Posting in the wall of my bedroom the 6 mapsheets in scale 1:50.000 around my place changed my spatial abilities for the best. I surely recommended it.
Ask HN: How can I improve navigation skills?
31–39 of 39 posts
Re: Ask HN: How can I improve navigation skills?
#32I've you're a parent, and notice this in your child, like I did a few years ago, there's a simple game to play with them, when you're out and about.
Stop at random times... and ask.... which way is our house? Or... let them decide to go left/right/straight at the next turn.... eventually they'll start to catch on. 8)
For the original poster - I'd suggest giving yourself 5 minutes before turning to google maps, to try to figure out where you are.
You should turn off "auto-rotate" and always have North as Up.
Also, you could just use google maps with location turned OFF, as a big zoomable paper map replacement.
Re: Ask HN: How can I improve navigation skills?
#33If you are in NYC, it's easy due city being a grid system, you just have to remember which way is north/up and then you can figure out. Ie. I know after I get out of subway (a train station) I'd to go "up", up as in the default orientation in google maps which I think is north. Then I'd know that if I'm going the correct way. I'd encounter x street, and if wrong way then I'd encounter y street. So I get out, make a best guess and start walking. If the next street is what I should have gotten to, great! If not, I turn back. Also I use landmarks, lets I'm completely lost, I look for something big like a bridge, tall known buildings, ocean, or even the sun (very rarely), which helps me orient... If it's there and I see it from here then I must be at xyz.
Honestly playing videos games helped me develop these skills as a kid. MMORPG and massive FPS shooter games where you literally had to use in game compass to find the other person.
Re: Ask HN: How can I improve navigation skills?
#34My partner has similar struggles and after several years together, I think it boils down to how we orient maps. They use Google Maps' default "map turns around you" mode while I always orient my maps with the North pointing up. Spatial navigation boils down to learning to position and orient yourself relative to your surroundings. I feel like Google Maps' approach of having the map rotate around you is deeply counter…
> They use Google Maps' default "map turns around you" mode
Physical maps that do this are infuriating. For example the "you are here" maps on the street and the tube/subway exit maps inside stations in central London. So you get off the train and look at the station exit map with a goal of finding -- say -- the eastern-most exit if that is your direction of travel, but have to mentally rotate the map to according to the compass pointer first.
Re: Ask HN: How can I improve navigation skills?
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank-you, throwaway account and OP. It looks like "8" is a magic number--I tell others it takes me that many times of repeating to get around without GPS. It's inconvenient for some things, like carpooling, and it can annoy close others to "never remember." Even if I try to focus on getting somewhere, attention never lasts for long. I've tried heuristics and patterns, like "if I exited the highway and turned left, I…
Damn, I forgot about games, too. I play only occasionally, and never the competitive sorts. I play CoD, Factorio, Age of Empires, etc. Played some Vice City, GTA-V back in the day. In VC, GTA-V, I could never remember even the most common roads. I always found myself looking at the map at the corner much more than the main screen when I needed to get anywhere. If I played the competitive sorts, maybe I would discover…
I think there was a HN post about a language of hunters. The writer learned to speak it, and because it embedded orientation they did not get lost.
It would be interesting to train our brains through some kind of mapping like that.
Re: Ask HN: How can I improve navigation skills?
#36[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: How can I improve navigation skills?
#37I've never been able to navigate. Makes Geocaching very unpleasant. Until GPS came along I made sure to only drive with people who could navigate. However with quality GPS I never fret traveling for a second (well at least driving in the US). I've just accepted that I need it like I need contacts to see clearly.
I think you'll be happier accepting and using tools to navigate rather than feeling badly about your shortcoming.
I'm sure you excel in other areas of life.
Re: Ask HN: How can I improve navigation skills?
#38As one of those people who is like a walking GPS (I can take you somewhere if I’ve only been there once, or I can take you to a place if I know where it is, where I am but not what’s in-between, I have a 3d map in my head and can walk a route in my mind or visualise a place and its details) I’d like to offer the following advice... Maybe you can learn to be good at navigating. I did it by just walking round London as…
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Re: Ask HN: How can I improve navigation skills?
#39Everyone starts out like that, the reason some become better is because they learn to do it, by not using GPS all the time.
For me it was easy, I'm old enough that the first many years of driving a car, I didn't have a GPS device.. The first years, I used old fashioned paper maps, the kind you could buy in every gas station, when visiting a new place.
There simply was no other way.. You'd study the map to find the destination first, then plan a route, then study the route "okay, this route until a street with that name, down that street until the very end, then left" this sort of thing..
Limit your options, when your plans depend on it, you'll learn.
Be more like a child, remember when you were learning to read? How you'd try to read all text you came across? Do that with cardinal points, when you're in any place, look at the map (oriented so North is up), look around, usually you'll find a street name and a crossing or something to help you identify your point on the map..
Yes, maps are central to learning to navigate, they're an abstraction that you can learn to build internally.
Even computer games will help, just the other day, I played "dayz" for the first time, and found a map, and my real-world mapreading skills were immediately applicable. It could also be a game like minecraft, something with large environments, where you'll need some sense of direction to do anything useful.