Location element (google map). Improve usability. Location defaulting, pin drag issues, zoom button colour. - 25691

## Summary A suggestion to improve the usability of the location element (google map) in three respects: * Improve the location defaulting experience. * Improve the experience of using the pin to identify a location. * Change the zoom button colours to black (or whatever colour Google uses on its regular map) rather than grey. ## Details As I was learning the OneBlink platform I found myself quite confused by the location element as an end user of it. And several other internal users have reported a similar level of confusion. Firstly, the pin would default to central Sydney (and I'm located in the Blue Mountains). It took some months for me to be clued into the reason for this (on a tip off from an internal user) that this regional defaulting occurs when one's browser location settings are set to block location access. Possibly something ironically effecting the more technically inclined (in my case I'm quite deliberate about blocking location access at the browser level). There'd be no way around circumventing a user's browser permissions to the default location. And it would be undesirable to circumvent it even if it were possible. We want to honour a user's browser level decisions. However, perhaps there can be a detection of the browser setting and a standard message presented if it is set to block default location access. E.g. Something like "We've defaulted to a regional location because your browser is set to block default access to your location. You'll need to manually set your location". If the browser setting allows default location access then the message is not shown. Secondly, using the map to locate the pin was confusing to me. Currently you can use a combination of: dragging and zooming the map; and dragging the pin. This maximal freedom might be ironically confusing. At least it is different behaviour when editing a Google maps location: Open regular Google Maps > Click on a point of interest to reveal its card > [Suggest an edit] > [Change name or other details] > [Edit map location]: Observe that you can only drag the map, not the pin. Perhaps making the OneBlink location element behave like regular Google Maps, in keeping the pin centered on the map, creates an enabling constraint. That is, will make for a more intuitive way to use the map to identify a location. The third issue is trivial. The current greyed out zoom buttons makes it look like they are disabled when they aren't. If possible using whatever Google's default blackish colour should fix this. ## Other Notes * Although I haven't reviewed the current state of the Google Maps API for this ticket in the past I've found it to be quite restrictive. So I appreciate we might be quite limited here. * I'm inclined to think that using an an alternative to Google Maps would probably make matters worse. That is, it's probably better to remain with Google Maps, even in its current state, given this product is otherwise excellent and, at least, more likely to be familiar to users. * I note also I'm a particular user with idiosyncrasies on this issue. So having a bit of a usability study (for some value of "study") on this might be right to do before embarking on any changes. * My current work-around hint text is: "On a personal computer (a desktop or laptop) or mobile device you can drag the red pin to your location. If your browser's location settings are turned off, the pin will default to a nearby major city. On a mobile device turning on your location service (e.g. GPS) will drop the red pin for you."

John Bentley posted over 2 years ago

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