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Comment by user24 | Hacker News Reader

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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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.

> 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.

>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.

I could draw the stick people in SVG

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