This is pretty cool. If I were in London, I'd use it.<p>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?"
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.
A bit odd UI-wise that the largest column is the least desirable.<p>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.<p>Perhaps change the graphs instead of being block colour to have a texture of little people - eg something like <a href="http://static2.bigstockphoto.com/thumbs/9/8/7/large2/789645.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://static2.bigstockphoto.com/thumbs/9/8/7/large2/789645....</a> or <a href="http://www.vectorstock.com/composite/49471/statistics-graph-vector.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.vectorstock.com/composite/49471/statistics-graph-...</a><p>edit: also, why can't I search or see a full list of all places?<p>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.
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.<p>e.g. <a href="http://whenshouldivisit.iamdanw.com/venues/2661544" rel="nofollow">http://whenshouldivisit.iamdanw.com/venues/2661544</a><p>Is this just one person each day?
Brilliant.<p>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.
Looks great, definitely a value-add yet very minimal. I sent my friends in London to it, could see it going a bit viral.<p>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'?<p>Well done.
Usability Issues:<p>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.<p>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.
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.
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?"<p>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.).<p>Consider making the graphs into a widget for local tourist, hotel, and city pages.
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.
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.<p>You might also want to take a look into incorporating Spotrank data (<a href="http://www.skyhookwireless.com/spotrank/examples.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.skyhookwireless.com/spotrank/examples.php</a>).<p>SimpleGeo is one way to do that (<a href="http://simplegeo.com/" rel="nofollow">http://simplegeo.com/</a>).
Very nice!<p>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.
Funny metaphore with "antisocial" software ;-))<p>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).<p>Cool project!
Very nice. For extra whizzyness you should ajaxify it so you can use raphael's lovely animation in place of page transitions, like <a href="http://populationpyramid.net/" rel="nofollow">http://populationpyramid.net/</a>
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!
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 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 :)
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.