[HN Gopher] A better way to display museum hours (2017)
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A better way to display museum hours (2017)
Author : artpi
Score : 116 points
Date : 2022-01-21 12:05 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jamesrobertwatson.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jamesrobertwatson.com)
| gpvos wrote:
| I once made a paper insert to stick with my library card on which
| I had drawn the weekly opening hours of the couple of library
| branches that I used at the time, all together on one chart, each
| library hatched or shaded differently.
| suyash wrote:
| inspiring work and thoughts, favorite was the 6 suit deck of
| cards :)
| dlkf wrote:
| Mostly good advice, particularly regarding the use of visuals.
| But this is flat-out wrong:
|
| > The TUE CLOSED is the most dominant element - the info that is
| least important and most negative is the focal point.
|
| This is among the _most_ important information. Travelling to a
| museum during - what are normally - peak operating hours only to
| learn that it is closed on that day of the week is a far worse UX
| than any possible formatting of operating hours.
| brokencode wrote:
| It only really needs to be so emphasized there because of the
| format of the other days, where multiple were grouped together.
| So you might misread that and think the museum is open.
|
| The author's suggestion of listing out every day individually
| makes it clear even with the closed day is less visually heavy,
| because the diagram is simply easier to read.
| dlkf wrote:
| I agree with everything you say, and I agree that the
| proposed revision in that section is a lot better than the
| original. I just disagree with the claim that the fact that
| they're closed on Tuesdays is unimportant. It's extremely
| important, and any good design should communicate this
| unambiguously.
| dang wrote:
| This is fun, but it usually leads to better discussion if you
| pick the most interesting page from a list and post that instead.
| If you want to nominate one, we can change the URL at the top.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
|
| Edit: artpi suggested the museum hours page, so we've changed to
| that from https://www.jamesrobertwatson.com/.
| artpi wrote:
| Thank you dang for managing this community with such care!
| kingcharles wrote:
| And on a weekend morning when he should surely be doing
| something else with his time :)
| wglass wrote:
| The article on the round backgammon board is great.
| https://www.jamesrobertwatson.com/backgammon.html
|
| I like the story and photos from initial idea, to prototype, to
| contract, to production. He doesn't really dig into why it
| didn't sell well. But it's a good story.
| djbusby wrote:
| Oh, I made a copy of that board (using cardboard, then SVG)
| to play, cause I like Backgammon. The circle shape gives a
| better view, IMO, for strategy.
| dang wrote:
| It also looks great and someone (you?) should submit it in
| the future. Email hn@ycombinator.com if you do and we'll put
| it in the second-chance pool
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/pool, explained at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308), so it will
| get a random placement on HN's front page. But it would be
| best to wait at least a few weeks, maybe even a few months,
| to let the hivemind caches clear.
| factfindingisfn wrote:
| slater wrote:
| nonsense?
| rrauenza wrote:
| I keep trying to figure out a way to display time of use PG&E
| schedules... This seems like a good start!
| bena wrote:
| While I do agree that having each day have its own line is
| better. I'm not 100% sold on the variable length bars.
|
| Great, I can see the place is open later on Thursday (for
| example), but how does that information alone help me? It doesn't
| tell me the time or even in relation to the other days how much
| later it would be open, all I know is "later". Sure, if I knew my
| schedule prevented me from getting there before a certain time, I
| can begin by looking at the latest time, but it still doesn't
| tell me if the days with earlier closings would still be
| acceptable. So no matter what, I'm still checking all the days
| for closing times.
|
| Often the case is I know I have a certain day off, so I'd want to
| check the place's schedule for that day so I can plan around it.
|
| I'd also lead with Saturday/Sunday as the weekends are the days
| most people would likely have off.
| dlkf wrote:
| > So no matter what, I'm still checking all the days for
| closing times.
|
| The proposed format makes this process faster and easier. Once
| you have read the closing time of one day, you can immediately
| infer the closing time of all days of the same length.
| Gabriel_Martin wrote:
| fjd wrote:
| This reminds me of Edward Tufte's work on Information Design. His
| books and lectures go into all sorts of problems like this.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_design
| divbzero wrote:
| I like this, but couldn't this be simply "A better way to display
| open hours" in general? No need to limit it to museums.
| dlkf wrote:
| Why is this being downvoted? This is such a good point.
| extra88 wrote:
| The home page uses a frameset! That may be why he didn't notice
| the museum hours article has a messed up page title: <title>
| <meta name="description" content="A better way to display museum
| hours"> </title>
|
| As for the actual content, listing each day of the week instead
| of grouping days with the same hours is definitely an
| improvement. Using just a letter for the day of the week is
| harder for people less English-literate and translation software
| won't be able to do anything with it, unlike the "before"
| examples, especially the ones that use the full words instead of
| abbreviations. Museums often have a lot of international tourists
| visiting.
|
| The vertical format is much harder to make accessible to screen
| reader users but the article doesn't have any alt attributes on
| the images so he's not considering that. It's also harder for
| Google and other tools to parse to present accurate answers when
| people search for "museum name hours."
|
| Having the hours in bars with lengths that vary based on how long
| they're open and the bar's position being based on opening time
| might be a useful enhancement to displaying the opening/close
| hours.
| croisillon wrote:
| a lot of shops in Lithuania have a small diagram on their door to
| explain their opening hours, usually with a design related to the
| product they sell
| artpi wrote:
| James Robert Watson has some other amazing inventions on his
| site:
|
| - Accessories for medical arm slings:
| https://www.jamesrobertwatson.com/slingaccessories.html
|
| - How to make elevators more user-friendly
| https://www.jamesrobertwatson.com/elevatorbuttons.html
|
| - Better layouts for queue lines
| https://www.jamesrobertwatson.com/quelines.html
|
| - Better rest area signage
| https://www.jamesrobertwatson.com/restareasigns.html
|
| - Better table numbers
| https://www.jamesrobertwatson.com/tablenumbers.html
|
| - Travelpants https://www.jamesrobertwatson.com/travelpants.html
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(page generated 2022-01-22 23:01 UTC)