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Looks interesting. It's great you have put a lot of effort into making the app easy to use, but here are some suggestions if you really want to be a nautical ch
by keithwinstein 13y ago
Looks interesting. It's great you have put a lot of effort into making the app easy to use, but here are some suggestions if you really want to be a nautical chart app "done right":
(1) Don't just use the published RNCs; they are only released at 100 pixels per cm, which is too low to look good (especially on the awesome resolution of the iPad screen). If you send a FOIA to NOAA, they will give you the RNCs at 300 pixels per cm (nine times the resolution), which is what they actually use when printing them.
It will also give you a unique advantage over the 20 other similar apps.
(2) Show the user what charts overlap their location, in order of scale, and let the user control which chart they want to see at a particular time. The existing apps all try to guess which scale chart to show and they switch between them as the user zooms. (Your web app does the same thing.) It's never quite right.
(3) Use the (geo-aligned) ENC vector chart to provide clues to the UI, even if you don't actually render the ENC. The user should be able to tap on a feature (e.g. a buoy) and get information about it and set it as a waypoint.
The user should be able to plot a course to a waypoint that keeps in mind the draft of the vessel vs. the depth of the water. The user should get an alarm if their course will take them over a shoal or into a mark.
(4) Make clear on your Web site what distinguishes your app from the 20 other apps that also display RNCs aligned with the iPad's GPS fix. E.g., MX Mariner is $7 and perfectly servicable if no-frills -- what do you have that they don't? How about my Raymarine chartplotter that came with my boat -- why is this better?
Right now the marketing ("modern," "done right") resembles the puffery that seemingly every app spouts (you're missing "beautiful" and "exquisitely-crafted" but otherwise you check most of the boxes). If you want actual mariners to buy your app over others, it wouldn't hurt to make it a bit more expert-friendly and show what makes it special. More screenshots would help!
I worry that no matter how hard you work on making it easy to get started, you are just yet another app displaying lowres RNCs as a dumb raster that can't take advantage of semantic information contained in the chart. That's not "modern" or "done right" and it's not something a professional mariner would be caught dead using. Which may be ok -- you're not aiming your product at professional mariners. But better to be clear about what your app does and doesn't do than have it be an unwelcome surprise.
- andrewljohnson 13y agoThanks for your comments! 1) I didn't know that about issuing a FOIA to get higher res charts, but I'm not sure it would be very feasible. Our server processes the NOAA updates in real-time, and charges change nearly every day. 2) I totally agree, and only iNavX seems to do that, and I think we can do it cleverly. The one big feature that did not make Skipper 1.0 is the ability to press and hold on the chart mosaic, to surface the entire chart, and pan/zoom it with collars, insets, and all. 3) We do render the navaids using the ENC data. It's not perfect, but if you zoom in enough and tap on the navaid symbols on the charts, you will be able to interact with them (info, guidance, etc). 4) I hear you on the website text, and marketing is always tough. For now, we're emphasizing the automatic syncing between devices/web, automatic chart updates, the good UI, and friendly support. "Done right" is just a phrase we use so you keep reading, and find out what we mean by that. In general, the response has been overwhelmingly positive, and I think we're always going to get accused of smarminess by some. There are certainly a million things we could do to improve the website and other marketing.