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Should this be a map or 500 maps?

escapethealgorithm.substack.com

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Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#31

Post by psychoslave »

acka wrote: post #19
psychoslave wrote: post #12

> modularity is inversely correlated to expressiveness I would highly mitigate this statement. It’s more like some forms of expressiveness are out of scope once you settle for a set of constraints, be it through modularity requirements in precise specifications sent to people that all passed the same qualifying formation, or vague query to a set of random people who don’t held in common much more than ability to matc…

https://websim.ai/ would like a word with you.

Seems fun, thank for the link. Not sure how I should interpret your comment however :D

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#32

Post by glenjamin »

I think a great takeaway from this article could be "standardization is not inherently valuable or desirable".

Standardization, like almost anything, has costs and benefits and tradeoffs and so on.

So when you're pushing to standardize something - consider what it is you're gaining and what it is you're losing, and decide whether that's a tradeoff you're ok with.

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#33

Post by exe34 »

nicbou wrote: post #10

We had a lively discussion about Google Maps in my cycling group. It's very annoying to have a map that is only designed to show the fastest route, and that forcefully reroutes you to it. It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another. It does not show named bike routes and hiking trails. It doesn't even let you keep the screen on without having directions. For most people, the entire experience of using a map is…

I find Organic Maps to be less irritating, but it doesn't always find the address I search for - but once I've found the place and dropped a pin, it's much nicer to work with for walking and cycling.

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#34

Post by dataflow »

nicbou wrote: post #10

We had a lively discussion about Google Maps in my cycling group. It's very annoying to have a map that is only designed to show the fastest route, and that forcefully reroutes you to it. It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another. It does not show named bike routes and hiking trails. It doesn't even let you keep the screen on without having directions. For most people, the entire experience of using a map is…

> It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another

This might be a computational cost thing. Modern routing algorithms preprocess the graph to find the optimal route orders of magnitude faster than you normally would without preprocessing. If you let each person customize the graph then such queries would be much more costly.

Then again, I'm sure there are lots of other complications already and that most users wouldn't want alternate routes, so maybe the marginal cost here is irrelevant?

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#35

Post by JR1427 »

jorisboris wrote: post #29
nicbou wrote: post #10

We had a lively discussion about Google Maps in my cycling group. It's very annoying to have a map that is only designed to show the fastest route, and that forcefully reroutes you to it. It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another. It does not show named bike routes and hiking trails. It doesn't even let you keep the screen on without having directions. For most people, the entire experience of using a map is…

I’m still looking for a map which let me optimize for “stopping as little as possible” which in practice means avoiding traffic jams and traffic lights. I notice this makes me drive more relax, and especially with a baby it’s way easier to keep the baby asleep

Similarly, there was a time when my daughter got very car sick, and I desperately wanted an "avoid roundabouts" option!

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#36

Post by [deleted] »

nicbou wrote: post #10

We had a lively discussion about Google Maps in my cycling group. It's very annoying to have a map that is only designed to show the fastest route, and that forcefully reroutes you to it. It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another. It does not show named bike routes and hiking trails. It doesn't even let you keep the screen on without having directions. For most people, the entire experience of using a map is…

[deleted]

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#37

Post by card_zero »

nicbou wrote: post #11
lmm wrote: post #3

I hate overly designed news articles. I want to read the words and maybe see a couple of relevant pictures, thanks. Similarly I suspect most of these different individual maps are just bad. Whimsy and idiosyncrasy are all very well in theory, but in practice they're mostly just annoying.

This is true on the web, but not in print. Salt Fat Acid Heat is a gorgeous book and the beauty just doesn't translate well to .epub

Hey look, an idiosyncratic map by that illustrator.

https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/64240ee4eb3a3b4b2059ff7c/...

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#38

Post by aa-jv »

eCa wrote: post #22
nicbou wrote: post #10

We had a lively discussion about Google Maps in my cycling group. It's very annoying to have a map that is only designed to show the fastest route, and that forcefully reroutes you to it. It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another. It does not show named bike routes and hiking trails. It doesn't even let you keep the screen on without having directions. For most people, the entire experience of using a map is…

OsmAnd is awesome, I use it especially when walking in new cities. For cycling though, I’m a happy user of cycle.travel[1]. [1] https://cycle.travel/map

>walking in new cities

I do enjoy digital life, but you know what else rocks, apropos walking in new cities[0]?

Custom maps, printed.

Its fun to look at the little piles of maps I've made for myself over the years, from Frome to Rome, Berlin to Pristine ..

In fact, I think I prefer printed maps over digital, for personal adventure/navigation needs.

([0] Disclaimer: Got navionics and predict wind running on multiple tablets..)

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#39

Post by codetrotter »

dataflow wrote: post #34
nicbou wrote: post #10

We had a lively discussion about Google Maps in my cycling group. It's very annoying to have a map that is only designed to show the fastest route, and that forcefully reroutes you to it. It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another. It does not show named bike routes and hiking trails. It doesn't even let you keep the screen on without having directions. For most people, the entire experience of using a map is…

> It doesn't let you avoid a road or favour another This might be a computational cost thing. Modern routing algorithms preprocess the graph to find the optimal route orders of magnitude faster than you normally would without preprocessing. If you let each person customize the graph then such queries would be much more costly. Then again, I'm sure there are lots of other complications already and that most users woul…

Hire some game devs that have worked on path finding in AAA games. They will find a way to partially pre process the map data in such a way that on-device computation can then let the user pick and choose what roads to favor and what roads to exclude.

And as an added bonus they’ll be unrelentingly optimizing your map application to the point where the UI will run at 144 Hz ;)

Re: Should this be a map or 500 maps?

#40

Post by arnorhs »

yen223 wrote: post #23
lmm wrote: post #3

I hate overly designed news articles. I want to read the words and maybe see a couple of relevant pictures, thanks. Similarly I suspect most of these different individual maps are just bad. Whimsy and idiosyncrasy are all very well in theory, but in practice they're mostly just annoying.

Well, you've got your wish. Every damned website now looks the same. Whatever creativity the early internet promised has now been snuffed out to appease the user-metrics gods.

I'm all for creativity but laying devil's advocate,..

who is this supposed creativity for? If the majority of people just want to scan headlines efficiently and read/parse.. isn't that a good thing for most people?

Pragmatically speaking, the creativity is not needed for news articles/headlines. We need better reporting / journalism in online news, not more creative frills..

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