced you?)" — and you can classify the change: More agreement, More disagreement, Nuance / clarification, Reframing. Then Save revision.

Not changing your mind is equally a result. A held position with a reason that has survived the counter-arguments is stronger evidence than a position nobody challenged.

8. Between rounds — the richest screen in the study

When a round closes, the screen does not say "please wait". It says Round {n} has closed, and then it shows what the round produced:

"Below is where the panel landed this round: distributions, other people's reasoning, and what was left open. This is the round's interim result — not a waiting screen."

This is the moment the whole method is built around, and it is easy to waste. The round's result is in front of you with no obligation attached: nothing to fill in, nothing due. Whatever view you bring into the next round is formed here.

If the next round has been scheduled you are told when — "Round {n} opens on {date}" — and if it has not: "The next round has not been scheduled yet." The interim result does not depend on the schedule; time is an addition, not a condition.

In a Barometer study this is where a wave ends and the next begins; the interim result is the result, and there is no final screen.

9. When the study ends

"The study has ended" — all rounds are closed. The final distributions, the panel material, the discussion and your own path through it stay readable. If you revised your answers along the way, the interface says how often: "You made {count} revisions to your answers based on the dialogue."

What happens after this is outside the panel: interpretation — theming, scenarios, argument and discourse analysis — is done in the analysis ecosystem, and the results reach you as a message rather than as a new screen. Pronoia describes; it does not interpret.

10. More services: the index

More services is an index, not a drawer. It opens a list with one row per service: an icon, a name, one line about what it is, and a mark on the right.

Four things about this list are deliberate:

1. A row only exists if the service exists. Group comparison appears when the study has comparison axes; the signals channel appears when the study collects signals. A row that opens onto nothing is worse than no row.
2. The mark is a fact, not a nudge. An unread message is highlighted because it is waiting for you. Everything else is a count, and an empty service says nothing yet rather than pretending to be full.
3. One service at a time, and one step back — Back to services. Your work stays open behind it: "Pick a service — your work stays open behind this."
4. The privacy and AI notice is always reachable. It is not a service that has to earn its place by being interesting.

Two of these have a note worth reading.

Panel pulse draws one track per measure: a light band for mean ± standard deviation, a mark for the mean coloured by where it sits on the scale (the colour shows position, not whether the result is good), the group means as dots when the study has groups, and the ends of the scale underneath. Consensus is not drawn as geometry anywhere: a consensus figure is a classification that needs a calibrated threshold, and that classification belongs to the analysis, not to a bar.

Group comparison is hidden when the groups are too small: "there are not enough reportable sub-groups of at least 3 people. Results are shown at whole-panel level only." Small groups identify people. The suppression is the promise working, not a fault.

11. Two ways the same journey is named

A study chooses one of two vocabularies, and the switch reads View: with Story and Plain:

This is naming, not structure. The states, the rules and the surfaces are identical in both; a panel that would find the Delphic imagery strange gets plain words. In the Story view, tapping a station explains what that stage means — "Tap a station — I'll tell you what it means".

Wherever you are, You are here marks the current station, and Round {n} / {total} says how far along the panel is.

12. If the study is real-time

In a Real-Time Delphi there is one round, and answering and dialogue are open at once in it from the start. The orientation conversation (§3) may be part of it too. "Other panelists' answers appear continuously. You can change your answer at any time."

The rule from §5 still does the work, thesis by thesis: a thesis shows you the panel as soon as you have answered that thesis. Updates arrive live where the connection allows, and the interface says which mode it is in rather than pretending — "Updated just now", and a tooltip that distinguishes a live connection from fallback polling.

There is no "between rounds" screen in a real-time study, because there is no between. In a Barometer Delphi, by contrast, the same theses are returned to one measurement wave at a time: the gap between rounds is the gap between waves, and a thesis may go out of use or be replaced by a new one during it.

13. Your answers, your data

• Anonymity toward the panel is structural, not a setting you have to find. Other panelists see a code.
• Leaving is possible without erasing the discussion. You ask the study's contact person, and they carry it out — the promise is kept by someone who is able to keep it. Withdrawal deletes your name, email address and personal link permanently; the answers you have already given stay in the material under the pseudonym, because other panelists have read and argued with them. That asymmetry is deliberate, and it is stated here rather than discovered afterwards.
• A closed round stays closed. Answers to it are not edited afterwards — a response rate that has already been shown, and the comparison between rounds, would otherwise change quietly underneath the study.
• The privacy and AI notice is the authority on how your data is handled in this particular study, and it is one click away from every screen.

14. For the facilitator: what is worth saying out loud

Three things panelists ask, that the interface answers but the invitation letter usually does not:

1. "Do I have to finish in one sitting?" No. Drafts survive, answers can be edited while the round is open, and the study waits.
2. "Why can't I see the results yet?" Because you have not answered yet — and the moment you answer that thesis, its distribution opens. It is a rule about anchoring, not about access.
3. "What happens to what I wrote?" It is read by the panel under a pseudonym during dialogue, and by the analysis afterwards. The reasoning is the material; the number is the index to it.

Written 26.8.2026, against the interfaces as rebuilt on 23.–25.8.2026. Button and tab names are taken from the application's own English strings, and a guard test (scripts/test_guides_coverage.py) fails if this guide names a control differently from the program. The specification behind this text is docs/UI_Panelistin_nakyma_IA_v2.md; where it and this guide disagree, it is right and this is stale.