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When Should I Visit? - A 24 hour hack I made, what do you think?

whenshouldivisit.iamdanw.com

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Re: When Should I Visit? - A 24 hour hack I made, what do you think?

#31

Post by danw »

paulitex wrote: post #27

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.

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.

Re: When Should I Visit? - A 24 hour hack I made, what do you think?

#32

Post by danw »

davnola wrote: post #29

Sir John Soane's museum. Quietest on Monday, because it's closed on Monday :) Spotted that immediately, but smart work anyway.

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

Re: When Should I Visit? - A 24 hour hack I made, what do you think?

#33

Post by danw »

rodh257 wrote: post #7

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

Yes it could be expanded. Because the Foursquare api doesn't provide historical data it takes a few weeks of monitoring the venue before I have useful data for it however

Re: When Should I Visit? - A 24 hour hack I made, what do you think?

#35

Post by danw »

ddkrone wrote: post #22

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.

Wednesdays used to be quietest for cinemas in the UK but now it's one of the busiest thanks to the Orange 241 offer that's been running the past few years

Re: When Should I Visit? - A 24 hour hack I made, what do you think?

#36

Post by danw »

darkxanthos wrote: post #15

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.

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

Re: When Should I Visit? - A 24 hour hack I made, what do you think?

#37

Post by davnola »

danw wrote: post #32
davnola wrote: post #29

Sir John Soane's museum. Quietest on Monday, because it's closed on Monday :) Spotted that immediately, but smart work anyway.

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

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.

Re: When Should I Visit? - A 24 hour hack I made, what do you think?

#38

Post by 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!

Re: When Should I Visit? - A 24 hour hack I made, what do you think?

#39

Post by niekmaas »

ddkrone wrote: post #22

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.

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

Re: When Should I Visit? - A 24 hour hack I made, what do you think?

#40

Post by 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.... or http://www.vectorstock.com/composite/49471/statistics-graph-...

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.

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