

When Should I Visit? - A 24 hour hack I made, what do you think? - danw
http://whenshouldivisit.iamdanw.com/

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zck
This is pretty cool. If I were in London, I'd use it.

You could integrate Google Maps to show you the least busy places in a certain
part of London, so it could be used for "I've got an afternoon to kill. I'm
over here; where can I go?"

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rrival
Cool idea - is the % of foursquare users in a sample population consistent?
What if Tuesday is "bus in the foreigners/elderly?" - valuable info
regardless, but I'd be curious to know how that holds up.

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davnola
Sir John Soane's museum. Quietest on Monday, because it's closed on Monday :)

Spotted that immediately, but smart work anyway.

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danw
Whoops. I should integrate with <http://opening-times.co.uk/> perhaps.
Although places like the fantastic Soane and Geffrye seem to get very few
Foursquare checkins even at the busiest of times

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davnola
Well caveat visitor and all that!

opening-times.co.uk doesn't looks like it carries museum opening hours.
Actually a semweb data source of visitor attractions and their opening hours
would be a very valuable resource. I don't think one exists.

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rodh257
Any reason why this couldn't be expanded to a vast range of places, seeing as
it reads the same Foursquare API?

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citricsquid
Yeah, make it a smart phone app, charge $2.99 for it and include everywhere
that foursquare supports, money to be made! Although maybe foursquare could
just release a similar feature.

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sahillavingia
OP: Please don't let "_____ could just release a similar feature" stop you.

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user24
A bit odd UI-wise that the largest column is the least desirable.

At least that's assuming that you'll want to visit at quiet periods. If you
expanded to include pubs and clubs, popularity might be more desirable.

Perhaps change the graphs instead of being block colour to have a texture of
little people - eg something like
[http://static2.bigstockphoto.com/thumbs/9/8/7/large2/789645....](http://static2.bigstockphoto.com/thumbs/9/8/7/large2/789645.jpg)
or [http://www.vectorstock.com/composite/49471/statistics-
graph-...](http://www.vectorstock.com/composite/49471/statistics-graph-
vector.jpg)

edit: also, why can't I search or see a full list of all places?

edit: Also for SEO you should change the URL to something keyword-packed like
whenshouldivisit.iamdanw.com/when-is-british-museum-busy and offer alias short
links like whenshouldivisit.iamdanw.com/british-museum, etc.

~~~
sambeau
Glass-half-empty vs graph-half-full problems abound in UX and the answer is
always to use the one that tells the least lies. So in this case the graphs
should represent people - how can you represent emptiness?

I would like to see actual people on the graph (not one person scaling) as
this will show you exactly how busy each place is - and, if you know how big a
place is you can estimate how full it will feel.

~~~
user24
> actual people on the graph (not one person scaling)

yeah I couldn't find an image which showed exactly what I meant, but yes, that
is what I had in mind.

Although you seem to be suggesting that you should be able to get a literal
exact count of the people. I think that that won't be possible or useful
because the data is aggregated over several timepoints. I guess "on mondays,
approx 10 people visit" might be useful, but I see this graph as more of a
general indicator of how busy a place generally is.

Using a repeating image of little stick people will hint to users that the
bars represent visitor volume.

~~~
JonnieCache
_> Using a repeating image of little stick people will hint to users that the
bars represent visitor volume._

This is a very good idea. Unfortunately his bars are vectors drawn with SVG, I
don't think it allows background images.

Another, perhaps not as clear suggestion would be to simply add a "Smaller
bars mean less busy" message under the graph, like you see on performance
benchmarks.

~~~
danw
I could draw the stick people in SVG

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sambeau
It would be great to see some real numbers on these graphs as there is a
danger that some days are being reported as really busy when the n is really
low.

e.g. <http://whenshouldivisit.iamdanw.com/venues/2661544>

Is this just one person each day?

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stretchwithme
Brilliant.

Another reason software is a bottomless pit of opportunity. There are so many
things that can be optimized if only the data can be put into the right hands
in a usable form such as you've done here.

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paulitex
Looks great, definitely a value-add yet very minimal. I sent my friends in
London to it, could see it going a bit viral.

I found venue navigation very confusing. When clicking on the underlined 'tate
modern' (top left) I expected to be given a choice of other venues. How do I
see a list of venues? I can only discover them via the 'top lists' and
'Random'?

Well done.

~~~
danw
Thanks. I certainly need to add some kind of index/homepage that lists all the
venues. The current 'venue roulette' navigation isn't exactly the best
approach.

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gtb
Good idea. One suggestion: vary the colors of the columns. Green for quiet
days, red for busy days.

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shib71
The size of the columns already indicates that. I think varying the colors as
well would be confusing.

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r00fus
Disagree. It's the whole point of the page, so it isn't excessively redundant
if you say it more than one way... I'd just put a single column that's a
different color (ie, green) for the best day, maybe with an embedded checkmark
or some other indicator for the color blind.

Google "comparison chart" and see how <a
href="[http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://printgreener.com/...](http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://printgreener.com/old_site/images/common/comparison_chart.jpg&imgrefurl=http://printgreener.com/old_site/support.html&usg=__SPE-
np5LHnYBFO2R0CfcEBp8oOo=&h=750&w=500&sz=81&hl=en&start=0&sig2=y7Ls8rEq73YUswcFJnnPAQ&zoom=1&tbnid=UBlMhuLfQeG-
oM:&tbnh=126&tbnw=84&ei=2GxPTdDWNJD2swPsueilCg&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcomparison%2Bchart%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dsafari%26sa%3DX%26rls%3Den%26biw%3D1225%26bih%3D668%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=527&oei=2GxPTdDWNJD2swPsueilCg&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=27&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0&tx=71&ty=40>multiple)
facets</a> can inform a viewer in a simple way.

~~~
benjoffe
I don't think the checkmark for colour blind is needed (the colours are
supplementary, not essential).

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pkamb
Usability Issues:

When I first went to the page, "Tate Modern" is the H1. The 'logo' at the top
says "When should I visit Tate Modern?". That's great... except I have no idea
what 'Tate Modern' is. Needs better separation of your general site/'pitch'
from each individual attraction. Your homepage is currently taken over by some
random museum, when I really want to search for the British Museum or
whatever, and that's driving me away.

Similarly, that 'logo' link at the top has the attraction underlined. That
makes me think it individually is a link, to the museum website, wikipedia
page on it, etc. Instead, when I mouse over it the entire sentence turns in to
a link back to your app's homepage... when I really wanted an outside link to
the thing that was underlined. Don't inject the current page title into that
logo, unless you're actually linking to it's official page or wikipedia or
etc.

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tobych
Nice one. This will help me avoid the sort of people who use Foursquare, or
who like playing with their mobile devices while in art galleries. And, I'll
assume, will help ensure I have plenty of opportunity to meet others like me.

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JacobIrwin
Good call on using foursquare to do the work. I'm not sure if you can use this
source to include the best times of the year also, but this would be ideal.
When people ask themselves (or others) "when should I visit?" they are often
referring to "what time of the year should I visit?"

For a 24 hour job, I'm wowed. I can see a lot of expansion potential, notably
in adding location (by country, state, city) and categories (i.e. breaking it
down by museums, theaters, parks, etc.).

Consider making the graphs into a widget for local tourist, hotel, and city
pages.

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sdfx
Great project. Is it possible to include the best time of the day to visit,
e.g. "quiet on Wednesday mornings"? Also: Do you adjust for longer opening
times? Maybe some venues close sooner on some days.

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seancron
Very nice job. I don't have a use for it since I'm not in London, but I like
your implementation and design. A comparison feature would be nice, so if
you're uncertain where you want to go one day, you can compare activity.

You might also want to take a look into incorporating Spotrank data
(<http://www.skyhookwireless.com/spotrank/examples.php>).

SimpleGeo is one way to do that (<http://simplegeo.com/>).

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prawn
Could license use of the graphs/data (iframe?) to travel sites.

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jeffcody
Very nice!

Another cool feature would be a temporal zoom - let me see that data
juxtaposed over different months or weeks (I imagine it likely that the
busy/free days vary depending on the season); conversely, it would be useful
to be able to zoom in to the hour for specific days (best hours to visit
today). That would help either plan vacation visit agendas, or determine an
intra-day itinerary.

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kunley
Funny metaphore with "antisocial" software ;-))

Shouldn't you switch the columns with museums list to see which one is least
busy first? This will be more consistent with your supposed goal and will
correspond with the fact that you say which museum is quieter first above
(just below the bars).

Cool project!

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stavrianos
looks sweet! a comment: before spotting the caption, it isn't obvious if the
graph shows business or desirability.

~~~
thascales
This is something colour-coding could help with. Red meaning busy, some
gentler colour meaning quiet.

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spektom
Thank you for the 'how this works' section, which is 'must have' for projects
posted here!

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JonnieCache
Very nice. For extra whizzyness you should ajaxify it so you can use raphael's
lovely animation in place of page transitions, like
<http://populationpyramid.net/>

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ibejoeb
I made something somewhat similar a few years back because I thought it was
something that I would use. I did not follow through, but I'm glad you did. I
think there's a lot to be done with this. Good luck!

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darkxanthos
It's always interesting introducing a feedback loop into a complex adaptive
system. I wonder how close to an even distribution this would make attendance
if it became hugely popular.

~~~
danw
I wouldn't expect much difference. Weekends tend to be busiest as most folks
work weekdays for example

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switch007
I thought this was going to be a travel website that gave you the best time of
year weather wise to visit a particular city. Your idea is cool anyhow :)

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toughaspixels
Its a really cool idea, if / when you expand I hope that make finding places
to visit easier by tagging or something else. I recommend image tagging.

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sfrench
I did a very similar hack for local gyms, but I keep it granular down to the
individual checkin so I can do rollups on each hour over the week.

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prawn
Did you get many users? Still running it? Sounds interesting.

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wybo
The links to attractions on the whenshouldivisit site should be made blue
(and/or underlined), otherwise many people will not find them... :)

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mcdowall
Seems to be down for me...

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mopoke
Similarly, although it looks like a DNS issue. I managed to get to it by
adding this to my hosts file:

50.16.215.196 whenshouldivisit.iamdanw.com

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grandschema
very nice clean use of raphael.

referenced stylesheet "all.css" returns 404

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danw
Thanks for the heads up, I've fixed the all.css 404.

The raphael code could do with cleaning up too

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dpio
This is a cool idea.

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colinhowe
Awesome :)

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ddkrone
I like your idea but what are you going to do when a lot of people start
visiting on the least busy days turning them into busy days? I know from
personal experience that Wednesday afternoons between 1-4pm are usually the
quietest times in movie theatres and other venues that tend to be packed on
weekends so by putting this information in people's hands you're messing with
my zen dude.

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niekmaas
But since this system only incorporates data from the past few weeks the shift
towards quite days will be detected pretty fast and thus these days will start
to be visible as busy. It will balance itself out I think

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notahacker
Since only a small percentage of the UK population use Foursquare I'd be more
inclined to be concerned it might head in the opposite direction (i.e.
relatively small numbers of people using this site to identify quiet days to
visit are _substantially_ more likely to check in - resulting in more noise
than signal)

