[sangnoir]

> The process you WANT: pick your start and end. now start searching for places in between. Your start and end are saved. When you find someplace interesting, add it to your list. Keep doing that, keep searching and adding

Am I missing something - this use-case is already supported! You choose start & endpoints, then your start the trip (which "saves" them) - you can now search and add as many waypoints as you desire

[Johnny555]

That's what I was thinking, I do that all the time.

For example, do a map of San Francisco to New York City. Now you want to visit the world's largest ball of twine, so you add a waypoint, and start typing "Ball of Twine" and a drop-down will appear with a few choices, pick the one you want and it'll add to the map. You can re-order them as needed to optimize your route.

You still need to know the name or address of the waypoint you want to add, but that's the case with paper maps and is a good use of browser tabs to search for it.

[BurningFrog]

I've been using Google Maps since it launched, and had no idea this is how it works!

One important factor in a good UI is that it is discoverable! If you build an amazing feature but forget to inform the user about it, you've wasted the work.

[sangnoir]

I discovered this by myself - I mean, the search button is right there! I must have been in the middle of a trip & searched for something, which pops up an "Add Stop" button. I think it's pretty discoverable.

[Multicomp]

I'm glad you discovered this, but let's look at a strawman grandma: "the search bar is where you type where you want to go, therefore if I search, it will turn off my current navigation / reroute my destination to whatever I am searching for".

The above is not a foregone conclusion, but it was how I thought until I read your and parent's postings about it, and I'm a techie. For every 1 techie that doesn't know about a feature, there are 1,000 users (or something like that).

I would posit that the discover-ability difficulties are present whether someone is in a TUI or a GUI.

[sangnoir]

I'm specifically referring to the Google Maps mobile app - it doesn't have a search bar, but has buttons that come and go depending on your current context. If a button is visible in your context, you can bet it works in that context. As an example, the layer, compass and search buttons are present when you're not navigating, but once you start, the layer and compass buttons are replaced by the audio chatiness button. The search button is still present, and the implication is that its usable in my current context: that's great discoverability in my book.

[BurningFrog]

I only hit start when I start driving, and then I don't look at the screen much, since I'm driving.

If you hit start before, it starts talking a lot, and that's annoying.

To be fir, I've never really wanted this feature much, so I haven't tried to find it.

[stevelosh]

I just recorded a two minute video me of me trying to do this. Maybe it will help you understand why people like Gravis (and myself) are frustrated. The video is at http://paste.stevelosh.com/1983.webm but it's a little blurry, so I'll narrate it.

(There's a less blurry mkv at http://paste.stevelosh.com/1983.mkv for those that want it.)

I go to `maps.google.com`. The page loads a search box, with my cursor focused inside it. Then it unfocuses the search box while some other boxes pop in. Then it refocuses the search box. Is it done thrashing? Can I type yet? I wait for a few seconds. I would have already entered in my query by now in 1983. I sigh. This bodes well.

I guess it's as done as it's ever gonna be. I search for "rochester ny to montreal qc". I wait for the screen to load. It finds me a route, which is actually good. Step one done.

Now I want to find a restaurant somewhere in the middle. Let's try just browsing around. I find somewhere roughly in the middle — Watertown seems like a good place to stop.

I zoom in on Watertown. I wait for the screen to load. I look around the map and see some restaurants, so I click one. Now I want to read the reviews, so I scroll down to find the "See All Reviews" link. My scroll wheel stops working after I scroll more than an inch or two at a time, until I move it out of the left hand pane and back inside it. I sigh, wiggle my mouse back and forth repeatedly to scroll down and click on the link.

A whirl of colors — suddenly the map zooms in on the location. Why does it do this? I wanted to read the reviews, not look more closely at the map! Now that the map is zoomed in, a hundred other points of interest are suddenly cluttering the map. I wanted to read reviews about this restaurant, and suddenly 3/4 of my screen is filled with text about other places. I sigh.

I ignore the garbage now cluttering most of my screen and read some reviews. This place seems fine. I click the back arrow, then click Add Stop to add it to the route. I wait for the screen to load. Suddenly my screen whirls with color and zooms out, losing my view of Watertown. I sigh.

My trip is now 8.5 hours instead of 5.5, because it added the new stop at the end. AlphaGo can win Go tournaments, but I guess it would be too much to ask for Google to somehow divine that when I add a stop in the middle of a 5.5 hour trip, I might want to visit it on the way by default. I sigh and manually reorder the stops.

Let's also find a gas station somewhere before Montreal, because I like to get gas before I get into the city so I don't have to deal with it once I'm in. Cornwall seems like a good place to stop.

I zoom in on Cornwall. I wait for the screen to load. I don't see any gas stations markers, but that's fine, there's a button that says "Gas stations" on the left! I click it and the screen goes blank. I wait for the screen to load. I've suddenly been whisked away to downtown Montreal instead of looking around where I'm currently centered on the map. Guess I should have read the heading above the buttons first. I sigh.

I click "back to directions". I wait for the screen to load. The map does not return to where I was previously, it just zooms to show the entire route, throwing out my zoomed-in application state. I think back to Gravis' tweet of "gmaps wildly thrashes the map around every time you do anything. Any time you search, almost any time you click on anything" and I sigh.

I rezoom in on Cornwall. I wait for the screen to load. The gas station button didn't work, but surely we can search, right? I don't see a search box on the screen, so I roll the dice and hit Add Destination. This gives me a text box, so I try searching for "gas stations" and pressing enter. This apparently didn't search, but just added one particular gas station to the route. It also zoomed me back out, throwing away my previous zoomed in view.

I rezoom in on Cornwall. I wait for the screen to load. I notice the gas station it picked happens to be across the US/Canada border from the route. That clearly won't work. I sigh and remove the destination. This zooms me back out (I wait for the screen to load), throwing away my previous zoomed in view.

I rezoom in on Cornwall. I wait for the screen to load. I click Add Destination again and this time notice that when my cursor is in the box, there's a magnifying glass icon — the universal icon for "search" — right next to the X icon (which will surely close the box). It even has a tooltip that says "Search"! Aha! That was well-hidden, UI designer, but I've surely defeated you. I click the magnifying glass icon and it… closes the input box. I… what? I sigh, loudly. It has also zoomed me out, throwing away my previous zoomed in view. I wait for the screen to load.

I rezoom in on Cornwall. I wait for the screen to load. Okay, apparently I can't search to try to find routes. I guess I'll resort to browsing around the map again. I notice what looks like a gas station called "Pioneer" and click on it. Cool. But then I realize this is on a bit of a side street. Surely I can find a gas station along the main road. Let me just cancel out of this location by pressing X.

My entire route is completely gone. All that time I just spent, flushed down the toilet. To add insult to injury: this is the one time that it didn't automatically zoom me out and lose my view of the map. It just threw away all of my other state.

Fuck this. I'm with Gravis.

[maemilius]

You know, the back button works in Google Maps and does exactly what you might think it does: take you back to the state you were just in.

After you accidentally lost your route, you could have just used a built in feature of your browser to get yourself back to where you were.

EDIT: The rest of your post was entirely accurate. Google Maps is a slow, stuttery mess on literally every platform I've ever used it on recently. At least the back button works...

[stevelosh]

I guess years of using single page Javascript webapps where the back button is a complete shitshow has trained me to not even consider trying it. I'm impressed it actually works on Google Maps.