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Google maps have been terrible for years. (The actual map part and UX interactions.) Lack of detail is astonishing. At this point it's just a glorified car navi

by megous 3y ago

Google maps have been terrible for years. (The actual map part and UX interactions.) Lack of detail is astonishing. At this point it's just a glorified car navigation, where the road is everything, and anything else is just for show/illustration/gray/green blur, I suppose. (I don't drive.) Green color means absolutely nothing useful. It can be a forrest, field, or a pretty much anything. UX consists of annoying forced zooming around during menu/UI navigation. I often just want to exit a search context, but not change the map zoom position, and select something else on the map. I constantly struggle to keep context, when this auto-zoom/sift happens. I mean if there was some checkbox to decouple menu navigation from map control, that would improve the experience 7fold. Show me a fucking arrow on the screen edge if the POI is out of the viewport, but don't shift the map to a supposed "better view". I have quite a bit of pent up rage towards this stupid app, that I sometimes have to use because local public transport relies on it. UX right out of hell. These changes don't even register for me as significant degradation of UX.

iainmerrick 3y ago
Their wider strategy was pretty strange too. I especially boggled at how they bought Zagat to help with trusted restaurant reviews, ran it into the ground, then sold it again. Checking my memory on Wikipedia, I just learned that they did exactly the same to Frommer’s! Although in that case it was less than a year before the Frommer family bought the name back.
CogitoCogito 3y ago
> UX consists of annoying forced zooming around during menu/UI navigation. This is extremely irritating. The fact that turning your phone sideways and then back doesn’t take you back to your original position is just amateur hour. The fact that turning it sideways doesn’t keep the map centered is amateur hour. Personally I’d like to see an option to just turn off auto zoom entirely except as a result of an explicit search. Google maps _always_ gets it wrong. I am zoomed in on an area and click that I want to start a walking trip and it zooms out and shows the whole city. I mean seriously is anyone an Google actually testing their product? I understand that it’s not actually a map app and instead an app meant for car navigation and advertisement of POI, but seriously just allow some options to override things like auto zoom or an option to actually display road names densely, and they’d have an actual map app again.
nicbou 3y ago
> UX consists of annoying forced zooming around during menu/UI navigation This drives me bonkers and nobody is talking about it. You plot a public transit route and see something along the way. You click on the marker and nothing happens because there's a route active. You hit back a few times and your map pans wildly around, losing whatever you wanted to see.

by megous 3y ago

iainmerrick 3y ago

Their wider strategy was pretty strange too. I especially boggled at how they bought Zagat to help with trusted restaurant reviews, ran it into the ground, then sold it again. Checking my memory on Wikipedia, I just learned that they did exactly the same to Frommer’s! Although in that case it was less than a year before the Frommer family bought the name back.

CogitoCogito 3y ago

> UX consists of annoying forced zooming around during menu/UI navigation. This is extremely irritating. The fact that turning your phone sideways and then back doesn’t take you back to your original position is just amateur hour. The fact that turning it sideways doesn’t keep the map centered is amateur hour. Personally I’d like to see an option to just turn off auto zoom entirely except as a result of an explicit search. Google maps _always_ gets it wrong. I am zoomed in on an area and click that I want to start a walking trip and it zooms out and shows the whole city. I mean seriously is anyone an Google actually testing their product? I understand that it’s not actually a map app and instead an app meant for car navigation and advertisement of POI, but seriously just allow some options to override things like auto zoom or an option to actually display road names densely, and they’d have an actual map app again.

nicbou 3y ago

> UX consists of annoying forced zooming around during menu/UI navigation This drives me bonkers and nobody is talking about it. You plot a public transit route and see something along the way. You click on the marker and nothing happens because there's a route active. You hit back a few times and your map pans wildly around, losing whatever you wanted to see.