Okay, so this whole “super regions” thing started because my brain hurt trying to make sense of all this scattered data. I was mapping user traffic across like, hundreds of little areas for this side project. Total nightmare.
Where It All Began
Started by dumping all my location points onto one big map. Felt like throwing spaghetti at the wall – just chaos. Zooming out made it a blurry mess. Zooming in took forever. Thought: “Man, I gotta group these somehow.”
The First Disaster Attempt
Tried sorting by random stuff first. Grouped areas by timezones. Big mistake. Ended up with regions split by imaginary lines that made no sense for my data. Users hopping between “super regions” just because clocks changed? Nope. Trashed that after two days.
Pivot Time
Went manual. Printed a giant map, taped it to my wall, grabbed highlighters. Started circling clusters where activity naturally bunched up. Ignored borders, ignored names, just followed where dots clumped together. Called a buddy over for beer and a second opinion – he spotted connections I missed.
How I Glued It Together
When the wall map looked decent, I:
- Snapped pics of each highlighted “blob”
- Drew rough digital outlines around those clusters in my tool
- Tagged them stupid-simple names like “Coastal Band” or “Central Desert Pack”
- Fed my original data points into these new buckets
Surprise! Suddenly patterns popped. Coastal Band had crazy spikes at sunset. Desert Pack snoozed midday. Couldn’t see any of that before.
Real Talk: Why This Stuck
Almost ditched it again when I realized updating boundaries manually sucked. But then I ran last quarter’s reports through it. Night and day difference in clarity. My coffee-spilled notebook sketches became the backbone because they mirrored reality, not rules.
Where It Stands Now
Still janky? Yeah. Do I care? Nope. It’s like duct tape and hope holding my project together, but it finally shows me what matters – how users move and clump naturally, even if lines get fuzzy. Would I do this for a bank? Hell no. For my needs? Perfect.
