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The LEGO Wall: New site for tracking Pick A Brick (PAB)
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Comments
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=E20+1EH&hl=en&sll=51.543924,-0.01468&sspn=0.033816,0.031586&hnear=London+E20,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=15
Oh, and another request: could there be a mouseover to give the name/colour of the brick. The code number doesn't mean a lot to me.
For instance, it seems that 3741 for plant stems is a LEGO code, used by BrickLink - what does the -6 signify? I presume it's the colour.
If you got this mapping sorted, you could do useful things like link to BrickSet:
Sets containing 374128, which is the LEGO code for your 3741-6:
http://www.brickset.com/search/?part=374128
Or use LEGO's own images:
http://cache.lego.com/media/bricks/5/2/374128.jpg
And then a similar mapping could mean a way for BrickSet to link back to wallofbricks.com if Huw were amenable.
Awesome interface:-). If someone does not beat me to it, I will try and update Bellevue, WA store when I go there next. Thanks to the person who updated Lynnwood store. :-)
I'll add the part name to a mouseover but it will be a few days before I can commit the changes.
I'm not opposed to using official lego part #s if those are more standard. It may be a little while before I can get to it though.
It looks like what brinklink did is take the "Design ID" (that is what brickset calls it) and append a color code to it to create their part number. Here you can see the Design ID is 3741
http://www.brickset.com/parts/?part=374128
So I can map the two conventions together, I just need to crawl all the parts pages on brickset. Unless brickset has a place where I can download their parts list? I couldn't find one.
This link is better:
https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=westfield+stratford&hl=en&sll=51.545241,-0.005794&sspn=0.033815,0.031586&hq=westfield+stratford&t=m&z=15&iwloc=A
The first match A, is pretty much the centre of the shopping centre.
https://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&ll=51.543319,-0.006904&spn=0.004227,0.003948&t=m&z=18&vpsrc=6&iwloc=A&q=LEGO®+Store+Stratford&cid=401755595244834583
take that as you will :)
Thanks
On google maps this pointed me to the intersection of Albion St and Commercial St, the Lego store itself must be in the "bley" area just south of that on the map.
Maybe a red background for newest, down through various shades of orange and yellow as they get older, until it gets to white for oldest, or something like that?
It is really a nice interface and after 5 minutes use, you can really fly through the inputting. Well done @dwalton76, I'm very impressed. Apart from the suggestion above, I would put the country drop down box above the store one so you don't waste time looking through the US ones. I'm really picking nits there though.
@dwalton76 You can see the enthusiasm for your site here - and I definitely think you have really got the interface done nicely - but could you share with us a little your plans for development? There have been a lot of good ideas suggested but it's been a little while since anything changed.
My issue is that at the moment, it's hard to tell at a glance which pods have changed recently. Therefore it's harder to tell what's new.
"Is it possible to have an easier way of telling how long ago the wall and individual pods were updated? At the moment it's really quite hard to tell, whereas with iPAB you can tell at a glance."
yeah right now I show the date for when the bin was last updated but you are correct, there is no easy way to glance at the wall to tell what bins were updated the longest ago.
What if I add a checkbox that says "Highlight bins that were updated more than X days ago" where the user picks X? I'll also add a "Last update on" line under the store address.
On a related note, if you click on a bin and the part in that bin is still correct, when you click the green checkmark it will update the "updated on" date for that bin.
@coachie
"I would put the country drop down box above the store one so you don't waste time looking through the US ones"
Enough people have asked for this change now...I guess I will give in and put the country first :)
@cheshirecat
"if there was someway to remember your last store using cookies or something, that would be great."
Currently I use a cookie to remember what store you last viewed. I didn't do this for the store you last edited though...I was worried it would make it too easy for someone to accidently update the wrong store if they happen to visit multiple stores. Once you pick the store to update though we'll remember it as you are traversing through the bins.
@leemcg
yep things slowed down for a bit, I was on vacation for a little while but I am back at home now. I appreciate all of the feedback from everyone on this forum, it helps motivate me to keep working on this project :)
Future plans for the site...I don't mind sharing just keep in mind nothing is set in stone. Before I went on vacation I started working on a Shopping List feature. My thoughts were to come up with something that would tell me what bricks (and how many) to get from a pab wall in order to complete certain sets of legos
PaB Wall Shopping List
- user creates an account and logs in
- user enters a wishlist of sets he/she wants to complete by buying individual bricks
- user enters a wishlist of parts he/she wants (outside of the parts from wishlist sets)
- user enters what sets and extra parts he/she already has
- user views the pab wall for his/her local store
- At the bottom of the page I print out another copy of the wall but this copy only includes the bricks that would apply towards the users wishlist sets or wishlist parts. In each of these bins it shows how many of the brick to get.
I figured it would be cheaper to use this approach to complete remaining sets...after working on this for a bit I'm not so sure though. For instance I have quite a few Star Wars sets so I started looking into obtaining the remaining parts for 10178 (the motorized AT-AT). I have over half the parts already but of the remaining half only a few are available via pab and it would cost more to buy the remaining parts via bricklink than it would to just purchase the entire set on ebay.
I'm not sure if the wall Shopping List idea is worth the added complexity of supporting users, logins, wishlist for sets, wishlist for parts, etc when in the end it will just be easier/cheaper to complete sets by buying them used. That and there are already multiple lego sites out there where you can inventory your sets and parts. What do you guys think?
Multiple Bricks Per Bin
- It is kind of corner case but several folks have mentioned that their local store puts multiple parts per bin. I don't have a way to handle this but it is on my todo list.
Sets Search
- I'm really happy with the way the Parts Search interface turned out. I may try to do something similar for searching for sets.
Amazon and/or eBay links
- I can't imagine I'd make a ton of money but it would be nice to make enough to cover the web hosting cost for the site
A couple of thoughts:
The way you describe what happens, in terms of update date, when you click the big check mark, means that it wouldn't have the effect that @paperballpark was asking for. I'd go further and say that you shouldn't interpret anything from such a click. I'd never go through all cells clicking okay - I just change the couple that are (now) wrong.
My priority for simple things that could make things a lot better would be other data displays (particularly for viewing a store) by colour, by part type.
I'm not sure that you'll ever get very far with using PaB for missing parts for sets - the range is just far too limited - but even if you decided to go that way, I'd recommend not reinventing the wheel. Instead of trying to recreate rebrickable, or the various inventories of Brickset, BrickLink and BrickOwl, concentrate on working with those sites and building hooks into and out of your site. 'hooks' could be formed URLs to a full API.
I'd also recommend a publicity drive. Your top features should really be those which could give you a chance of a front page mention on BrickSet, eurobricks, etc etc.
"I'd never go through all cells clicking okay - I just change the couple that are (now) wrong."
ok I think there are two problems to solve here:
#1 How to easily display the age of the data on the wall?
Today: We display the 'updated on' date in the bin
Option 1: Provide a checkbox and a slider so the user can only display bins that are older than a certain number of days. I have this working on my dev machine...the other advantage is you can also use it to only show the bins that have been updated recently.
Option 2: Use some sort of color scheme to display the age of the bins. So red if the data is older than X days, orange if it is older than Y and green for everything else. What do you guys think the cutoffs should be for X and Y? Maybe 4 weeks for X and 2 weeks for Y?
Then 2nd option would certainly be easier to use but wouldn't have as much flexibility.
#2 User needs to tell the site that the entire wall is accurate?
Right now the only way to do this is to traverse every bin and click the green check mark for the "Is this correct?" question. This is slow though and users aren't going to do this.
I can add a "The Entire Wall Is Accurate" button that will update the "updated on" date for each bin to the current date. The only risk is if people click it when they shouldn't. If it starts being abused I can add login support and force users to login to use this button.
"My priority for simple things that could make things a lot better would be other data displays (particularly for viewing a store) by colour, by part type"
So something like the Parts Search interface but applied to a wall as a filter?
"I'm not sure that you'll ever get very far with using PaB for missing parts for sets - the range is just far too limited"
The surprising thing (to me) was that even using bricklink it doesn't make financial sense to buy missing parts to complete a set...even when I already owned 75% of the set. I went so far as to write some code to find the optimal set of bricklink stores to purchase the remaining 25% from but even then it is cheaper to buy the entire set.
With logging in it could easily be done with a simple check against last time viewed and the update timestamps for the bins. In that case you could have quite a vivid highlight around a bin that's been updated since your last visit.
Without logging in, some kind of time scale as you describe would be best, but it may be best to make it quite subtle rather than a vivid highlight. Perhaps using the date string but colouring it green and bold for 1 week, green for 1-2 weeks, amber (or half way green-black) for 2-4 weeks. That should be quite a simple thing to code and could be trialled easily enough - much more so than a login system.
Unrelated, two things strike me, firstly, when viewing a wall it would seem more sensible to have the wall contents first then the store map. I suspect most people know where the store is, and even if they don't, they've come to look at the PAB not a google map. I think showing the important information first, what someone is really looking for, would be a great idea.
Secondly I wonder if the wall format used for updating is better than the larger version used for the general viewing. It fits on one row (or at least it does for Manchester and most others I've checked) and whilst smaller gives a much better quick overview. There's something a little jarring with the split row. You could have the other information as a popup on mouseover (although obviously this might be an issue for tablets etc). I'm not sure about this, its just a feeling I have.
In terms of general direction - I would focus on what you do best. PAB walls. Your site is miles ahead of any competition when it comes to PABs. Like yourself and others, I can't see much benefit in adding sets or somehow trying to recreate sets from the PAB contents.
I would maybe try to improve the parts page - when you click on one of the parts on a wall. The first part is perfect, maybe I would add a second list of where this part has been available in the past (and date span), this will become important later.
Secondly, I would change the display of sets this part is in. I don't think there's much point in listing only 10, either all or nothing I think. Also, the format used means there's a lot of redundant space. Look at either brickset (http://brickset.com/search/?part=345526) or peeron (http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/3455) for what I think are better ways to list them. I quite like peerons (its not as pretty as bricksets) but shows all sets including those for a different colour and also, importantly, the quantity of this part in the set (which I know yours does now also).
Then, as others have said, I would get some links going with brickset and others. A few of us were quite vocal that brickset should do a PAB wall updater, but then you did a great one and the need reduced. However, some of the benefits of brickset doing one are still missing. For example if we could have a link to your site from this page (http://brickset.com/parts/search/?query=3455) or other similar ones, or even pull some information from your site to say if a part is available on a PAB wall or ever has been, then that would be fabulous. At that point the information not only about if a part is currently available somewhere, but also if it ever has been becomes quite useful.
Sorry for the long post, and just to clarify - I love your PAB site, its by far the best and the first I've felt I wanted to use (and do use). Please don't take the above as criticism, rather just feedback.
The thing about a button to click to state the entire wall is correct got me thinking, as I think that would be good, but obviously it wouldn't help with my stated use of seeing what's new. So that got me thinking about what I was really meaning and how I really use it.
I think what the colours mainly do is allow you to easily see when the wall was last updated. So whether it's just 3 or 4 pods that are coloured brightly, or all of them, I'm not sure it actually matters. What matters to me is easily seeing when someone last updated it, to see if there is something new. At the moment if you want to see when it was last updated, you have to look through the dates on all the pods. Seeing which pods have been updated recently would be good too though ;)
Also, I agree with having the map below the wall.
Map below the wall content - agreed, the map should be at the bottom. This will be in the next update.
Wall Format - The wall display format that is used for the update page works really well for stores with 14 columns or less. If it is more than that though then you have to click prev/next to load different sections of the wall...if I show more than 14 columns the icons get too small to see. So using the small icons format doesn't give us a way to display the entire wall at once for many of the stores :(
For the wall display page though I could have it so everything is displayed in one table (unlike today where it splits after 10 columns), there would just be a horizontal scroll-bar at the bottom of the wall content that you would drag left or right. Thoughts?
Dates & Colors - I'm starting to think that I need to track two dates...when the part was first added to a bin ('first-added-on' date) and when it was last updated ('updated-on' date). Because some users just want to see which parts were updated the longest ago so they can check those bins to make sure the wall is accurate while others want to see what bins have changed since they last visited the store.
What if I display a calendar where you click on a date and bins whose 'first-added-on' date is after the selected date are highlighted? The calendar could have a toggle switch to highlight bins based on the "updated-on" date instead of the "first-added-on" date. The user could use this to sanity check the bins that haven't been updated in a long time.
This would prevent the wall from becoming a rainbow of background colors.
Parts Page History - So have a second section (after 'Available At These Stores') that shows when the part has been available at the various stores? I can see how that would be nice to know...esp since there are tons of parts that will probably never be seen on a pab wall.
Parts Page Sets - Displaying all of them at once could end up being a ton of sets for a common part...I could have it so you click a "load more" button to grab the next batch of sets (something similar to how the google images results page works). That is kind of cool how peeron shows you the sets for this part but in a different color. I'll have to think about how to do that...
Personally I don't mind a wall being a 'rainbow' of colours, and I'm not really that bothered about the date a part was first added to the bin, although I realise others might be.
Wall Filters This is the major change for tonight. I added an interface so you can filter:
- by duplicate...this will show all of the parts that are in more than one bin
- by color
- by when it was added...@Paperballpark just set the From date to whenever you were last in the store and you'll see all of the bricks that have been added since. I went with this approach instead of color coding the bin backgrounds based on age....this is much more flexible and looks nicer.
Part Page History - you'll see a second table that lists which stores (if any) have had this part on their PaB wall in the past.
Wall Activity and Set display pages - Changed the format for displaying parts so I'm not wasting so much screen real estate.
The next items on the todo list are:
-map bricklink part numbers to lego part numbers. Once I have this I'll link each part back to brickset. Hopefully I can get brickset to link to me.
-support multiple parts per bin
-enhance how the Parts page displays what sets that part is used in
- select Other
- set the dimensions to 0x0...this tells it to search all dimensions
- in the keyword filter put in something simple like "flower"
I'm working on the code for supporting multiple parts in a bin and am trying to get a handle on how to do the GUI.
btw, the 'fade' feature by date etc works well, and I like the change in display for wall activity :)
Glad you like the fading...I was pretty happy with the way it turned out :)