Park Locator is a mapping tool for Raleigh parks that allows you to find the closest park to your home, search for parks by amenity, get directions to a park, and explore program offerings at the parks.
Currently, you have to scroll down the list and remember which activities you have selected and which ones you haven't. There should be a portion on top of all the selected ones (like in park locator v1).
I've been having this issue for some time (it happened every time that I demo-ed the app to people) but I thought the app was just loading slowly and the data would take some time to come in. Today I finally understood what was happening. We are getting cross-origin errors when trying to access these REST services over cellular connection. This does not happen over wi-fi on the oaktree network or any other network outside of work. It happens on my AT&T LTE connection and I'm not sure if it's only with my carrier or any other cellular connection. Below is a screenshot of the console errors on web inspector.
Currently, activity labels are only visible when hovered on which may cause new users to wonder what every icon means at first.
A better approach would be to always display the labels as a card footer.
One's choice of "standard" is somewhat arbitrary when it comes to UI icons. Some icons (such as the plus and minus symbols used for zooming) are nearly universally used, while others are not. However, when choosing an icon for a purpose, choosing something different than (or conflicting with) a choice made by preexisting and more popular solutions can result in a frustratingly confusing challenge to new users.
In the case of maps.raleighnc.gov/parklocator, here are some examples I found confusing to the point of needing to reload the interface in order to accomplish the particular navigation I was trying to perform:
The white double chevron on the pink circle background, used in the lower right corner to indicate scrollable content. This is located in nearly the same position as the double chevron used by Google Maps, but for a different purpose. The need to indicate content existing offscreen (because the interface doesn't make it obvious otherwise) might indicate something that could be improved about the UI design itself.
I found the pink "Back To The Main Map" left arrow used to collapse the "About This Park" and "Things To Do" panel at the bottom confusing as well. It's in almost the same spot as the Mapquest arrow used for collapsing/expanding their left hand panel, and in a similar spot to the arrow tab that Google Maps uses to collapse/expand their left-hand driving directions panel. However, in the Raleigh GIS map, it serves a very different (but related) function of collapsing/hiding the bottom panel. I was actually trying to do just this for quite a while, but unable to figure out how to do it, since I assumed that left-hand arrow was there to collapse/expand the left panel. Furthermore, once clicked, the arrow doesn't move with the panel, it disappears. Thus, once the bottom panel is collapsed/hidden, it's moderately tricky to figure out how to get it back again, especially if one wants to get the same information that was already being displayed, but doesn't know which icon corresponds to the park on the main map.
The bottom panel itself seems like a rather annoying "attention seeker". Clicking on any map icon opens it up, where it fills a large amount of the UI and makes the map area much smaller and more difficult to navigate. Consider how this functions differently from how Google Maps works, or most of the other major map sites. On those sites, the main map interface is rarely resized/hidden, except when performing a significant shift in content (from overhead to street view, for example). In that case, getting back to the main map interface is made possible using fairly standard icons/UI elements in predictable locations. This seems like a case of trying to do "everything" in one interface, whereas maybe it makes sense to use the left panel for location information (like the other map sites do), and offer driving directions overlaid on the main map interface, or in a different manner. Perhaps even using a small window overlay on the main map would be preferable, since it wouldn't entail resizing/hiding the main map interface.
Just some ideas...it's really a great site (thank you for it)! I just feel like it's been made unnecessarily challenging to use by some of these UI choices.
I am on the Class page and using the Search feature. I did a search using common terms but each time received a message there are no results.
Terms used: Dance, class, gym, track, pool, fish, tennis, playground, volleyball, yoga, pottery, 5:30pm