Let the User Help Solve Their Own Problem
I wish we had a maps app like Apple Maps or Google Maps that let you order up a travel itinerary using public transit between two points, and explicitly pick the transit routes involved. Or, ideally, multiple sets of routes, for comparison.
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Sometimes all the app’s recommendations are reasonable, but sometimes there’s one or more options that might be preferable—and I don’t know how preferable if the app isn’t showing me when the next 49 arrives, so I can compare to the 7 minutes for a 14R or 9 minutes (including a short walk) for BART.
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This is one instance of a general problem, which is products having only algorithmic solutions to the user’s needs, with no opportunity for the user to contribute to the solution.
The algorithmic-only model admits only one remedy: Improve the algorithm. But because no algorithm will ever be perfect, you’ll be playing this game of whac-a-mole forever.
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But Apple Maps does give 5 or 6 different public transport options. I think Google does as well.
Could be up to the source I am in London so get Transport for Londonm and National Rail that provide APIs to get current bus and train positions and routes.
But Apple Maps does give 5 or 6 different public transport options. I think Google does as well.
I use Apple Maps regularly. I know that it suggests some random number of route combinations, presenting a subset of the available paths to my destination.
My problem is that it's a subset. It's almost always leaving out some route combinations that I know would work and I want to see compared with the others.
(I also wonder whether there's some kind of cutoff and it just doesn't bother to show more than half a dozen or so combinations. For places like downtown SF, this can leave a lot of routes on the table.)
Could be up to the source I am in London so get Transport for Londonm and National Rail that provide APIs to get current bus and train positions and routes.
Yes, San Francisco has the same. This can help influence the wayfinding algorithm (which may downrank a route with a long wait time, or hide it outright so I don't know what its wait time is); it does not mean the algorithm will always suggest every route worth considering, nor does it provide me with any way to suggest routes or route combinations that the algorithm missed or omitted.
The general point about products only offering algorithmic solutions to user needs is so valid. This is my #1 complaint about the Apple ecosystem for the last decade or more. I get that it's helpful to the general user base to try to automatically curate their photos, or syncing, or playlists, or whatever it may be, but I'm begging them to *also* let us manually intervene when we want.
It would be nice to have more multimodal options too, like ride share Uber or city bike to the train to save the most time balance with total cost more.
This is a common refrain and written about a lot; that you know there are good travel options not being shown to you, but apps do the easy (and sensible ) thing: optimize for total travel time.
It’d be nice if the major mapping companies had a “vibe” or “explore all options” setting for travel planning, right? (or provided APIs so others could build this)
The closest thing we have to this is is how air travel search engines now use “agony” as a metric for ranking options (I believe it was Hipmunk who did it first), where price, time of travel, transfers all fed into that agony metric. That was a world-changing insight and done at scale. Groundbreaking UI.
