State-of-the-art analysis: Google maps

Google maps

Fredrik Schmied

Reading maps is generally a universal talent, so a map implemented into any traveling application or suchlike product comes intuitively. Google maps has centered their design around maps, naturally considering the name. Furthermore, they have implemented a fairly simple interactive panel where you can not only search for a particular location but also search for routes between two places. In addition to this, you can choose what type of transportation you prefer for any given situation. A correlation to our project is that you can choose public transportation and Google maps will give you alternate routes and some basic information about the next departure etc. You get a very informative birds-eye view of the journey you are planning for, easily being able to compare the length in time of the different alternate routes that are available. All this compared to the SL app or website which have a map implementation but one that is lacking in comparison to Google maps. The SL version, however, gives you access to a wider range of other types of information that Google maps doesn’t have (e.g traffic info, multiple departure, information about tickets etc).

For our project we decided to interview tourists, and generally we got the picture that they didn’t use the SL app, rather they used more old-fashioned methods (e.g asking around or using a physical map) or they used Google maps. Furthermore, one of our interviewees mentioned the unclarity regarding how you use the SL-card, which could either mean the information of how to use the card might be non-existent or at the least hard to find/clearly presented. Of course this data is perhaps inconclusive, since we didn’t gather more than a couple of interviews, but there might still make some sense to bridge this gap somehow, to make information about public transportation readily available without much trouble or confusion. This connects to Google maps, because usability for travelling using Google maps is limited by prior knowledge of the Stockholm public transportation system. There is clear information on how to get from point A to point B, but little to no information about details regarding the journey. Information such as where to purchase tickets, how the ticket system works, prices etc.