So I am not crazy after all! The other day I was driving in Palm Springs, and I was using Google Maps. I literally had to zoom in until the road I was on almost completely field the screen before it would show me the name of the road or the roads around it. They did something to their display algorithm where you now have to zoom almost entirely into an area to see anything about the area, very inconvenient.
What Happened to Google Maps?
51–60 of 201 posts
Re: What Happened to Google Maps?
#52I'm confused by the replies saying that more dense labels would somehow harm usability for driving or navigation. When you're driving, you know where you're going, the map knows where you're going, and it's easy to see the route you need to take. When you're not on a route, denser labels help you to orient yourself with the map and to know when to zoom into a particular location. That said, I also think the focus on…
For driving Google Maps getting quite bad. See this screenshoot: http://imgur.com/uPO8QJh
This kind of crowded display is fairly common now. I use Here Maps now which is much better + I like supporting a second option to avoid one service getting 2 monopolistic.
My theory of why google maps is getting worse is there must be designers dedicated to this that need to constantly look for 'new' things to add even if its to the detriment as they can hardly say its all good now and twiddle their thumbs. Maybe that's unfair but I've seen this effect on other digital products first hand.
Re: What Happened to Google Maps?
#53There's a broad trend of tech companies disrupting traditional industries and then making rookie mistakes and generally not living up to the standards of the tradition. Google, hire cartographers. Amazon, hire librarians and typesetters. Spotify, hire musicologists.
Why do you think they haven't?
Well, I assume Google has a big staff of skilled people working on GIS, but I'm curious to know what kind of input they get from people trained in the art of cartographical mapmaking...
My hunch is that the tech industry is bad at taking advantage of this kind of traditional trade knowledge, and the essay in question here is an indicator.
As for Amazon, the Kindle e-books very often have horrific typesetting that would be laughed out of any traditional book printing shop.
And as for Spotify, their catalogue mechanisms and information design are clearly awful from a musicology standpoint.
Re: What Happened to Google Maps?
#54I'm surprised the author didn't mention the main difference between paper maps and google maps. That is, google maps is interactive. With a paper map what you see is what you get. You had to cram as much information as it would allow. But this is not the case with google maps. You can zoom in, out, and anywhere in between. You can't compare the two based on the level of information displayed at one fixed zoom level b…
Not only zooming, Google Maps also has search. If you're looking for Oakland, CA, you go to the search bar and type "Oakland, CA", and it shows up on the map. No need to scan the map for the thing you're looking for, that's the computer's job!
I was going to a location yesterday that you couldn't search for. "The junction which splits the road going to A and B". I was very confused by the new Google Maps which essentially didn't show enough detail for a good overview and orientation.
Re: What Happened to Google Maps?
#55The new maps look clearer and less cluttered and more useful to me. I would guess that the maps were simply designed to follow their primary utility function which is navigation. Old style printed maps had cities on them, because the map didn't know where you were going! You had to find your city or your location on the map. Now the map knows where you're going, so it can show that place extra-clearly while hiding a…
It's not surprising that paper maps often do a better job than Google maps, especially when you consider that people have been optimizing the format for several hundred years. For instance, you can't beat a decent topo map for browsing terrain looking for new places to go. Having a large map with high information density is just the ticket.
The place where Google maps really excel is applications that combine a search result of some kind with geographic data. For ordinary navigation, especially if you want geographical context rather than just directions from point A to B, traditional maps still are much better in my opinion.
Re: What Happened to Google Maps?
#56I'm surprised the author didn't mention the main difference between paper maps and google maps. That is, google maps is interactive. With a paper map what you see is what you get. You had to cram as much information as it would allow. But this is not the case with google maps. You can zoom in, out, and anywhere in between. You can't compare the two based on the level of information displayed at one fixed zoom level b…
Not only zooming, Google Maps also has search. If you're looking for Oakland, CA, you go to the search bar and type "Oakland, CA", and it shows up on the map. No need to scan the map for the thing you're looking for, that's the computer's job!
Search is of course entirely useless, worse than useless, if you don't know in advance what you are looking for. Needless to say, search is not an adequate substitute for intelligent design and proper levels of detail on maps.
Re: What Happened to Google Maps?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sure Google knows more than the author about their own maps, but please give the author his due: he wrote a successful blog called 41Latitude that did a lot of in-depth analysis of Google Maps's display of information, and later led the Apple Maps team. If he has something to say about information density on maps, I'm inclined to listen.
>and later led the Apple Maps team I'm not sure that puts him in a position to be trusted to criticize google maps. Apple maps has been considered inferior to google maps since its launch. Just because he has ideas about how to pack an overwhelming amount of information onto a map doesn't mean it's a good idea for normal users.
Nice use of the asshole passive voice there. "Has been considered."
Re: What Happened to Google Maps?
#58The comparison to a paper map is stupid. A paper map is severely limited in that you can't zoom in on it so it has to be packed with enough information to hopefully be useful. An interactive map only needs to give you enough context to know what to zoom in on. If I'm using a touch interface that overloads me with information in one screen, it's a bad interface. It's like claiming that the new york times should displa…
Not stupid at all, actually. The paper map is hand-tuned and shows a great deal of thought and care about precisely what to show, how to show it, and where to show it.
There are many lessons that digital maps can learn from hand-crafted maps.
Re: What Happened to Google Maps?
#59Google know more than the author about how Google Maps is used by end users. The author is grading Google Maps based on the number of cities and roads displayed, not how the users use it. Google provide an alternative mapping product, Google Earth, for satisfying curiosity about the planet. Google maps is primarily a navigation tool. They have very distinct use cases.
I think it's safe to say that the Google Maps team hasn't cared about end-user convenience and utility for quite some time. The Google Maps of 2016 is utterly terrible compared to the same service ten years ago.
You don't get customer feedback like this (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/HfC6dYi4...) when you're doing things right.
Re: What Happened to Google Maps?
#60The way I use Google Maps a lot is for discovery. I look at the map of New York to see cities around it. When I look at a more zoomed in level of the city I want to see different boroughs and major roads. More zoomed in you want to discover shops and businesses. The bareness of the current Google Maps makes it very unsuitable for these functions. For example, even at full zoom level it only shows a few (<5%) of the shops and bars at the city center where i live. If i want to get a feel for a city (where are the most restaurants, where are the shopping centres, etc) the maps are really bad for that unless i go searching for the specific terms in the search bar. But that is the down side of the search bar: you never finf something you didn't know you were looking for.