VenueActivity

UX‎ > ‎

COLOR KEY: Joe LaPenna, Chris Brummel

7/17/09

Biggest change is the Venue page. Took out the checkin info and threw it in a dialog box. Added the tips to the first page. I thought that this was the most interesting data about a venue. Unlike the iPhone, I added the actions in a single line instead of on their own screen. At the bottom of the list will be a "Add Tip" button.

Do you think the front tab should vary by referrer? That is, if a user comes to the venue display from the UserActivity, display tips because they have already likely come from a place that shows who checked in where and if a user comes from the search venues activity, it displays checkins? I kind of felt that checkins as the default was the right approach, but getting user's tips on display immediately is pretty useful too.

Here was my thinking: you can only see your checkins of your friends who are using this for any particular venue, and as it stands, I use the "Friends" page to get that type of information. For almost any venue I'd visit, I would get a blank list of results for "Recent Checkins" at a venue or just my name over and over. I might be a rare use case, but I don't have a regular hangout. Tips would also likely be blank for most venues, but you could entice a user to change that.

Regarding varying the layout of the front tab, I don't think that it would be the best for usability. I'm fine with picking 1 of our two options (recent checkins or tips) and sticking to it.

Another important point about this screen is the "Checkin here" button. I thought this was the best compromise between maximum information on the screen without taking up space with a button. It sits on 1 line across from a field that will very unlikely ever come close to collision with the button. My thoughts were that this is the single most important action in the application. Being redundant (in the "Menu" tabs and next to the business' header) is good for usability in this case.

I totally agree about redundancy and the importance of this widget. I was talking about it to a co-worker, and they suggested that the on-screen button automatically check you in, where-as the menu option would take you to this dialog and would be labeled as "shout!"

This could be interesting. I probably should change the language to something along the lines of "Auto-Checkin" in that case. If the language was the same for both buttons, but had different functions, that'd be pretty bad.
Funny that this issue is coming up on the mailing list! I changed the button text to read "Quick Checkin," but don't know yet if we should change the menu option to "Checkin" instead of "Shout."

7/22/09

NOTE: We should change the Map tab to the map icon instead of the compass icon to be consisted with the other uses. Done.

I changed the language of the "Tip" button to "Make A Tip" on the main venue page, because the next screen would have a "Add Tip" button. Making someone click the same button on 2 screens with 2 different actions is a bad idea.