timpaul
commented
6 years ago Thanks for this @simonneb !
The next step would be to try and find some good examples. Do you know of any government services that are already using geolocation APIs? It's always worth asking on the Service Designers mailing list.
If you can gather examples and show that there's a need for design guidance on this topic we can propose it to the Design System working group.
simonneb
What
Geolocation APIs allows the user to provide their location to web applications if they so desire. For privacy reasons, the user is asked for permission to report location information.
There is currently no standard design for how this should be implemented - for example, a standard link or icon that could be added to relevant search pages.
Why
Users could automatically provide their location without manual entry and search.
This creates a lot of interesting potential for GOV.UK services, such as integrating with backend systems to provide locally specific information for the area the user is in. This could be used for services that may be used by users who are on the move, or don't know the local area:
Most location search on GOV.UK relies on the user knowing a postcode or area name. If may be quicker, and easier to simply search for their current location using Geolocation APIs that are part of HTML5
Anything else
Thoughts on implementation:
Related patterns