Now if only the Google maps (mobile version) devs would read this. On Android anyway, no matter how much you zoom the text labels on things like street and highway numbers will not enlarge.
5 years ago that wasn't the case.
Type `ho`, stop there, and it will suggest your home location (if you have it set). Continue typing and it will serve up results that have `home` somewhere in the name.
Its typical Google, I can imagine an engineer going 'hmm, this way if they want to go to their actual home location, they can just tap on it, and if they continue typing, they can quickly find home depot!" not realizing this blatantly violates the Principle of Least Astonishment.
You see the same with Android 7.0 in the pulldown quicksettings: if you haven't fully pulled down the quicksettings, a tap on Wi-Fi turns it off. But if you pull it down completely, a tap suddenly opens a network selection menu, despite the icon giving no indication it will do something different. This again, violates POLA. Its purely a power user feature (how often is a normal person gonna be on a Wi-Fi network that isn't already set..?). Even worse is that some icons (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth) act in this 'dual' way, yet some others keep working the same (Torch, Orientation Lock).
Obviously Torch and Orientation Lock don't really have any options beside on/off so they shouldn't have a menu.. its just that, from an UX perspective, its better if all your buttons act in a homogenous way, especially if they look the same!
These are all typical examples of Google being a company with engineering in its DNA, whereas Apple is a company that breathes design.
What astonishes me is how much GMaps doesn't learn. Every time I use the map to go to a place by car, my way back is back home. But it doesn't suggest it by default, and doesn't even get the hint when I type "home"...
To me, this is how IA will look. It knows you perfectly from a Bayesian perspective, but some product manager decided that the bayesian suggestion is the only place that won't be suggested to you...
Same for distance. There may be a restaurant called "The Place To Be" next to you, but it will ask for anything named "Place" within 1000km...
Off topic but does anyone else feel that Google Maps (and in general Maps) have just regressed in quality? In particular, while using directions. The most common problem I face on my iPhone (and I've heard the same from people using Android) is - compass orientation. It's so predictably bad that I have now started moving the opposite direction which the compass suggests. I'm more right than wrong when I do so. This wasn't the case 5 years ago on my iPhone4 when Google and Apple worked together to create the Maps application. I wonder if it has got to do with the same event.
I've used multiple phones across continents but yet tend to suffer from the exact same problem. Strange!
This is not the app's fault. The compass sometimes needs to be re-calibrated and that involves waving your phone around. The app should prompt you to do so if it thinks the calibration is off though...
Sure, but I think the font should be (to some extent) scaled proportionally to the map area or perhaps some other way of making the text larger. A typical use case for me is zooming in on a highway to see what exit number a particular ramp is. Today that info is basically unreadable on either platform.
On the other hand, I don't want to see giant a 'D' over where I live because on a far out zoom level it happens to say 'UNITED KINGDOM', and someone wanted to zoom in to see the font.
Additionally the mid blue for the route obscures the street name.
Also 'Home' works on some GMaps but will take you to Home hardware, the Home Office etc in other versions.
Basically Google Maps is a summary of Google itself: the best data and pretty damn poor UX.