Spike: Getting location data into the tool

[wrynearson]

What is the best way(s) to get location information into the tool? Some options include:

• Point click for adding location data #10
• Drag and Drop .csv
• Link Google Sheet
• Link Airtable
• Link X
• Add participant by location search #21
• Something else?

Giving users options is probably best in the long term, but increases complexity and development time in the short term. To get this up and running as soon as possible, we should choose one or two to start with.

Here's an unvalidated user-centric framing:

User	Assumption(s)	Best option	Other options
HR person	Not very technical, doesn't have coordinates of colleagues	Geosearch (for small teams)	Point click (for small teams), link X (for larger teams)
Hacker News viewer	Technical, short attention span, wants something "clean"	Point click	Geosearch
Conference organizer	Lots of data, structured somehow	Link X	Drag and drop .csv

I'd vote that we prioritize point clicking (for quick analysis and interactivity) and geosearch (for slightly less quick analysis and interactivity) and then add other import/integration options later, but I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[kamicut]

@wrynearson linking a spreadsheet or uploading a CSV can also quickly get the user information (name, team, info) into the tool in one go. By point & click do you also mean "form for entering user data and location" for each person?

[wrynearson]

Good point @kamicut. I was thinking that click or search would be "instant" gratification. Linking or uploading requires a user to create the content in the format we request, then link/upload.

For point & click, I was thinking just clicking on the map X times would give X points, and after 2, we could start the calculation/viz

[nerik]

Thanks @wrynearson for summarizing the options. I think you make a great point that point clicking is the best way for the curious visitor to get a sense of what the tool does. Let's prioritize that. It could look like this:

• A map where users can drop markers, maybe just on top of the planner itself
• Option to add names to markers, but otherwise team member 1 will just work
• (optional) A little location search box
• Option to remove markers
• Whenever that markers list is updated, the planner results must be updated

IMHO geosearch (by that I assume you mean geocoding a country/city or a full address into lat/lon coordinates), is something that comes on top of all other data sources: ideally, for all the data sources types, you'd look at lat/lon columns, and if they are missing, you'd try to geocode based on country/city/address columns automatically.

I think we can work on the point click and linking X in parallel, and after one of those is completed tackle the geocoding issue.

Any of those things you'd see yourself working on @kamicut ?