Opening times

Press 'Use favourites' to see the interestingness

This demo is by no means perfect (there are numerous JavaScript niggles that I couldn't account for so it doesn't quite have the finesse of an iOS app) but it does showcase a useful, focussed, and mobile-friendly approach to displaying opening times for multiple places.

What you see here could easily be scaled up to larger screens. The visual approach doesn't require too much thought and with more screen to play with, additional relevant information could be made to fit.

Before the list view, the opening times section allows people to view National Trust places from three options: using any existing favourites stored; using custom places (picked from the A-Z list); using places near their existing location. All these options then display a list of places relevant to the visitor looking to enjoy a place to visit for a day.

The method works down from day, to time, to places. Each place can be clearly seen, just like other sections of the handbook app that display places. Scrolling the view left and right and up and down allows people to view multiple places' opening times so as to see an optimum 'window' for visiting both a single place and many, on the same day.

The logic of display is as follows: the day's window (in this demo) is 8am to 8pm. Most places fall within this timeframe. However, if the results of the places' opening times for that particular day all start later, for instance at 10am, and finish earlier, say at 5pm, then we need not show any extraneous time either side of those hours -- the day's window should be condensed. The customer doesn't lose out as nothing is lost and we're able to lessen the mental overhead required when presented with visual dead space. Handy, considering the size of the iPhone's screen.

The logic of defining a place's opening and closing time is as follows: take the earliest opening time and latest closing time for that particular day and create the 'master block' that straddles that place's opening period within the day's timeframe. Places that have staggered opening times are labelled, urging the potential visitor to press for more detail. Pressing this expands the place's list area to show, most likely, the staggered opening times for that place's features. Those places that have one opening time, or are closed all day (or partly, due to surrounding places opening for longer periods), are marked clearly with 'open' and 'closed' respectively.

The approach is one of simplicity and usefulness. Simple, because considering the screen space available, complex information has been well structured to fit that constraint. Moving the virtual pane and discovering what places are open on a particular day at a particular time is really quite easy. It's usefulness is its selling point -- you can compare nearby (or even distant) places' opening times at the same time, making it much easier to plan a day out.