Thanks, again, for all your feedback on our last big release. Overall, it sounds like you appreciated most of the changes, but it turns out we got some things wrong. We wanted to let you know we heard you and have been working ferverishly on fixes. To make sure the changes we’re making are the right ones, we would like to run them by you for feedback.
Here’s what we’re considering changing:
1. Parcels: we received a lot of feedback asking to put back the parcels, however, we did not remove them. Many of you thought we removed the parcels and replaced them with icons. What we did was show the parcels only at the two most zoomed-in levels. We did this because we thought the parcels were too small to see any further out. Based on your feedback, we will show parcels for the three closest zoom levels (except on Internet Explorer 6 because of performance problems).
2. Icon size: Yes, we agree, they are way too big! Now we have to admit that we did not give a lot of consideration to the icon size when designing them; we were focused on solving what we thought were other more important problems. It turns out you are very passionate about not having the map obscured or cluttered by large icons!
To evaluate your feedback, we started with an icon study:
As you can see, our icons are not only above average in size, but they are about the largest out there. What we are proposing is a much smaller icon roughly 60 percent the size of the last one. This is what it would look like at a high zoom level:
This is what it would look like at a lower zoom level:
And, finally, this is what it would look like when you are zoomed in all the way. You may notice the icon is a little larger here. Typically, this is the zoom level where you would see a parcel, but we have parcels for only 50 percent of the properties (we get this data from each state and it is not always complete), we wanted to show a larger icon to differentiate when there is no parcel available:
Instead of assuming what you are asking for, making changes and waiting for your feedback, we would like to hear from you first! Do you think this is the right icon size? Should we go smaller? Or should we go larger? Should the icons be transparent when you are zoomed in really close? Should we scrap the idea of icons altogether and just use circles? Please let us know your thoughts by leaving a comment or you can reach me by e-mail at matt.goyer *at* redfin dot com. We likely will make a decision on this by Thursday evening so please let me know before then, but, as always, feedback is welcome anytime.