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A new kind of map: it’s about time

blog.mapbox.com

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Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time

#161

Post by stouset »

collinmanderson wrote: post #144
shurcooL wrote: post #61

I think this is great, but I can see it being potentially improved further if there was a temporary overlay of the physical map whenever you hover over a destination. Basically, I feel that completely removing the physical map is okay until you've picked a target. Then, having to click on it to be able to see what the route looks like (which streets to take, etc.) is higher friction than I'd like. Instead, imagine if…

It would be neat if they skewed the map to match travel times.

I don’t think this is a transformation that can be performed by only stretching and deforming the surface (e.g., the maps of a city with time units vs distance units aren’t homomorphic).

Imagine starting on the far south end of a congested city surrounded by a circular, relatively low-traffic highway. Points on the northern end of the city would be “closer” on such a map than points directly in the center.

You could certainly define a transformation that accounts for this, but I think it would necessarily defy most people’s intuitive interpretation of such a map.

Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time

#162

Post by dlandis »

It kind of reminds me of what Uber decided to do in their UberEats app, which is organize restaurants by how long delivery will take and not say anything about how many miles away the restaurant is or what its address is. You can't sort by distance or display a map. So it ends up being really annoying if you would rather deal with nearby restaurants you end up doing a lot of flipping back and forth from google.

Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time

#163

Post by dredmorbius »

microcolonel wrote: post #8
qznc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I was hoping for some weird pictures of distorted maps.

For what it's worth, I think it would be computationally quite hard. You would have to pick a set of points and maybe isomap them from three dimensions (x, y, and time) to two, then find a visually acceptable cage transformation using those points as anchors. You'd have to do this for each query.

See Cartograms.

Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time

#164

Post by codeka »

scott_karana wrote: post #133
nerdponx wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the definition I'm using. I don't understand what's so noteworthy or funny about that example for it to become a meme.

I'm guessing, but presumably "pizza in San Francisco" is a representative GIS problem that pushes all the right buttons and acts as a good shakedown test, and has become a "standard".

I thought it meant that Google et al are all trying to solve the "pizza in San Francisco" problem (i.e. trying to find local businesses) and not trying to solve the problems that people are actually turning to maps for, because "pizza in San Francisco" is an obviously-monetizable problem.

Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time

#165

Post by HeavyStorm »

opportune wrote: post #147

As a user, I would find an isochronic map much more useful than the weird radial design they want to provide. To provide the level of precision that the radial map does without destroying our eyes with colors, they could substitute a color gradient with some sort of border around "reference times" such as 5 minutes. The author thinks that the time-only maps address the root concern, which is "how fast can I get somew…

Just a cool thing to notice:

> I'm going to the third place if they're all the same distance (and probably even if the third place is farther than the first two, to an extent).

By distance, you probably meant time to get there.

Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time

#166

Post by bradknowles »

Not too bad, but the search needs to be less literal.

When I search for "sandwich", my neighborhood Subway should show up, even though the word doesn't appear in the name.

When I search for "convenience" or "store", my neighborhood convenience store should show up, even though those words do not appear in the name.

But I did discover a Whole Foods location that is even closer to my house than the three others in town that I knew of. Cool!

Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time

#167

Post by flachsechs »

bradknowles wrote: post #166

Not too bad, but the search needs to be less literal. When I search for "sandwich", my neighborhood Subway should show up, even though the word doesn't appear in the name. When I search for "convenience" or "store", my neighborhood convenience store should show up, even though those words do not appear in the name. But I did discover a Whole Foods location that is even closer to my house than the three others in town…

this isn't a question of being less literal, it's a question of building a search taxonomy and synonym database and tuning it for relevance, in this case, in the restaurants vertical.

this is something a lot of people don't realize about search engines i.e. yelp, angie's, etc. - they are tuned to fit the humans to the data, not vice versa.

Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time

#168

Post by JimmyAustin »

erikb wrote: post #121
shurcooL wrote: post #61

I think this is great, but I can see it being potentially improved further if there was a temporary overlay of the physical map whenever you hover over a destination. Basically, I feel that completely removing the physical map is okay until you've picked a target. Then, having to click on it to be able to see what the route looks like (which streets to take, etc.) is higher friction than I'd like. Instead, imagine if…

I think the idea is to keep mobile and desktop in sync here. And mobile doesn't have a "finger over" event I think.

Peek/Pop works on iOS for 6S and above.

Re: A new kind of map: it’s about time

#170

Post by PascLeRasc »

shurcooL wrote: post #61

I think this is great, but I can see it being potentially improved further if there was a temporary overlay of the physical map whenever you hover over a destination. Basically, I feel that completely removing the physical map is okay until you've picked a target. Then, having to click on it to be able to see what the route looks like (which streets to take, etc.) is higher friction than I'd like. Instead, imagine if…

It really shines in dense urban areas like the example in Oakland CA. The route overlay would be really important if there's anything like super busy roads or no sidewalks available.
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