Ability to choose meeting location

[wrynearson]

We want to reduce the environmental impact of distributed groups meeting in person. Now, we're showing the least-impactful locations, plus the home locations of each participant.

However, I could see another user need – to know the impact of the meeting place they've already determined, to see how bad their meeting place is, and hopefully not repeat the mistake. Their improvement could also be a point of internal pride or external communications.

E.g., a conference organizer selects Namibia for their meeting place for mostly North American participants. The next year, using the tool, they select a place much closer to the mean location of all of the participants, resulting in a X% decrease in emissions year-over-year.

I imagine if we add the ability to select any location, we'd want to not encourage users to use it – we want them to go to the least impactful place after all. It could look something like having a selector at the bottom of the list of results saying analyze another location, then a user could search for airports (or locations with airports).

@LanesGood @nerik @kamicut @kathrynberger thoughts?

[kathrynberger]

I think that's a great feature to add @wrynearson! While our main goal would be finding the ideal location for meetings - I agree, this tool could also be used as a tool for change and promoting better practices.

What about a comparison tool? Much like analyze_another_location - you could allow users to explore another location (e.g., current meeting location) and facilitate the comparison between that location and the ideal location that is recommended by the tool. Simple comparison metrics could be generated (reduced emissions, etc) that could be used to share with colleagues.

[wrynearson]

Great idea @kathrynberger !

[manicmarvin]

I'd like to add to this.

The ability to set a location (or better a set of possible locations) manually would be very important for many of us.
If the purpose of the tool is ore than a theoretical exercise, there are many factors that determine where a meeting can feasibly be held. The political stability of the destination, the logistical support the organisers have in place, the visa-compatibility between the destination and attendees.

While the tool cannot probably account for all these factors, allowing users to manually force a set of options, will allow us to choose the least of many evils while we account for the human and other aspects of these large decisions.

PS
There is something to be said for a tool that also looks at visa possibilities for this kind of planning.

[wrynearson]

Hi @manicmarvin, thanks for joining! We'd love your support on this. I agree with you that choosing the "least of many evils" is a good approach. We had discussed some of your other points as well, but deprioritized them in lieu of releasing the tool in its current state.

In a previous version (internal), we listed all medium-sized airports and larger in order of least -> most impact. Users could scroll through the large list, or they could use cmd + F to force an option. This worked, but might not be the best UX way to do this.

How would you imagine this feature to look like?