Josh: One of the things that drove us back to the drawing board was that the check-in button appeared and disappeared depending on how close you were to a known location. That meant people often didn't even know there was a check-in button, even though checking in was the whole reason for the app. We had thought that as you got close to a location where an item was hidden, it would be really cool to have an indicator tell you you're getting warmer, warmer, now you're hot, now you're there, and then you can check in. But the check-in button didn't actually appear until you were within the given range. It was terrible and really unintuitive, but the thing is that it made sense in the abstract: why display a button if it can't be used yet? It turns out that it's helpful to have something there—a dimmed button—to let people know that their goal is to check in and get an item.
Figure 2-7. The case of the disappearing check-in button: in the first version of Gowalla, the app's check-in button appeared only when you were standing within 15 meters of a precise coordinate location. If you were just a few paces away (left), the button went away, appearing only when you stepped into place (middle). Later versions (right) made the button permanent and much larger.
On top of that, our original GPS logic for checking into a location was way too strict. So the app says there's an item at Stubb's Bar-B-Q in Austin, but I'm at Stubb's right now, and the stupid thing's telling me that I need to walk 43 meters southwest. So I've got to get up from my lunch and walk down the street? And then, maybe if I'm lucky and I happen to stand in the right 15 meter radius, the check-in button appears and I can tap it and actually get the item. We realized that it sucked.