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"Find a trip in..."?????
Posted: 21 Dec 09 6:25 PM
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I am new here, and I know this is a bit minor to most people and users. I was exploring your website and looking things over when I tried your "Find a trip in..." box. But, living in Washington (STATE NOT D.C.) it's more than a bit confusing to try and find a trip near home (or even in the same state!). Yes, I understand that these are the only two with this problem. Just my two cents worth though!  |
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kevin77
Posts: 1237
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Re: "Find a trip in..."?????
Posted: 21 Dec 09 8:27 PM
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The trip search page allows you to enter just about anything you'd enter into a search box on Google.com. You can enter a number of different search terms, including activities, place names, addresses, latitude/longitude coordinates, and more. For example, 'hiking south mountain, az', 'zion national park', '10 market st, san francisco', or '33, -112'. The "Find a trip in..." is just a quick link to the more popular trips in those states.
Hopefully with that you can find something close by and of interest. We appreciate the feedback and any suggestions you might have. |
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Re: "Find a trip in..."?????
Posted: 16 Apr 10 4:57 AM
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I was going to post about this in a new thread but it seems appropriate to this one.
I have noticed the "Trip search" doesn't really return anything logical for any query I have tried.
For example:
Selecting "Other" from "Find a trip in...", ticking the "Hiking" check box and entering "Australia" in the search box only seems to return a bunch of MOUNTAIN BIKING trips (I checked them, they were correctly allocated to Mountain Biking, and Mountain Biking check box was off. There were 2 or 3 Hiking results buried in the resultset)
Selecting "Hiking" check box, and searching for "Australia Hiking" returns only an American users walks called "HikingWithMyBrother" (No reference to Australia that I could see)
Lastly, selecting "Hiking" and searching for "Victoria" (Australian state) returns 3 results, one Mountain Biking and 2 with Victoria in the name (Those two are probably good results)
Probably the main issue is the activities on the search page (Running, Road Biking, Mountain Biking, Hiking, Other) don't seem to match the 40 activities you can assign to a trip (Which is another oddity, what is the difference between Backpacking and Hiking? Surely they are synonyms? And Walking?) |
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kevin77
Posts: 1237
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Re: "Find a trip in..."?????
Posted: 16 Apr 10 5:28 AM
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Thanks for the feedback. We are currently working on the trip search and will be sure to test out your queries. Unfortunately, we don't have too many international trips. We have a total of 464 shared trips that are marked as being in Australia, most of which are running or biking. I find only 9 marked as hiking or backpacking, 7 of which are yours  The other two are:
www.trimbleoutdoors.com/ViewTrip/680389
www.trimbleoutdoors.com/ViewTrip/539931 |
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Re: "Find a trip in..."?????
Posted: 16 Apr 10 5:33 AM
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Right-o! I shall endeavor to add more hikes to your database to make testing easier
Thanks for the reply |
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Logan Swapp
Posts: 237
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Re: "Find a trip in..."?????
Posted: 16 Apr 10 5:11 PM
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Hi Fashtas,
As to the mountain biking trips showing up, we decided to include those in hiking results because virtually all mountain bike trails can also be hiked. This helps in situations like this one where we have very little data that's actually marked as hiking.
Also, the filter categories on the search page are aggregates of a number of different activities selectable on a trip. For example, the hiking filter does include backpacking trips as well. |
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Re: "Find a trip in..."?????
Posted: 16 Apr 10 7:32 PM
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I understand this logic now that I know the limited data available for Australia, but from a user point of view the results look odd (A is turned off yet I get results for A).
Should the user decide to expand their search to Bike trails it is easy to do on their own (just click the Mountain Bike Box)
The second choice of aggregating the activities could also cause issues, since the user is unaware of what is aggregated (For example I was unaware HIKING was in fact Hiking, Backpacking and Mountain Biking.... is it also Walking? Geocaching? Trail Running?)
When searching for a day walk for example, things like Mountain Biking may be worthless results due to the distance and choice of path
It isn't a huge issue, just confused me a little
(EDIT: bad idea) You could probably do away with those activity check boxes entirely and just use the text search entries for your search. I think virtually everyone is used to Google and typing stuff like "Hiking tracks in the Lower Bolva" or "Places I can run in Albuquerque" or just "France" (for all activities in a place)
EDIT: I realised the flaw in the idea above as soon as I stepped away form the computer
New idea, leave the search screen as is and just add a tooltip/screen display text somewhere that describes the check boxes.
For example: Hiking (?) (Returns results from Hiking, Backpacking, Mountain Biking, Canoeing, Skydiving and Rock Hopping activities. Ideal for finding walking tracks in an area) |
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Bob Wold
Posts: 890
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