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Comments
13 responses to “Update 15: Help test the Good Ways app on your next walk, run, wheel or ride!”
Overall my experience of using the iPhone app was very good. The layout is straightforward and intuitive, with a simple and uncluttered design.
I drew the route on the web app on a laptop. A small step-by-step guide about how to use the web app, e.g. snap to paths tool would be helpful. Particularly if it is the first time using this type of app. It was easy to go back later and edit the route created.
With the option of uploading a photo to the created route, for other websites which are crowd-sourced, such as Atlas Obscura, if a photo is uploaded, then the creator has to state the permissions for using the photo – e.g. I took the photo myself, or Creative Commons license photo.
The iphone app was easy to use once on the walk. Only a minor point, I had selected walking routes, however to start the route, the button to start said ‘Ride this route’. Once on the walk it was clear how to keep track of the route and distance covered etc.
After completing the route I answered the questions and created a review. On the route the star rating is showing (though the average star rating is not correct) and it says one review, however when I then select to open the route on the iphone app it then says no reviews and that nothing’s been posted yet. The same with notes I added, not showing on the iphone app, only on the web app. It was an easy step with the pop-up at the end of the route to review, rate and add notes.
There is a similar app for cycling in the Netherlands (https://www.fietsnetwerk.nl/), a very useful feature on that app is the option of live prompts at any junction/waymarker – a spoken instruction or alert to check the route. This saves having to keep your phone visible to check throughout a lot of the walk/ride.
It is encouraging to see the progress being made on Good Ways and I look forward to seeing the next stages of the app development.
Hi, this is just a quick note to say that I tested the app by creating a short walk (4.5 Km) on Good Ways, and then completed the walk earlier this morning.
The only issue I had was that I found creating the walk on my iPhone to be rather fiddly as everything was a bit too small to tap the location points accurately. Maybe this is because my eyesight isn’t as good as it used to be!
I therefore created the route using the website on my iPad instead, and had no problems doing so.
I used my iPhone for the walk itself and the app worked very well. It was easy to follow the route and my location was tracked accurately. The look and feel of the app was very good, so well done to all concerned!
Thanks to all the great feedback this week we have already made a bunch of improvements.
A short report from Toby!
Web App:
Limit creation of routes & places to UK/Ireland only
Accessibility fixes – I went through using keyboard-only and a screenreader and mostly it worked fine. Also colour changes for contrast. Still worth us finding people who actually need these adaptations who wouldn’t mind giving some feedback?
Thanks to Sophie: Warning users when you’re about to leave the ‘create a route’ page without saving first
Thanks to an anonymous user: Routes being drawn are now orange, not blue like most routes
Thanks to Dan: You can now invite users to be editors of public collections, before you only could to private collections
Thanks to Andrew Staplehurst: We now only show the first and last waypoint when creating a route – you can expand and collapse this
Thanks to Petr: ‘People with access: 0’ now is ‘People with access: 1’ when only you can access the route
iOS App:
Fixes to dissuade iOS from killing apps
Guard against double upload of your recordings
Add a translucent route line
Android App:
Fixes to dissuade Android from closing the app in the background
Guard against double upload
Attempt to improve the flow when you re-open the app mid-navigation
Add a translucent route line
Please keep the feedback coming!
I mostly succeeded in achieving what I wanted to achieve. It looks and feels intuitive to me.
Suggestions:
As I created many routes in the past, I guessed correctly how to start/end and create waypoints. It may be a challenge for those who are creating routes for the first time. Maybe a link to a short video explaining it would be helpful.
I didn’t quite get what the question “Did you use anything else to help you make this route?” I had Google maps displayed on another tab but I didn’t know how to categorize it in my answer.
When I edited privacy and sharing settings, I was confused when I published it but saw “People with access: 0”. How can it be 0?
I could edit the route which was good but if a note or a review refers to a previous version of the route, should the route that was commented upon not be retrievable?
When one searches for a route on the map and the resolution is very low, the route(s) are almost imperceptible. Would it not be better to display a pointer e.g. to the middle of the route when the resolution is low and show the full route only when the resolution is high enough?
Hey Petr,
Thank you for taking the time to leave us some feedback. I’m glad that in general, we’ve managed to make the platform feel intuitive enough despite being early on in the development!
The aim of this early version is to lay the foundations to do something brilliant. This means that, at the moment, it may look and feel like a lot of other apps. It’s a really good point that those who have created routes before may find it a lot more intuitive to use, but we want Good Ways to help anyone create and follow routes, not just those already good at it! I’ll pass your comments on to our designer, who’s currently drawing up designs for the web app, and we’ll continually review how easy things are to create. Once the designs are done, having a short video explainer sounds like a wonderful idea. Thank you!
Sorry to hear about the confusion around using Google Maps. We want to ensure people only share information they are allowed to, without needing an in-depth understanding of different licences data is released under. We’ll keep working on the wording here to make sure it’s clear.
On sharing, I can see why that’s confusing, and it gave me a good chuckle – it should read ‘People with access who aren’t you: 0’. I’ll have a play around and come up with something much clearer.
Versioning of routes is very interesting – we haven’t yet got on to this, but we’ll absolutely consider how a new route version affects feedback given on an older ersion.
We’ve got some ongoing work to display routes clearer on maps, including grouping similar routes and making it clear how many routes there are when viewing at lower resolutions. I’ll pass on your comments and we’ll use them as part of the solution.
Thank you again for your suggestions, and for helping us build the best platform we can!
Had a similar problem trying to comment on a review with a photo. Stillness sure if it has uploaded.
Tried posting a review with a photo and got this:
Edit review
Please fix the following errors:
Images[0].uuid: The images.0.uuid does not reference a valid pending jpeg/png/webp upload.
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Great for bird watching if you go via the Walthamstow Wetlands.
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Walthamstow Wetlands
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Andrew Staplehurst
Just checked, and my review (and photo) seems to have been posted anyway.
I’ve been playing around with the web app on my android phone and tablet. A few issues so far:
– when you are in explore mode, then view a route, then press Back, you go right back to the first explore page, with all the filters re-set.
‐ when you are on the main explore start page, you have to remember to re-select the main filter (“walking”, “running” etc.) each time, before “find me a route” will work.
– it would be good if you didn’t have to set this main “mode” filter each time you revisit that page. Default to “walking”, or a user-selected alternative would be really useful.
– Main gripe so far: When editing a route that you have posted, all the waypoints appear listed first (and there could be hundreds), before the metadata (name, tags etc.). This means you often have to scroll madly through all the waypoints before getting to the information you want to edit.
On the plus side:
– Creating new routes, whether importing or drawing in the web app, was really straightforward
– adding comments, notes, flags etc to routes was quite straightforward
– It looks really good.
More comments later when I have tried the android app.
Hi Andrew,
Thank you for having a look at the web app, I’m glad you mostly enjoyed using it and found it straightforward to use!
I understand what you mean about the main explore page – it feels like it could be a lot smoother if it remembered your filters. I’ll spend some time today investigating a solution that makes exploring our routes that much easier.
All waypoints appearing listed first is a really good point. It’s something I’ve got very used to, so I stopped seeing it as a problem. We can collapse those now to make it a little easier, and in the future look at ways to make the whole process feel more seamless.
I’ve also seen the issues you’ve had uploading photos, we’ll get that fixed asap.
Thanks again for your feedback!
Thanks for fixing the waypoints listing issue. That is much better now.
First feedback:
What I was trying to do – create an account on the web app
What actually happened – it says last name (optional), implying the last name is optional. But if I leave it empty it says:
“Please fix the following errors:
Last name: last_name cannot be null”
This was on the web app, so phone type not applicable here.
Hi Sophie,
Thank you for the feedback – I’d like to say we put this here to test if people were paying attention, but in reality it was definitely just an oversight on our end.
We’ve fixed this now, so leaving the last name blank will work as expected. Thanks again for catching that!
Toby