Apple Maps and 3D

So since I last posted here there has been a lot of to and fro about 3D in mobile maps.  I won't get into discussing the Google vs Apple rivalry as this has been well discussed elsewhere .  What I'm interested in is what is the long term value of 3D on maps.  Consider this video



it shows two 3D features I want to discuss here, 3D full color and 3D grey blocks.   I've discussed these issues before but its worth revisiting considering the new Apple example.   The full color IMHO is just showy, I can't see people pulling up this kind of imagery on their mobile devices whilst on the move, its just too visually complex.  I think everyone is going to play with it when they first see it on a device and then revert to something more visually simple when completing navigation tasks.

The more interesting feature is the 3D gray blocks.  Of course these aren't an Apple breakthrough, they've been on Google maps for a while:



Gray blocks for buildings (either of the Google or Apple variety) are visually simpler than full colored buildings and so may form an extra layer of information which users can use to navigate with.  I think the simple Apple gesture needed to make 3D snap on or off is good, this may make it something users can turn on when they are on the move and think it could help them navigate.

However, I think the buildings examples used in the demo had distinctive shapes so the grey blocks view looks very effective.  The feature may be much less use in a more normal city scape where building shapes are squarer and much more uniform.  So for navigating around a city, I'm yet to be convinced 3D gray blocks are a game changer.  And of course, out of the city, the feature really loses its value as buildings big enough to act as landmarks are much rarer.

More interesting is when navigation moves indoors, then shape of rooms and corridors becomes much more important for navigation IMHO.

oMaps, Google Map edits and Google Map Update

Back from my break, had a great time in New Zealand and Australia although my brain still isn't quite in gear again.  Today I've three topics to discuss:

Off 3G Mobile Map use:  While I was away, my iPhone 4 was invaluable for navigating around.  Of course download fees on 3G outside of the UK for me are a daylight robbery so I limited myself to picking up data via WiFi hotspots.  There are two techniques I used:

• Google Maps:  Navigate to the place you are going whilst on WiFi, so long as you have cached all the data you need, when you're moving in city the blue locator works and you can navigate around as normal.  However, if you only stay on one zoom level whilst on WiFi you can't zoom in when you're on the ground - only the zoom levels you've cached are available.  
• OMaps:  The OMaps App on iPhone works with OSM data and allows you to define an area and cache all the tiles at all levels prior to getting there.  Its a bit fiddly, the tiles don't download quickly and you have to get the balance right between getting a big enough map and defining an area that's large with an unreasonable download time.  Once you're through these hoops its very useful.

Google on the Ball:  After my recent critique of Google/Bing/OSM maps with respect to the UK Houses of Parliament and Clapham Junction train station Google updated their symbolisation (discussed in more detail below) in both areas.  I suspect the changes to Clapham Junction were part of a broader update but the changes to the symbolisation of the Houses of Parliament look like they are a reaction to my comments and work much better.  That sort of reaction is impressive.

I just checked Bing Maps, no change to their map.   

Google Maps Update:  In the UK, Sweden, Germany and Finland Google have just added a major update to their map.  They point out in the post that map data has improved in terms of 

• Water bodies 
• Parks

After a quick glance at the UK map I also note some other changes I think they've made:

View Larger Map

• More detailed train lines and a change in symbolisation to dashed lines (see above)

View Larger Map

• Parkland, common land, university campuses, cemeteries are marked by different colored polygons (see above)

More data on a map obviously adds to its value but if the symbolisation is not well thought out you can get problems with visual clutter.  I'll be discussing this update in terms of map usability in a later post.

3D buildings as Landmarks in Mobile Maps

Maps and City Navigation: Today I’m going to be looking at ways of including buildings as landmarks for user’s trying to navigate an urban landscape.  How important are landmarks for navigation and recall?  its relevant that memory champions who can memorize the sequence of a deck of cards in a minute use spatial landmarks as a system to aid their recall:  The memory palace technique has the user walking through a building well known to them imagining vivid tableaus such as a moonwalking Einstein (the title of an excellent book on memory) happening in different rooms.  The technique taps into our spatial memory system and shows how powerful landmarks can be. 

Google’s 3D buildings as Landmarks:  As an example I really like google's 3D buildings in google maps (see above, bottom screen shot). In a city scape the buildings can carry important landmark information for users trying to orient themselves using a map on a mobile device. A 'you are here' marker from GPS readings can make such orientation irrelevant but cities can cause a GPS trouble because of the 'urban canyon' effect so landmarks are still important.

You could choose to put full color 3D buildings onto a mobile device map as landmarks but this has issues that are useful to consider: 

1. Device processing time: full color models would slow the device down, the data bandwidth needed is very demanding. 
2. Visual processing: full color 3D can be complex for the user to process cognitively, for instance the color and structure of the buildings would make it more difficult to see the road pattern below.
3. Bird’s eye View:  For way finding, the bird’s eye view of a building is often not its most salient feature visually.  It is often the view from the pavement (sidewalk for US readers) like the colorful facade of the building or the grand doorway that provides the memorable image a user can latch onto (see top part of image above which relates to the location shown on the map).  

Google’s gray, plain rendering of buildings in 3D is a good solution to the first two issues but fails on the third.


Interesting 2D Alternative: Another way of including buildings in maps so they can be used as landmarks is to use photos.  A photo of an interesting building from road level at a node (road junctions or other important route points) mimics streetview functionality but pulls out the best landmark features of the view at that node (see top part of the image above which is taken from the streetview image of the map below). When a user trying to navigate a city reached such a junction and had a choice of routes she could locate herself using the building photo.  IMHO this addresses the three problems listed above but unfortunately it introduces another issue:  what makes a good visual landmark requires human input whereas Google’s gray building layer can be produced automatically.

Interesting 3D Alternative: A second alternative is to move into sub 3D view as illustrated above. Selected buildings at nodes are shown, they are rendered in gray at an enlarged scale (from a post by Digital Urban )

If you follow the link to the post you can also see the image placed into a zoomable Google Maps interface but at a 45 degree angle, this has a lot of potential for navigation but it has issues:

• Plan View: A plan view is better for viewing roads
• Single Direction View: You can only see the building from one compass angle direction (North Eastwards in the above image).  Often from ground level it’s a street level feature like a large doorway that is most salient to the viewer.  Unlike features such as the Gherkin (the torpedo building in the above image) a model of a doorway doesn’t make any sense viewed from the wrong direction.  

Usability of 3D maps in Navigation:  Related to our discussion of 3D in navigation, the comments on this post of mine about a 3D map of Southampton University's campus are interesting:  they suggest that 3D may be causing usability problems for those who are not familiar with maps .

Conclusion: Google have to provide a base map for any journey that their journey planner may suggest to a user that works on a mobile device.  Overall, I think their current solution is arguably the best given the need to produce their maps automatically and addressing the three issues I list above.  Where it would be worth trying out the alternatives I've suggested in this post would be a map for a particular route e.g. a map informing people how to get from a particular train station to a museum.

Usability of GeoData: Sat Nav Example

In my review of the Google maps public transport route calculator recently the major problem I found was that overland trains, a major and quick form of transport in London, were left out.  This is an issue of the usability of data and I recently came across another transport example.

I happened to drive across central London recently as I had to pick up a bike.  If you don't know London that well, this really is a last resort transport solution as our streets are complex and crowded.  I was lent an Android HTC phone to navigate with as it had a Google Maps Navigtion app.  Apart from driving in London being terrifying if you're not used to it (as I'm not) the app worked well.  Some positive notes:

• Voice prompts allowing you to keep your eyes on the road
• Free rather than over $100 for TomTom on the iPhone.  Thanks Google!
• Dynamic Rerouting when I went wrong, it rerouted me which is very helpful though its been possible on all the sat navs I've used to date.
• One Way Streets: It had data on which roads were one way and which weren't, a common problem in London.  It incorporated this into its journey calculation flawlessly.  

Some things I didn't like:

• Voice Prompts on demand:  I'd prefer to have voice prompts on demand, there were times when it told me information I didn't need and other times where I was wondering where to go that I wanted to make it give me an update.  Maybe it could talk when you touch the screen?  This would mean your eyes could remain on the road.
• Restricted Turns Data: It didn't have a complete data base of the restricted turns in London (it may have none of this information).  Its common in my home city that even though a street is not one way you are not allowed to turn right or left at a junction.  

The second of these is the more serious.  On the way out I encountered the problem and got away with it.  However, on the return journey I got lost and into some tiny medieval streets in London city.  I totally lost my bearings, the app found me a route but it wanted me to turn left at a junction where it was forbidden.  I drove away trying to find my way around the problem but being completely lost, I ended up coming in a big circle and found myself being instructed to turn left at the same restricted junction for the second time.  I was tired and confused and I have never sworn so loudly at an inanimate object in my life as that poor HTC phone when I got to that junction for the second time.

Conclusion:  Its common that usability issues with web maps come from the interface or symbolisation, what I hope I've shown here is that if the data isn't complete, they can come from the data too.  

Weasley Clock as Tube Map?

This post is about how we can improve on a normal map to show the members of a work team where everyone is in real time.

Introduction: One of the most fun of the magical items in the Harry Potter world is the Weasley clock .

It shows the general location of all family members with a hand for each family member  (the photo above shows a mock up with not enough hands).  Various hackers have had fun building real non-magical versions.

Whereabouts Clock: Back in 2006 the basic idea was taken by Microsoft and developed to an actual device which showed location of workers in their team to each other.  It proved popular with the team who liked being able to see where people were at a glance and found it useful to see who was in the building.  Key characterstics:

• It was an actual physical device and was always on
• It used a weasley clock analogy with people's icons moving between 'home', 'in the building' and 'out'
• Worked off SMS checkins
• Only available for the work group, e.g. could not be shared with family groupings.

Google+ and Latitude:  This post from the 'about Foursquare' blog notes that the Google+ circles idea and Google latitude checkins is a powerful way to share 'where am I' information without running into privacy issues.  E.g. it allows me to checkin to a supermarket so that my girlfriend knows I'm doing some shopping whilst not telling my boss because it's during work hours.

The Whereabouts Clock appears to have never been developed beyond the original concept.  Recent developments in Google+, Latitude and mobile devices leads me to think it's a concept that is worth revisiting.  In the rest of this post I'll look at the problem purely from the visualisation and usability angles and produce a mock up of the main interface for a smart phone app.  There would be a lot of work necessary on the technical side to make my ideas work but having a workable visualisation system is the core problem IMHO.

Work Journey Tube map:  My solution is to suggest a single train or tube line map analogy for displaying the information.  I've actually taken the background of the screenshot from a train journey planner app I have on my iPhone.  This design comes from the idea that for a work team the key information is knowing where a person is on the usual home to work route*.  In the UI sketch above, what were the train stations have been replaced with specific locations (Home desk, Office desk) but also with general areas (on campus, in transit.  Strictly 'in transit' isn't an area but it is really:  The space I move through to get from home to University Campus).

Description: Team members are represented by colored blobs, their smart phones are tracking their position and converting that into general information for the visualisation, the arrows represent direction of movement of each team member.  Jim is at his desk and his smart phone (or login from desk computer) predicts he is not moving at the moment.  Dave is on campus and has just reached the Shackleton building and is coming in.  Meanwhile I (Rich) have just got off the bus and am on campus heading to the Shackleton building.  Sam is somewhere else than his work route in the UK.

By clicking 'Rich' the screen displays my estimated time of arrival at various locations (blue text), shows my annotation saying what I am doing (yellow box left) and grays out the stations I've come through

Key Information and Outward links: The visualisation offers key information on one screen, users would have no interest in where I am in Hampshire on my normal train journey, they just want to know I'm on the train headed to work.   However, they are interested in fine grained data such as am I at my desk or elsewhere in the Shackleton building.  Other information such as where I am on campus if not in the Shackleton building can be accessed by clicking on the map button bottom left which will link to a standard latitude map visualisation.  The calendar icon (bottom) links to the team calendar since the ability to schedule a meeting will often be wanted if a team member is not immediately available.

But is it a Map?  I would argue that it is because it is showing locational information.  It just happens to do it in a highly stylised manner. Like the tube map it warps real space as a way to improve clarity in terms of line length, however, it goes one step further as it takes polygons of a large variety of sizes and represents them as one 'station'.  On the tube map this would be the equivalent of grouping together  a number of stations and representing them as one.

Provisos:  I think the idea will appear in some form or the other in the future but there are a number of conditions that need to be met some of which I discuss below:

• Mobile Devices:  Obviously the system needs data input from smart devices so the whole team will need them.  The data input could be from check ins or from passive tracking.  I think there is every reason to expect the vast majority of people to have smart phones in the next few years.
• Can I track you?:  As with many social network technologies, this one requires a critical mass of people to be using it for it to really take off.  To start using it people would have to be happy with people tracking them.  At the moment I think most people would have reservations but just as 'I don't want to be contactable all the time' was a common moan about mobile (cell) phones when they became common in the 90's I suspect over time people will come to accept broadcasting their location provided they have control over the data.  Google+ circles provides just the sort of system.
• Model: If the system incorrectly predicted my movements you can imagine that users would soon abandon it, the model that predicts my movements needs to be smarter than just calculating that I am travelling towards my work desk therefore I am likely to end up to it as I may just happen to be walking from meeting to meeting and heading in a general deskward direction.  The model therefore needs a certain sophistication and it could be a complex problem to solve.  It could be mostly solved by tracking people for a month and using a combination of calendars and previous journey data to predict movements.

And Finally: One aspect of the Weasley clock was not a location at all, it was  'mortal peril'.  I doubt that could be incorporated on my map anytime soon.  

*This assumes that as in my work place, people work from home a lot.

Point Clustering Usability Example

Intro: A number of times before (1, 2) I’ve discussed point clustering maps. I thought it would be useful to present an actual case study of a mobile app* that makes use of clustering to explain why I think the technique has problems from a usability point of view.  

Herd of Sheep Problem: Clustering maps have appeared as a solution to an old cartographic problem: If you have too many points on screen they overlap each other producing a map that looks like a herd of sheep has wandered over it (particularly if you use white markers as below).

Barclay's bike hire Stations map in Zoomed out view   

The Technique: The clustering solution involves sorting points into groups, each group then gets a maker (usually a circle) which is labelled with the number of points in the group.  This reduces the total number of markers rendered on screen.  As the user zooms in on an area big groups break up into smaller groups.  At a low altitude  the point icons themselves separate out from the groups.  

Boris Bike Example: My case study is the London Cycle App for the iPhone which shows in real time where Boris Bikes (aka 'Barclays Bikes') can be hired from.  Bikes can be picked up from a large number of docking stations and the app is very useful as bike stations often become empty as a typical day progresses.  The app needs to deal with the herd of sheep problem, the screenshot above is actually the bike stations it needs to visualise, it does this using group clustering.  We'll discuss the map's symbolization at high and medium zoom levels and compare that to the needs of an imaginary user who's using the app to find a bike to hire for a trip into town.

High Alitude Zoom:  At this viewpoint we see two cluster circles which show how many bikes are available for hire in two groups (repeated 3 times below).

High Altitude View with different possible group catchments.

The major usability issue here is that the catchment areas that the groups have been created from are not visible.  Any of the dotted catchment areas I've added in the three screenshots above are possible.  This is an issue for our user for two reasons:

• Where are the bikes?  It isn't possible for our user to know precisely where the 230 and 178 bikes are so how can she know where to head to?
• Density:  Knowing the total number of bikes in a group isn't as useful to her as knowing the density of bikes per square km.  For example, if the centre map catchments applied she'd be sensible to head for the 230 group SW of Islington but if the right hand map catchments apply the 178 group may well be a better bet as it has less bikes but in a much smaller area.

Overlap?  Not knowing the catchments of the cluster groups isn't a complete fail, its just unnecessarily vague. However, what is clearly a serious problem is the group circles overlapping.  That's plainly confusing for our imaginary user, it has no meaningful interpretation that I can think of.

Alternatives:  I think that both heat maps and grid density maps (below) are better solutions to the herd of sheep problem in this context as they communicate the data as density of bikes rather than total count.

Alternatives: heat map of house prices (bottom) Grid map of mobile web coverage (top) from this BBC site).  Boundary is of the whole bike scheme.

 (Note that I didn't have the time to create actual maps of the data we're discussing, these are maps of different data sets over London but they illustrate the techniques).  

High Zoom Best Alternative: No Data  My solution to the head of sheep problem is not heat or grid maps and is shown below:

its slightly counter intuitive but I've come to it by thinking about what the user actually needs.  She's probably getting into London by public transport and therefore knows the rough area that she wants to pick up a bike from.  My reasoning is that at this zoom level, the data is actually a visual distraction, what she really wants is to see landmarks so she can zoom in on her chosen area.  The bike availability is best kept off screen until she has zoomed in   You can see I've used three landmark layers above:

• Boundary: A polygon showing the boundary of the area covered by the Boris bike scheme 
• Big Train Stations: The location of a number of mainline train stations.  Not only are these well known landmarks in London but a large number of people wanting to pick up bikes will be arriving here (red pins).
• Bike Stations: The location of the bike stations themselves (blue circles)*

Medium Zoom: As the user zooms in from the High Altitude Zoom view, the two big clusters resolve into smaller groups (below left).

Medium zoom screenshot (left) and suggested alternative (right) created by screen capture from excellent oobr's bike share map

With each further progression down the zoom levels the number of clusters, their size and their location changes.  This change of symbolization proved highly confusing to users.  My PhD student Craig did some user tests on a similar visualization, his observations show that users expected that the circles would persist across zoom levels - some even said they wanted to use them as landmarks and were very put out when they disappeared from the screen!  

Medium Zoom, Improved View (above, right):  At this zoom level, by reducing circle size, its actually possible to present circles representing all the bike stations with color coding showing where bikes are available (red = lots available, blue = few, circle size = number of docking points at each bike station).  Our user can probably locate a station to head for without having to zoom in further, a good usability gain plus she avoids the problems of changing symbolization outlined above.  The alternative map isn't optimized for an iPhone screen but I think you can see my point.

Conclusion:  My suggestions for improvements to the bike app screen shots at high and medium zoom levels involve not using a clustering technique at all. They could be combined as an complete alternative to the app; at high zoom levels the user sees just landmarks, when she zooms on her chosen area the map view switches to the medium zoom visualization illustrating bike availability. This alternative app would;

• Avoid multiple confusing changes of symbolization with zoom (the most important advantage)
• Avoid cluster circle overlaps
• Avoid obscuring the view of the map by big cluster circles at high altitude zoom levels 
• Show landmarks to aid effective zooming in
• Show the user bike location data precisely - the user only sees bike availability at each station, there is no ambiguity created by grouping stations.  
• Present the user with bike availability at the highest zoom level meaning she doesn't need to zoom in unnecessarily.  

I don't think this technique of avoiding point clustering completely would work in all situations but in the case of the Boris Bike app, I think it's the best solution.

Further Testing:  My PhD student Craig is going to be comparing the usability of alternatives such as the heat and grid map to the cluster circles in the future.  So far preliminary results show there are serious issues with point clusters but also that there are issues with the alternatives as well.

*I've got the boundary of the Boris Bike scheme and the station points wrong in some screenshots but I haven't corrected it because I'm short on time at the moment and it doesn't impact the discussion.

London Transport Maps: Google, Bus Mapper and TFL

Google recently released a Public Transport Directions in London mapping tool as part of Google Maps.  I thought it would be good to compare it to other London transport services (Transport for London and Busmapper) and discuss the usability in terms of UI, symbology, data and mobile use.

Transport for London: up to now the only transport directions tool covering multiple transport types (that I've come across anyhow) has been transport for London (TFL). Although it produces a zoomable map in the results you can't input your start and end points by creating points on a map.  Also, the output map is small on the screen surrounded by adverts and other chart junk elements I don't want to see (see screen grab below):

not that user friendly - I want to be able to expand the map easily and enter points directly onto it.

Google Maps:  The new Public Maps transport directions answers both of my criticisms of TFLs website; you can click to define points, type in post codes (UK zip codes) or type in other place identifiers to define your start and end points directly.  You can also expand the map easily and it already covers most of the page with no ads.  Neat!

User Interface - Adding Start/End isn't Easy: Whilst the expand screen arrow (actually termed 'hide panel') is pretty self explanatory it's not obvious how to add points to the map.  Expected behavior: two pins icons to be available in the control panel with some micro text saying 'drag to define trip'.  What you actually have to do is right click on the map and choose 'start journey' or 'end journey'.  Bus Mapper does it much better with some simple 'click twice' text advice.  See me do it in the clip below

(note that the orange circles denote a click but were added by my screen recorder).

Symbology:  Moving on from the UI to symbology, there is some good work in this service but also some aspects I hope Google sort out soon.  Discussion refers to the above screen shot or you can open the original map.  To reproduce the view above, turn on the transit layer and create pins as outlined above.

• I like the angled labels (e.g. the label behind the green 'A' pin).  These enable a point to be labelled without overlying a nearby marker/label, unfortunately it seems the service isn't programmed to deliver this functionality.  For example, in the bottom right - the start (A) label could be separated from the 295 bus label if the angle went towards the bottom left rather than the top right.  
• Label Lines not Points: While we're still talking about the labels it's counter intuitive that they point to bus stops rather than lines.   For example, in the screen shot the 295 bus route is shown as a blue line but its not labelled 295, the label points to the bus stop at the end.  
• Colors for travel modes: Its useful that walking and transport are different colors (black and translucent blue respectively).  It would be nice to see different symbols for the lines for different travel modes, the tube line colours are known by most Londoners but I think this would get confusing because the suggested route would get mixed up with tube lines and other on screen elements.

Data - Missing Overland Train Info: The major problem I have with the transit map is that it misses out overland trains, on the map these appear as orange lines.  As an example, for the trip in the screen shot its actually much better to walk to Clapham Junction (covered by 295 label), then go by overland train to Kensington Olympia (East of Kensington) and then walk the last section.  Google not only doesn't include that mode of transport - it doesn't even tell you its not using it.   Not a fail but pretty serious problem for a journey planner - you could easily double your journey time as a result of not knowing about the overland route (buses can be very slow in London).

Mobile:  Comparing the Google map on my Mac to that on the iPhone there are a couple of things that stand out:

• Consistency:  Why is the transport line blue on the Mac but purple on the iPhone?  It's not a huge issue but I can't see any reason not to get the colors spot on.

• Step Through: When you have the route calculated Google Maps has a really nice feature that allows you to step through the directions.  A purple circle (see above) shows the transfer point and clicking the arrow (top right) steps you through the complete route animating the circle from transfer to transfer and automatically moving the screen.  Very slick and easy to use.
• You Are Here:  Where the Google mobile map thrashes transport for London mobile enabled website is the blue 'you are here' indicator.  It's very useful for travelling, you don't necessarily know where you are when you start a trip so typing in a name or post code is difficult, much better to use the blue marker and drop a pin on the map.  Not having a decent map interface leaves transport for London dead in the water IMHO. 

Conclusion:  I haven't reviewed other transport apps for the iPhone in researching this review so there maybe services better than Google Maps transport for London out there.  Up to now I've been using transport for London and Google Maps is a huge improvement on that especially on the iPhone.  That being said, Google have work to do, I'd suggest adding the overland train routes is a priority.