Week 17: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?
Last week I mentioned I would rework how the user arrives at location-specific waste information for a given item.
Here’s what it looks like. I’m happier about it than with the original Yelp-inspired approach.
The design rationale is that this flow defers the ‘tell me where you are’ step until a visitors reach an item profile page. Then if they deem this page relevant and worthy of use, they can inform the app on what location they need the instruction for. Down the road, this could leverage geo-location detection.
Why do I say this is one step forward and two steps back? Well, it turns out the simplification has allowed me to remove two features that were in the app’s previous iteration. The first is the ‘location’ filter in the main search bar. And the second is the monster list of cities in the menu bar. I actually consider reduced UI to be a good thing!
(Red area means it’s been removed)
To param or not to param?
One technical challenge I’m facing is whether or not I want to set URL parameters to reflect the a changed locale. My intention is to keep this flow server-side rendered (for SEO purposes), and using query parameters to reflect the location may not be beneficial.
But if I shouldn’t use query params, how should I structure my static URL routes?
For now, I’ll run with using query params because it feels most natural. But we likely have to revisit this later if/when search indexing becomes an issue.
Next steps
By next letter, I want to have a testable ‘end to end’ flow (excluding editing capabilities) ready on the live website. The flow should look something like:
Home page search => results page => clicking into a result page => item profile => adjustable location with reactive URL
We’ll see what challenges I encounter trying to hook all this up! Talk soon.
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