I’ve harped on about this before. In the last 10 to 15 years so called “mapping” organizations have veered more and more away from actual maps — in the true sense of the word — and have instead spent ungodly amounts of energy, time and money trying to recreate reality.

And for god’s sake, why?

No, I get it. It’s useful to help you get a feel for an unfamiliar neighborhood and perhaps its vibe. Unlike a simple aerial view you can swoop in, spin around and pretend you’ve suddenly morphed into some kind of acrobatic bird.

Perhaps it all started when John Hanke got on stage at Tim O’Reilly’s ‘Where 2.0’ conference in 2007 where he announced Google StreetView. I was there and I remember it well. StreetView was a ground breaker. It had one principal aim: enable people to get to know a neighborhood before they actually go there.

In 2012 there was another lurch towards immersive experiences: Apple announced Flyover. It was the first broadly available example of a feature that allowed you to arbitrarily fly around (a limited number) of cities as though you were actually there. Ignoring the faux pas of the actual launch, Flyover really was something completely different, albeit a bit melty in its first renditions.

More recently we’ve seen Google take another step towards recreating reality with their announcement of “Immersive Views”. As far as I can tell this is essentially Google’s answer to Apple’s Flyover, only they’ve taken it a step further to integrate flying birds and weather. Oh and you can also use it to preview routes. I’m not sure that is the most pressing problem people face, but there you go.

All this is very nice if you’re playing a game and you want to forget your own surroundings. And it’s especially nice if you’re playing a game like Flight Simulator or X-Plane. But apart from the initial “ooh, ahh” does it really buy you anything?

My take — as the sagacious readers among you might have gathered by now — is a resounding ‘fuck no’.

So what, pray, would be more useful?

Well given it’s the time of year to spend copious amounts of borrowed money on gifts in the hopes of getting what you really want in return, I thought I’d create my own Santa Claus wish list. Vainly of course. I don’t expect any of the big boys to pay any attention, but at least I’ll have fun venting.

So here goes — in no particular order — the Map Happenings “Top 10” wish list for consumer Map Happenings.

No more brain dead search boxes 

Well trained mapping nerds know the limitations of geographic search and therefore tend to be polite, well-behaved and gentle.

They type things like “Coffee Shops”, “Pizza”, “57 Bond Street” or “Acapulco”, knowing that if they veer from well defined geographic regular expressions they aren’t going to get diddly squat in terms of useful results.

I’m willing to bet you have simply no idea of what typical users actually type.

Those in a position to look at the search logs of mapping apps will know all too well. People use search boxes like they’re talking to a human, blindly expecting immediate and complete comprehension.

“Thai Food Near Me” is one very simple example. Search terms like this have not gone unnoticed. Some savvy restaurant owners have used this habit to their advantage. Here’s an example in New York City:

Now of course Google Maps and others have learned to recognize the “near me” phrase, but faced with something a little more complex — and somewhat typical of what your average user might type in — they tend to fall flat on their face.

Credit Google to being better than Apple at interpreting, but it still ain’t pretty. Here are a few example inputs and the resulting responses from Google Maps and Apple Maps…

“best places to stay in bellagio in may”

Google Maps response:

• Gets me to the right region (Lake Como), but not Bellagio
• Is clever enough to show hotel prices
• Fails on timeframe: shows December instead of May

Apple Maps response:

• Hmm.

“ev charging stations between home and phoenix”

Google Maps response:

• For some reason Google thinks I need to keep looking in Italy

Apple Maps response:

• Hmm.

“nearby dog friendly playgrounds with swings”

Google Maps response:

• Gets the “dogs” bit from all the user comments
• Not sure about the swings though

Apple Maps response:

• Assumes I’m looking for parks
• Ignores the question about dogs and swings

“places nearby to get good cheese”

Google Maps response:

• Does’t give me a list of possible stores and instead routes me to the nearest Trader Joe’s supermarket.
• I happen to shop at this store a lot and I bought some cheese there only a few days ago.
• I know Google is notorious for tracking everything you do, but really Google — do you have to be so creepy?

Apple Maps response:

• Yes. That really was the response. A conference center 100 miles from where I initiated the search.

Now you could argue that some of the [Google] answers are pretty good and it’s just the data that sucks. But I’m not going to let either provider off that easy.

Now that most of us are used to a conversational engine from the prodigal Uncle Sam ¹ — and not only that — a conversational engine that can maintain context — the results that you get from both Google Maps and Apple Maps seem a little, let’s just say, “SAD!”

In today’s age of generative AI it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable demand to expect a somewhat more salient interface? So where is it? Well I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the little hamsters in Mountain View and Cupertino are working on it and we just haven’t seen it launched yet.

But wait — somebody already did! — no less than Amazon Web Services! Here’s there announcement via LinkedIn:

So let’s give it a try with the search term “coffee shops in tucson that serve great latte”:

Well I know it’s beta software, but really AWS — surely you can do better than that?

Place ratings that don’t suck

Actually I’ve whinged ² about this before. See “Why Rating Systems for Places & POIs Suck… and a Possible Fix“.

TL;DR: places that are highly rated commonly suck and vice versa. There’s a better way to do this.

Cool routes

So how many times have you set out on a road trip when you have time on your hands and you want to avoid the soul-sucking, mind-numbing, interesting-things-obfuscating, complete-and-utter-boringness of driving on motorways and freeways?

Ok, granted, there are one or two highways that are interesting — Interstate 80 over Donner Pass or the M6 through the Lake District come to mind — but the percentage of them that offer that luxury must be significantly less than the percentage of time people enjoy talking to the helpline of their interweb service provider.

“Ah but!” I hear you say. “You can just select the ‘avoid highways’ option in your chosen navigation app”. Rubbish. That option is a cop-out that does no more than apply a brain dead algorithm that pretends freeways and motorways don’t exist. I guess if you like driving down frontage roads it’s a lovely feature.

Let’s instead talk about motorbikes.

Now, personally I have to agree with Jeremy Clarkson, I’ve never seen the point of motorbikes. But the people who are afflicted with a passion for riding these contraptions do have a point. They like good roads and they tend to hate freeways. What do they use to find good routes? They use alternate sources of information and one of them also happens to be one of my favorites.

It’s called MadMaps and I’ve used it countless times when looking for interesting routes to traverse California. But it ain’t integrated into your favorite mapping app. And nor does it have its own dedicated app. But if you want a cool route, it’ll give you one. I highly recommend it.

Please someone — license MadMaps’ data and other data like it— your users will love you for it. If you want a deeper dive on how it might be used, read this.

Cool routes with waypoints I might actually like

Ok. Now if you can get me on cool routes, now give me waypoints along the way that I might actually want to visit. This gets back to “Place ratings that don’t suck” but it also ties in to a requirement for creating a recommendation engine that doesn’t recommend crap and pays at least some scant attention to the things I do actually like.

Is it really that hard? ³

Least busy roads for cycling — no, I really mean that!

Now I may not have a passion for motorbikes, but I do have a passion for pedal powered bikes. I’m always on the look out for routes that are enjoyable to ride as well as being less likely to turn me into road pizza. If you happen to share my passion I’m pretty certain you also share the same goals.

Now my alma mater at Apple Maps has made some great strides in this area. Apple Maps now provides cycling directions across all of the USA, China, France, Germany, Japan and Australia as well as a number of big cities. What’s cool about it is that it allows you to avoid hills and busy roads.

Only it doesn’t.

All too often it takes you down busy roads when there’s a perfectly good residential route that would be a much better alternative. So, Apple, more work to be done on your algorithms, perhaps? Like simply invert the hierarchy of road classification?

Here’s a simple example of cycling directions on Apple Maps where despite the ‘Avoid Busy Roads’ selection it does the very opposite and makes a beeline for the busiest possible road in the area:

Google Maps is no better. In fact it’s worse. As far as I can tell it doesn’t give you an option to avoid busy roads, it only gives you an option to avoid ferries. Hmm. That’s useful:

Now here’s my hand-curated preferred route to really avoid busy roads made in Strava. Believe me, if you value your life it’s the route to take:

Now get me parked…

So you’re off for your fun night out. Perhaps a restaurant, a play, a game or a concert. Jumping in your vehicle you set the destination in your favorite nav app and head off happily to your ‘final’ destination. Only when you arrive you’re not so happy.

It all results in the abrupt eruption of an unwelcome ‘anxiety’ — just one of countless anxieties we all seem to be increasingly burdened with living in the 21st century.

It’s not range anxiety. It’s not where-do-I-find-a-working-electric-plug anxiety. It’s not FOMO. And nor is it chronic-fear-of-environmental-doom-due-to-climate-change anxiety.

No, it’s something much more mundane. It’s “now-where-the-fuck-do-I-park?” anxiety (perhaps ‘WTF-DIP’?)

Navigation systems and apps do a reasonably good job of getting you to your destination, but they don’t make it easy to solve that age-old and vexing problem of where you should park.

Yeah, sure, I can try to remember to add an extra stop before I leave. Alternatively I can do a last minute on-the-fly search as I get close to my destination. But that’s a pain and it only adds to my stress.

The data is there — at least for off-street parking anyway. What’s missing is the UI.

Come on guys.

Please get me to the right building (and the right entrance!)

I’m guessing you’ve probably encountered this many times. Either in your car or when on foot.

You’re looking for that one business or office in a cluster of buildings, or you’re looking for that apartment but you don’t know which of the six buildings it’s in.

And you don’t know where to park closest.

And you don’t know which side of the building has the best entrance.

And it sucks.

‘Cos you waste endless time and energy circling and then you find you’ve got a fifteen minute walk in the pissing rain when it could have been two. Or you have to abort your mission, get back in your car and try again.

There are countless situations where this arises: apartment complexes, hospitals, stadiums, corporate headquarters, universities. Even the classic American strip mall.

Ok, so it’s not an easy problem to solve. But it still really sucks.

(But if you do own such a complex — try Mappedin Maker — you can create and publish a map of your facilities for your visitors in minutes — and it doesn’t cost a dime!)

Indoor maps everywhere — but personalized for me

Ok so let’s assume you can get me to the right building. Now what?

Yup. You need an indoor map.

And instead of sending me a PDF with general directions to the lab that you want me to go to — which I’ll promptly misplace — why don’t you just send me a link that gets me to the exact room I need to go to.

For example, maybe like a link like this?

Fewer immersive views and more maps please

By now you should be getting the picture. None of these asks are about a desire to recreate reality. Not one of them is about immersive experiences.

We’re all forgetting how gorgeous, useful and informative maps can be.

Maps that surprise and delight.

Most mapping apps have four maps at best: road, transit, traffic and satellite. And if you’re lucky may be an ‘explore’ or ‘bike’ map, but alas the current attempts at such maps leave a lot to be desired.

What about dedicated maps for other purposes?

Like a really good bike map? Or maps designed for visiting state and national parks? Or perhaps a set of maps that educate with information about population and demographics? Or perhaps administrative or political boundaries? How about voting districts? Or perhaps the economy?

Ok — so some of this is going beyond the traditional purview of a navigation app, but hey — isn’t that what these mapping apps want anyway? (See “The Underlying Angst of Google Maps and Apple Maps“.) ⁴

Alas, printed maps are almost dead. And I suspect it’s even worse for atlases. As a result the kinds of maps you were accustomed to seeing in such publications are quickly being forgotten too.

I’m convinced there’s an opportunity here.

Now if only someone would listen.

A mapping app my mother-in-law would use 

I don’t know how many of you have a mother-in-law. I suspect there are one of two of you out there. I have one. She’s 89. For her age I have to admit she’s actually pretty with it as far as technology goes. At least in a limited manner anyway.

She can find her way around a macOS desktop. She can use the Mail app and get to Amazon and Facebook in the Safari browser.

But it pretty much ends there.

Try as we might we can’t get her to find her way around an iPhone. Instead she resorts to preferring her 1990s style flip phone. God knows why. I can barely use that thing. Have you tried sending text messages on a flip phone recently? It’s bloody complicated.

So it was with great excitement that I learned about a new feature in iOS 17 called “Assistive Access Mode”. When set up it essentially degrades your $1,000 investment into a cheap Jitterbug phone.

What?

Well, for some mother-in-laws at least this is a pretty good proposition because now the device is suddenly a lot less scary and a little more approachable.

Here’s what it looks like after the set up:

Did Apple nail it?

No, the interface actually still mostly sucks and it still scares the living daylights out of my mother-in-law. But hey, it’s a reasonably ok first effort.

Try adding the Maps app to the interface, however, and you’re on your own. All it does is embed the standard Maps app into a smaller screen space than would normally be allocated for the app.

In other words, it sucks so much that Steve is more than likely rolling in his grave.

There’s a market for making this easy. And UI designers should spend a lot more time learning from their mother-in-laws. We might all be in a better place.

TL;DR

Missive to the big boys: Forget immersive views. Create something more useful. It’ll cost you a lot less and your users might actually appreciate it.

That’s it for this week’s rizzy Map Happenings missive. Until the next time.

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1. Sam Altman that is. ↩︎
2. A widely used British term that means “complained persistently and in a peevish or irritating way.” Oh and by the way — it’s pronounced “win-jing” ↩︎
3. @Google: given you’re watching my cheese shopping so closely this should be a slam dunk for you. ↩︎
4. BTW: did you notice that these apps are called “Google Maps” and “Apple Maps” — not “Google Directions” or “Apple Nav”. So don’t tell me you don’t have ‘permission’ to go broad. ↩︎