Google "comparison chart" and see how <a href="http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://printgreener.com/... facets</a> can inform a viewer in a simple way.
2. I agree with the parent about the color coding. It might be more clear if you use a red-green spectrum for each day (e.g. red for the evening, when things might be more busy, and green for the morning, when things might be less busy).
Here's my suggestion: ditch the black borders on the columns and add very subtle shadows.
I really dig the idea, by the way.
Spotted that immediately, but smart work anyway.
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.
I wouldn't be surprised to find that foursquare check-in's is a very poor proxy for this kind of venue. For bars/clubs and coffee shops maybe, but you're measuring with the wrong stick. Having said that, it does seem to confirm common sense (that most places are busiest on the weekends and mid-week is quiet).
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
referenced stylesheet "all.css" returns 404
The raphael code could do with cleaning up too
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?"
e.g. http://whenshouldivisit.iamdanw.com/venues/2661544
Is this just one person each day?
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.
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.
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.
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/).
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.
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!
