Why do you think that use case is that common? And why do you think google maps should elevate that particular use case above other competing use cases?
I hadn't even thought of this specifically, but after it was mentioned in the initial post I realized just how much that is my use case most of the time and how often I am fighting with google maps to accomplish what are relatively simple tasks like adding an additional point along a route. If you are trying to add multiple additional points on a route it gets even worse.
This is all much worse on the Android app as well, where it makes the assumption that your use case is to get from where you are right now to somewhere else. Trying to get from point A to B, where neither is where you are now, is unnecessarily frustrating.
> This is all much worse on the Android app as well, where it makes the assumption that your use case is to get from where you are right now to somewhere else.
That strikes me as a fantastic assumption. I wonder what percentage of routes involve the user’s current location? I bet it’s high!
I can't reply to eitland for some reason, but yes, I get both those boxes.
I open the app, click my destination, and then click "Directions". The very next thing is both of those boxes, with "current location" defaulting to the start location. I can then change that if I want.
It optimizes for my most common use case, but allows me to do it otherwise, too. I don't think I could design this better.
On android I just (from london) typed "Washington DC to New York" and it instantly popped me up directions for the other side of the world, with two editable boxes.
That is 9 or so manual steps and it doesn't become clear until step 7 or so that it can even be done! There's nothing intuitive about this and when someone knows how it works that must be because they've either learned it from someone or kept on experimenting with it until they figured it out.
compare this to the original that they "simplified" away:
- Open app in navigation mode (step 1)
- it shows two boxes, where you are going from and where you are going to
- fill said boxes. There is a button next to from to choose current destination. (step 2 and 3)
- click get directions (step 4)
Compared to the current "simple" version it is immediately clear and there are fewer steps and less things you need to know.
No it was literally 4 actions (3 if you accepted the default starting point) and the the same amount of typing the current solution. I didn't summarize anything.
1. Open app in navigation mode (there was a separate icon for that)
2. Accept default start or type if you don't want the default.
3. Point at destination
4. Type destination and enter
Besides it was immediately obvious when I opened the app for the first time on my first smartphone, it just made sense and still does when I think about it.
I exaggerated wildly and can get it down to 5 steps. It is by definition discoverable since we have all discovered it, but I hold that it is still not obvious or self-explanatory in any way.
It's immediately obvious to me how to use it now. And if you accept the default start then both solutions are still the same.
Gmaps right now works like this:
1) Open App
2) Click search box
3) Either select a destination from the list that pops up or start typing and actually search. Once that's done the route pops up with your travel time.
4) Click start
If you want to change your start:
4) Select the starting location
5) Search or select from the list that pops up and your route and travel time are show.
6) Click start
It's not rocket science. It's all obvious from the UI.
This is exactly what I usually want to do with maps. I have a route I want to plan, and I want to do more than one thing along my route, or see what else is in the area. It's futile in Google Maps.
I see no reason that supporting this thing that old mapping software used to support would elevate it "above" other use cases. If you just want a single route, you do one search and you see the result and you never click the "add" button, no problem.
I should dig out an old Delorme Street Atlas CDROM and install it in a VM, to get some sense of how many clicks it took to do the things I used to do. I don't think it was many. It was definitely pickier about address entry; that's one place Google has absolutely improved. But aside from that, it was way more powerful at pretty much everything else.
Not trying to just nitpick, but if we assume that the Google Maps use research and data from users when planning features then the feature you're after may actually not be very common.
And your answer to someone asking "Why do you think that use case is that common?", your first line literally just talks about your use case from your point of view:
> This is exactly what _I_ usually want to do with maps. _I_ have a route _I_ want to plan, and _I_ want to do more than one thing along my route, or see what else is in the area. It's futile in Google Maps.
I'm not saying that wouldn't be useful, it's just that maybe not that many people need it... I guess it was built with the idea that you would just open more tabs to search other things?
> if we assume that the Google Maps use research and data from users when planning features
Based on what I've seen from Google product design, this is a pretty bold assumption.
While Google has access to unfathomable amounts of data collected from users, it's more than happy to eschew that if the data conflict with higher-level product or company strategy decisions, which generally are much less motivated by raw user data,
I have not conducted a survey, but they strike me as reasonably common desires.
On a 4-5 hour road trip, I want to take the kids to see a castle or something somewhere around 1/2 to 3/4 of the way. Even just wanting to have lunch somewhere other than Hilton Park or Newport Pagnell would be such a use case.
I have also wanted it for visiting someone - I'm going to their house, what is my most convenient option for buying some wine and/or flowers on the way?
I have wanted it when I've been away from home and have a big time gap between finishing my planned activities (or having to check out of my hotel) and my train or plane departure. What is the best way to spend a few hours that is anywhere on the route from here to the airport/station.
I think there is an anti-car bias in Google Maps and similar services.
Everything is oriented around the model of "reserve a hotel", "reserve a flight", like you really are on rails like a European.
Today's online maps aren't up to the freedom that motorists have to make small deviations from a route. For instance if I drive from here to Boston I am likely to stay at a hotel en-route, that could be anywhere from Albany to Worcester. I don't have strong feelings about where, but it might be nice to find a good deal or find a place that I think is cool.
Thus I am interested in searching along a tube around my route, not clicking on cities like Springfield and running a search at each one.
Google is in the directory business. Ultimately they don't want us to make the most informed decision, they want us to "feel lucky" and trust The Algorithm. Because the more we "feel lucky", the bigger the fear of businesses to get punished by The Algorithm for insufficient ad spending.
That's why desktop web search is less valuable to Google than mobile web search, mobile web search is less valuable to them than map search, map search is less valuable than voice search and voice search while driving is their holy grail because there the ranking game is completely winner takes all. A second page hit on desktop has a better chance at getting traffic than the second place overall in voice while driving. (And those sweet "while driving" hits will almost always be followed by actual business transactions, whereas the old desktop is just a mostly worthless page view)
Afaik Google is far from allowing businesses to directly bid for that coveted number slot (it would ruin their ability to keep the balance between attracting advertisers and attracting eyeballs), but the result is even better for them: when businesses "bid by proxy", via buying other ad products in hope/fear that it might be a factor in the ranking they don't just get the winner's money. I'd absolutely say that drivers are very high on Google's audience priority list, it's just that nobody on that list is a customer.
My "big time gap" example is explicitly a non-car use case.
The visiting example for me is normally a non-car use case. If going by car, I would probably pick these things up close to home and carry them all the way.
Wouldn't agree with regard to Apple Maps being "anti-car" when there isn't even a bike mode. Walking- and car-mode are unusable for cycling, with car-mode taking bad routes for cyclists and walking mode giving directions way too late, when a cyclist is already on/past the crossing.
Search for destinations along your route is (finally) a feature in the gmaps mobile app. It isn't in the web-app. Apparently Google agrees that it is a desirable feature. Why does the UI-limited, small screen experience surpass the rich desktop experience?
You can do it on the desktop app, via the add a stop feature. If you add a stop and then enter a search term ("coffee shops"), you'll see matching results along your route. (IIRC it doesn't show you the added travel time like the mobile app does, though. Maybe that's what you're referring to?)
Finally? I've been searching for things along my routes since at least the 2017 Eclipse as that's the first time I can remember using the feature on my trip from BC to Oregon.
Because if you plan to travel far you often want to plan a stop along the way to eat, use the toilet and refill anf maybe rest a bit in some hopefully interesting place.
Because it's a map. That's what you do with maps. You browse them, you study them, you mark them up.
I use Google Maps almost daily and this is also my complaint. It's not a hyper-specific use case. Google Maps are good for navigating from point A to point B when you are sure of both, but they suck at being a map. For instance, lack of always-on street names and weird POI handling makes them problematic to use when you want to explore the area you're in.
I disagree. That's what we used to do with a map because we did not have information available at our fingertips.
We would study the map ahead of time, based on the map figure out our plan of action by either making mental notes or notes in notepad, or notes on a map and eventually execute our plan based on the information we have selected.
We no longer need to do that. We can decide "I want to do something around X" , go to X and when we want to do something specific ask maps "Where can I find Y around X"?
Ability to drop pins removed the need to study map to complete most of the tasks. When one stumbles upon something interesting while reading a book, watching a show, scrolling through eater, one can drop a pin on a map so next time that person is in the area the pin is there!
Repeatedly searching and dropping pins in Google Maps is like eating your dinner by pulping it and drinking through a straw.
Studying a map ahead of time and marking it up (on the map itself, as we did with paper maps and dry-erase or permanent markers) is a more efficient interface. There's this forgotten principle in UI that users can mentally filter out noise and focus on relevant parts very good; that's what our sense of sight is optimized for. Having to actively search whenever you need to know something is an inferior experience, both in terms of efficiency and because of missing context.
(Also, dropping permanent pins is AFAIK impossible in the Google Maps proper; it's a feature of "my maps", which is hidden somewhere and has weird interactions with Google Maps.)
> Repeatedly searching and dropping pins in Google Maps is like eating your dinner by pulping it and drinking through a straw.
You are thinking about it as a synchronous workflow. Study map->create a plan->execute a plan. This workflow was the only workflow because it was impossible to execute a search when needed.
Google maps is optimized for a modern workflow. "I'm here. I need X. How do I get there?" With pins that workflow is asynchronous.
For example, I use pins for restaurants. I find/read something about a place I want to try at some point. I drop pins. Next time when I happened to be in the area I see the pins that I dropped. It may happened to tomorrow or three months from now. My alternative is yelp with its sync workflow - search and analyze results of a search or rely on my memory of what place should be around where.
That's what Google's "My Maps" does. It allows you to mark up a map. I've used it for planning trips frequently to mark places of interest and then used that map to plan my trip using regular ol' Maps for the turn-by-turn.
Because it's so simple. I've been wanting it for YEARS. What's more simple than planning a trip? What else do you need a map for if you're not planning to go from point A to point B?
I hate when I need a restaurant or gas station ALONG MY ROUTE and yet years later no maps have this ability. It's insane.
Selecting/Creating waypoints has been a digital mapping-feature of every service/tool I have used since digital mapping/navigation became a thing. From garmin hand-held off-road GPS topo navigation systems to units used for fishing to hiking/biking.
It has been a cornerstone of digital navigation since the things were invented. To claim that it's an edge-case ignores history and instead highlights how _you_ use the tools.
IMHO it was more obvious that Google wants to you 'actively search' for $waypoint item while enroute instead of pre-planning. "hey google, show me restaurants near me"
That gives them a better way to monopolize on advertising and forced $ from companies in order to stay relevant and appear in those type of searches.
Search along route is surprisingly hard to get right. Results near to the route geographically are not necessarily near in terms of disruption to your route (other side of a river, wrong side of a highway etc.)
To add to the "things are getting worse" narrative, we implemented this properly back in the days when sat navs were still relatively exciting things. Last I saw the algorithm was to do a lightweight route plan through nearby search results and find the ones that made the smallest difference to your arrival time at your final destination. I don't think the google maps search API does that yet, although I haven't worked in the area for quite a while.
The Android app will show you how much each search result along the destination will add to your route. It also shows the gas prices if you're looking for fuel.
That's how I plan virtually every multi-stop journey. And adding this functionality would not take away from the usability of gmaps for single-leg journeys with no stops.
Because especially on mobile, screen space is insanely valuable, and if you want to show new information from the new area the map has been moved to you often need to remove "stale" information.
it wouldn't, which is why the complaint in these tweets ("drag the map even a pixel? it erases all your results and closes the infobox you were looking at") is, in fact, not something that happens.
