Why do they make every mapping site hard to use?

[Brian Elfert]

Mapquest recently rolled out their new website. It sucks!

It now has the same problem as Google Maps, Bing, and all the other mapping websites. They switched to a freeform address field. Half the time with the freeform address field it says the address isn't found even though it is a valid address. I used Mapquest a lot because they still had seperate lines for street address, city, and zip code.

Do web designers actually test their new designs in the real world to make sre they are an improvement over the old design?

[Charles Wiggins]

Do web designers actually test their new designs in the real world to make sre they are an improvement over the old design?

Obviously not. I used to work with a guy who was our institutional webmaster and he NEVER tested anything in a browser other than IE. I would send him notes all the time on things that didn't work in Netscape or Firefox, etc. He would say, "Just use IE." My response, "So you're going to force all of our potential clients to use IE or have a bad experience with our site?" If we had been in the private sector he would have been fired in his first month on the job.

[Logan William]

I'm not too thrilled with Google maps right now either, I live out in the booneis and they were the only mapping software that could correctly find my house, they made some change in the last several months and its now about a mile or two off depending on the day. However I still like Google better then Mapquest, much easier to change routes and see the change in mileage

[Jim Koepke]

Do web designers actually test their new designs in the real world to make sre they are an improvement over the old design?

NO! Me thinks they test them to make sure they are just as crappy as the competition. After all why be better when you can do just as good, and keep your job, by being mediocre.

jtk

[Roger Newby]

NO! Me thinks they test them to make sure they are just as crappy as the competition. After all why be better when you can do just as good, and keep your job, by being mediocre.

jtk


Some strive for mediocrity....others rise to it. :D

[Eric DeSilva]

I use google maps regularly--I'm not a delivery guy or anything, but tend to plug addresses into it on a regular basis for directions. I've actually found the interface works pretty well for parsing single line addresses. I'm wondering why your experience is so different... I'm not sure I've ever gotten the kind of result you have...

[Jason Roehl]

I'm with Eric. I've used Google Maps quite a bit, and while not every address lands me in exactly the right driveway, it will almost always get me very close--at least the correct block.

[Dan Friedrichs]

I think it works fine.... :confused::confused:
Have you tried adding a comma between "lines"?

[Bryan Morgan]

Mapquest recently rolled out their new website. It sucks!

It now has the same problem as Google Maps, Bing, and all the other mapping websites. They switched to a freeform address field. Half the time with the freeform address field it says the address isn't found even though it is a valid address. I used Mapquest a lot because they still had seperate lines for street address, city, and zip code.

Do web designers actually test their new designs in the real world to make sre they are an improvement over the old design?

I haven't found any great mapping software or websites. They are ok to look at the map itself and figure things out but the directions they give are really hit and miss. Mapquest has always been the worst in my opinion, telling you to turn right when right is a cliff and the proper direction is left.... things like that. Nothing beats a good map and a halfway decent sense of direction. We use GPS in the car and I think of it more as a rough guide to get me in the general area. Plus, it has nice maps that I can manually look at.

[John Coloccia]

I like entering street, city/state or zip. I really despise the newer interfaces too. It's neat technology but I feel it's technology for the sake of technology. I find the "old" way faster and more accurate. Maybe in a few years they'll get it down and I'll like the new way better.

I'll tell you what I hate more than all of that, though:

Me: "Oh, that's great. Say, can you give me directions? I'll be coming North on 91."
Them (shouting to someone): "HEEYYYY!!! HOW DO YOU GET HERE FROM.....where are you coming from again sir?...FROM 91?"
...
...
after a minute or so...
Me: "Ma'am, how do YOU get there in the mornings?"
Them: "Oh, I just follow my GPS. There's lights and you have to know where to turn. See, that's the thing. It's not easy because you can't just go straight. You know, you can Google us."

GRRRRRRRRRRRR

[Curt Harms]

it's the database. There's a store near me that if I put its address in any of the major mapping sites--google, mapquest, yahoo, they all say it's at the same location, which is a few miles off!! I'm not sure where the problem is but it's not with the web sites.

[Jim Koepke]

I was planning on taking a shot of how Google Maps has me in the wrong place.

Well, they have changed things and now have me in the correct place geographically, the marker balloon is in my back yard. They used to have my street mislabeled as Oak Point Rd. Now they have it mislabeled as Cathlamet Rd. They still have Laughlton Ln. in the wrong place. What is labeled Cathlamet Rd in the image should be Spruce Creek Rd. They do intersect off the image to the left.

167569

Reminds me of GIGO from the old days of computing, Garbage in, Garbage out.

jtk

[Darius Ferlas]

Do web designers actually test their new designs in the real world to make sre they are an improvement over the old design?
Actually they do. The key word here is "world". Not all countries have the same addressing format so free form seems to be the best solution.

I find google maps very reliable. In my experience so far they will offer points to choose from in case of spelling errors, ambiguities resulting from wrong address or from formatting errors in the input.

And in fact, the entry field is only superficially free form. For the US addresses I always use the standard format:

street # street name, city, state (two letter abbrev).

I checked addresses in the US, Canada and EU. So far works like a charm for about a dozen countries if I maintain correct address format and information.

What google could improve upon are the driving routes. These are sometimes questionable but most of the time not seriously flawed.

[Dan Karachio]

No offense to carpenters, but in technology we essentially have carpenters (developers) doing the work of architects (human computer interaction experts). There is nothing that qualifies a developer to design a user interface. Being able to *build* one doesn't always mean you know how to design one. HCI experts are trained and their methods rest heavily on repeated and iterative user testing. Fortunately HCI trained people can get a good paying job anywhere and any time. Unfortunately, not enough people fully appreciate the field and even when hiring one, often over ride them with data-less opinions and decisions. Also, quite common, the developers aren't skilled enough to implement something that is more usable.

[John Coloccia]

No offense to carpenters, but in technology we essentially have carpenters (developers) doing the work of architects (human computer interaction experts). There is nothing that qualifies a developer to design a user interface. Being able to *build* one doesn't always mean you know how to design one. HCI experts are trained and their methods rest heavily on repeated and iterative user testing. Fortunately HCI trained people can get a good paying job anywhere and any time. Unfortunately, not enough people fully appreciate the field and even when hiring one, often over ride them with data-less opinions and decisions. Also, quite common, the developers aren't skilled enough to implement something that is more usable.

Amen. It took me days to convince my program manager that we will NOT be adding an option to select Left or Right my LCD/Scrolly knob button encoder interface. He didn't like my rationale of "5 items fits nicely without scrolling. Once you scroll, you need to read the screen, whereas a box scrolling over fixed items allows you to just look at the position of the box." They thought that was stupid. I finally just flat out refused to do it. I had them add a "left/right" switch instead, oriented oddly enough so that left meant left, and right meant right. It's like that with everything I do...until I quit, that is.

It's always a fun day when you're demoing a product for a customer, and the customer's project manager pushes you aside and starts demoing the product himself to his own team. I just slowly work my way to the back of the crowd and smile :)

Not an HCI "expert". Just a concerned ex-engineer that wishes he could get a job fixing all the incredibly lousy interfaces out there and actually make money doing it.

[Dan Karachio]

John, it sounds like you are a natural. There is one way to end these conversations. When someone says, "I think we should put a watchahigit there and a dohickey here..." just ask, "Okay, where is the data to support this?"

There are plenty of people out there making money doing this, especially the self proclaimed gurus.
http://money.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2008/12/11/best-careers-2009-usability-experience-specialist.html

P.S. If that were my boss, I would, perhaps for a week or so, give him every report and other document in every meeting with the bottom 1/5th of the page or so folded under. Maybe that would make the point about avoiding scrolling?