I've been using Google Maps at home to find out how long it would take to get from one place to another before I actually do it. Route planning is really essential to arriving on time, and planning ahead for traffic, when possible, is a useful way to avoid being late for that important meeting or missing the bobblehead give-away at the ballpark. But it's with this use of Google Maps that I am frustrated, in part because it could do more, and in part because it seems like some features have been omitted in Google's latest Maps re-build.
My first issue is with a new feature that is actually something I've been longing for on Google Maps for the longest time. I can now create a "Home" address and a "Work" address that reflect those locations, so I no longer have to enter the addresses for those places instead. This is so handy, since (let's admit it) when Google knows everything about me already, it seems stupid for them not to use that information to make my life easier. But it has one quirk that I'm not easily able to figure out.
Google Maps makes it conspicuously difficult to use this new feature. If I click the "Home" entry to use it for directions, it starts edit mode to let me edit my Home location. This is not what I want at all. I have yet to figure out a key press that will select the Home option as my starting or ending location. Everything I've tried turns it into an editable field instead. I end up having to type "Home" into the box and press enter. And while this is significantly more convenient than the prior alternative of typing out my own whole home address, it's significantly less convenient than just clicking on that option in the list. All the while, I have the eerie impression that there's something simple I'm missing in this process.
The next thing that bothers me is that there is no way that I've seen to include directions for multiple waypoints. It's possible to drag an existing route line to intersect with an additional location, but there seems to be no way to add an address to the list of waypoints. Sometimes I don't know where the location of the waypoint is on the map, or would prefer to accurately target a specific place. Google Maps doesn't seem to allow for this option.
Weirdly, I seem to remember a button in the old interface that would allow you to insert waypoints into the directions. You could then drag the waypoints to reorder them. The new interface seems to only have a button that swaps the starting and ending addresses. If I want to have two sets of directions from A to B then from B to C, I need to open two browser tabs and do separate searches. This seems oddly inefficient to me.
Now, let me complain about the driving versus walking versus transit directions. Google Maps very cleverly can combine walking and transit options in their directions. This is great. But it won't combine driving and transit directions at all.
As a basic example, assume I want to take the train into Philly. I would have to get in my car and ride to one of the close Septa stations to catch the train. From there, I would take the train into the city, and probably have to walk from the station there to my ultimate destination.
Google Maps will only show me bus directions on either end. There are some times when I don't want to take the bus, particularly on the home side of the travel, but usually anytime! It seems like it would be a really good idea to be able to select any transportation-unique range of the route and convert it to a different type of transportation.
While I'm thinking about it, here's something I dislike about GPS/navigation in general: I shouldn't have to hear navigation out of my driveway. Every 30 feet, the GPS will tell me to turn onto roads in my development that I'm familiar with. It would be great if I could define a radius away from my house inside of which it would not give me directions. Instead, it would say "proceed to the intersection of 401 and 113", and from there start navigation. Or, it would be great if I could mark a few well-known, well-traveled locations from which the GPS could start. And if the directions don't pass through any of those locations (or some button is pressed to override it), then it would just do what it's always done and give complete directions.
Finally, where did Street View go? If you search for an address, you can click on the address' Street View image to go into Street View mode. But in the old design, you could drop the little Street View man onto any blue-highlighted road, and see the Street View for that location. To do that now, like if I see an interesting thing from "Earth" view and want to check it out from the street level, I have to click on the map and hope that there's a Street View image to click on to get to Street View. I suppose this is a smallish change, but it's a totally different way of using the map, and one that doesn't feel intuitive to me yet.
Overall, I like the new design. Some of the new features are pretty neat. I suppose I'll just have to get used to the changes that merely bother me, and hope that they improve the usability on the ones that are more severe.
