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Letting go of the GPS to learn the art of natural navigation

theguardian.com

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Re: Letting go of the GPS to learn the art of natural navigation

#51

Post by kalleboo »

navs wrote: post #35
jzwinck wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A related thing I'd like is a navigation system which understands that some turns are not important. If I'm driving on a Manhattan-style grid, I'd like it to say "You could turn here if you want, but straight is good too." I'd probably go straight if it's green and I'm doing 45, but if I'm at the head of the queue and it's red, I'd rather turn right.

Or maybe a navigation system that has a bit of personality. I feel like they've remained robotic while companies try to inject a personality into their personal assistant counterparts.

It used to be a thing to download celebrity voices to your TomTom. John Cleese was popular.

There's a Japanese navigation app that has a bunch of anime voice actresses doing different stereotypical characters. You take a wrong turn and they scold you, or ask if you're feeling OK http://maplus-sp.jp/voice_list.html?ct=cvi1

Re: Letting go of the GPS to learn the art of natural navigation

#52

Post by monort »

seer wrote: post #39

Once I was travelling through Morocco and the general advice I got from other turists even before the trip was “don’t trust the gps”. It turned out the medinas (old towns) themselves were so densly packed, that you could not see much of the sky to get any lock on satellites, and the internet coverage was very spotty. And you “had” to learn how to read paper maps, because otherwise you’d fall pray to the many “tourist…

I haven't been in all medinas of Morocco, but never had a problem with GPS there, have you actually tried to use it? :) I think the only place where I really had a problem were Caruggi of Genoa.

One tip to have a better location awareness with electronic map is to enable trip recording, if you see your previous way you can sort of continue walking "inertially".

Re: Letting go of the GPS to learn the art of natural navigation

#54

Post by vanderZwan »

I just had a discussion about this with a friend of mine, Jaffar Salih (we studied Interaction Design together so topics like this fascinate us), and what he remarked is that navigation apps could actually be educational tools for learning to navigate yourself. They just need to add clear markers of landmarks in their route descriptions.

Even more interesting: since Google already keeps track of where you are very often, it could use your favourite shawarma place or regular bus stop as a "personalised landmark". to give you things to orient by and help you connect the dots and fill in the gaps. Same thing with familiar routes.

My "counter-argument" was that it was not in Google Maps's interests to make you less dependent on their navigation app. But maybe someone should get on making an OSM-based kind of app that does it instead.

Re: Letting go of the GPS to learn the art of natural navigation

#55

Post by arethuza »

monort wrote: post #52
seer wrote: post #39

Once I was travelling through Morocco and the general advice I got from other turists even before the trip was “don’t trust the gps”. It turned out the medinas (old towns) themselves were so densly packed, that you could not see much of the sky to get any lock on satellites, and the internet coverage was very spotty. And you “had” to learn how to read paper maps, because otherwise you’d fall pray to the many “tourist…

I haven't been in all medinas of Morocco, but never had a problem with GPS there, have you actually tried to use it? :) I think the only place where I really had a problem were Caruggi of Genoa. One tip to have a better location awareness with electronic map is to enable trip recording, if you see your previous way you can sort of continue walking "inertially".

I did try using Google Maps on my phone in Marrakesh a few years back and it failed completely and left me with an astounding data roaming charge.

Easier to pay a local to walk you back to your hotel if you get completely lost!

Re: Letting go of the GPS to learn the art of natural navigation

#57

Post by barrkel »

sksksk wrote: post #14

Something I loved about living in Bogota, was how easy it was to navigate there. The whole city was built on a grid, with the east-west streets increasing in number as you went north. And the North-south streets increasing in number as you go east to west. There is a mountain range to the east, so if you can see the mountains, and know what streets you're on, you can always find your way

I think grid-based cities are almost soulless. Designed for routing efficiency and land parcelling, and not for human living. Very little in the way of designed vistas, and not much scope for landmark buildings to add up and create an aspect. The architecture seldom gets a chance to create an emotional impact on the pedestrian. In fact grid-based systems are usually not designed for pedestrians at all.

Re: Letting go of the GPS to learn the art of natural navigation

#59

Post by isostatic »

usrusr wrote: post #46
mcgreevy wrote: post #38

"Look for satellite dishes. They all point towards the equator. In London, that is roughly south-southeast." If by "roughly south-southeast" you mean "south" and by "in London" you mean "in the northern hemisphere" :).

Geostationary satellites occupy specific spots over the equator. If you want to catch a satellite from the edge of its reception area, you point the dish quite noticeably eastward or westward. Since the Atlanteans never put up TV satellites, in the UK that means all the dishes are either pointing south or southeast, never southwest. You can often take a surprisingly educated guess at the immigrant ratio of a building…

In the UK almost every satellite dish will be a minidish and pointing to 28.2E. Sure a few ex-pats will have dishes pointing at other locations, but they won't be the typical sky dish.

That only really works in the UK though. If I go up to the roof of the building I'm in now, I see some dishes pointing east, some west, and some directly up (well almost)

Re: Letting go of the GPS to learn the art of natural navigation

#60

Post by mikepurvis »

jzwinck wrote: post #29
pkamb wrote: post #25

I'd love some kind of GPS mode that just gave the most important or trickiest directions, then was completely silent for the rest of the trip. I know how to get out of my neighborhood and onto the northbound freeway. I'll never need directions to do this. I know I'll be driving for 30 minutes. I just need the exit to take when it's coming up, and a few tricky turns near the destination. Just give me that and I'll fig…

A related thing I'd like is a navigation system which understands that some turns are not important. If I'm driving on a Manhattan-style grid, I'd like it to say "You could turn here if you want, but straight is good too." I'd probably go straight if it's green and I'm doing 45, but if I'm at the head of the queue and it's red, I'd rather turn right.

100% agree with you and parent comment, though Google does make some effort to offer alternatives (with "about the same"/"x minutes slower" annotations), and regardless of that, you can always skip a turn or turn sooner and let it adjust.
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