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Comment by com2kid | Hacker News Reader

I hope it actually starts showing street names when zooming in. When using Google Maps for pedestrian navigation, having street names show up rather arbitrarily can be a huge problem, I've had times when I was unable to find out what street I was on due to visual design overriding usability concerns.

This is most applicable in cities that don't feel the need to place street signs all that often, which is another issue altogether!

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Oh my god I went into the comments section to post exactly this! It makes me curious how they determine when to show a street name. Honestly, all I want is at all times the center of my screen should show its street name. That's it. Sometimes I find myself zooming in and out of the very center of my screen and it refuses to show the street. Instead it shows the names of nearby streets I don't care about. Sometimes I'm on the damn street and I just want to know what street I'm currently on. It really does feel arbitrary.

This happens in the real world frustratingly often too. Many cities will have huge streets that intersect each other, and at that intersection, there will be no signs. No street signs at all to tell you what intersection you're at, despite being at perhaps the largest and most used intersection in the city. It's infuriating.

It's especially awful when people try to give directions based on crossroads and stuff. "Drive on Main until you get to water street then turn." then water street isn't marked. or "It's at the crossroads of 46th and main" then 46th isn't marked so you have to find 43rd and count three streets forward. You'd think that would be one of their base duties.

Hudson county, NJ takes that a step further (especially in the West New York/Guttenberg area): E/W streets are numbered, crossed by a dozen or so named N/S Avenues/Boulevards. OK so far. But in some areas there aren't any street signs for those names, just "local" street names (which, by the way, usually aren't visible on maps) in both directions.

Or if they do have signs, they are positioned up high, easy to see from a car but very hard to see as a pedestrian.

This is my bane. Or they only have them facing the directions cars come from so that there's a 50% chance you can see one as a pedestrian without going well out of your way.

I think Los Angeles is the only city I've seen that actually manages this pretty well. Major streets have signs hanging in the middle of the street, large signs and reliably placed. https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Burton+Way+%26+S+Doheny...

Smaller streets have smaller signs, but also fairly reliably placed https://www.google.com.au/maps/place/Burton+Way+%26+S+Doheny...

King County in Washington State is pretty good about having street signs on corners. I'd say 95% of the time they are findable, the size is a bit small, but overall they are quite usable and the names are printed on both parts of the sign and, baring trees, visible from all four corners, finding the cross street if you are a pedestrian walking down on the same side of the sidewalk as the sign is the worst case.

I've seen the signage fall apart at the more complicated intersections though. But then again, labeling 3 left turns probably isn't an easy task to be charged with, as a driver I am not always sure what sort of signage I'd want in those situations. (I swear I've seen some intersections where they just gave up though)

It doesn't even seem to prefer labeling streets that are on a route given to you when searching directions. This also baffles me, they seem to prefer visual balance and aesthetics over usability.

This is really annoying and occasionally dangerous (if you're in an situation where you don't to look lost or have your phone out longer than you need to).

The other thing I find really annoying is that you can't touch landmarks for more information while in navigation mode. A lot of times I'm on a long walk and want to know if it's worth detouring for a business that's a few blocks off the route, and the only way I've found to do so is exiting navigation mode, clicking, then re-entering my destination.

When I first lived in Chicago, this was _awful_. Even with Chicago's grid system, Google maps would only show like every 3rd street or something--even when zoomed in as much as possible. Not knowing the city, I'd frequently go the exact _opposite_ way intended because I'd incorrectly remember "oh wells st is between these two..." when in fact it was between the two streets on the opposite side I was headed. I'm pretty decent with directions in general, but this often led to many extra miles being walked.

that's google fitness built into google maps

I know it's not perfect, but I have found that dropping a pin on a street with no name shown, is a pretty easy way to find out what it's called.

Clever! I will have to try that.

All electronic maps use heuristics to show street names because otherwise the map would be too visually cluttered. They tend to show the major streets and a few non major ones and change based on zoom level.

I mean for you use case they should perhaps have a subtitle which is “currently on street X” but I definitely don’t want my maps cluttered with overfitting this concern and jam packing it.

Not OP but I wish you could at least easily tap a street to see its name, or quickly toggle to show all street names even if it makes the map ugly.

Which would mean adding yet another toggle for showing all street names, or adding touch points on every street for showing the name. All of that would easily overload the user interface.

I'd guess that the team probably took all of that in consideration, and the "I need to know every street name" use case was too rare to justify cluttering the small screen with names.

I think the solution is simply to show the street name when the zoom is at certain level. In that case, there is no clutter.

The problem is, sometimes not even zooming in enough that only one street fills the screen, its name will be displayed. Of course no one's asking for all street names to be displayed while zoomed out.

I've worked on more than my share of mapping systems in my life (disclaimer: I have not worked on Google Maps). The behavior you describe could very well be explained as follows: Many map data sets store, along with the geometry for the roads and points of interest, pre-baked positions at which the street names may be rendered. The map will never render a street name (or highway number) in a place other than where these candidate points are. In order to de-clutter, the mapping system simply selectively turns on or off these labels--it is not smart enough to move them around. So what you are likely seeing is: You zoomed into a stretch of road where no pre-baked candidate positions for the street name exist.

The whole point of a map is to show as much information as possible, with as much density as possible, so you can get all that info.

Nope, the point of a map is to display the information you want to know, which is a subset of all information.

A map should show you the information you need, and hopefully look nice while doing so.

I strongly disagree with your position, which seems to be that a map should look nice, and hopefully show you the information you need while doing so.

The best compromise would be to add a slider somewhere to let the user determine what's "too cluttered." But the trend is toward taking as many decisions as possible out of the user's hands, and I'd be amazed if future Maps updates move the product in any other direction.

My ideal interface decision would be actual switch (like between regular and topographical maps) that would turn off all the commercial shit and turn the map to a map, with building numbers and street names.

> All electronic maps use heuristics to show street names because otherwise the map would be too visually cluttered. They tend to show the major streets and a few non major ones and change based on zoom level.

There are situations (not that uncommon in my experience) where you can zoom in all the way and Google maps will not show some street names.

It gets really infuriating, I am using a map, I want to know where I am at! That is one of the primary value props of having a map. I get that a lot of people can't even read maps now days, and that turn by turn directions are the norm, but in cities where people actually walk, being able to look at a map is very useful.

I've had times where I'd ask friends where they are at, and they could NOT get Google maps to tell them! Instead they had to resort to giving me a nearby store, and I'd use Google maps to navigate to that store. A serious design fail in grid based cities, where if I just knew they were on 73rd st and 142nd ave, I could just walk a few blocks over and find them instantly.

Once I see the route on Google maps I can close it down and just walk there, but I shouldn't have to cajole my maps app into being a map.

Or the other annoying case: street name will be shown (underneath route information if you're going somewhere) at one level, but then disappears when you zoom in further to make it actually readable.

I agree that online zoomable maps often have trouble with labeling, but my problem is just as often with too many labels: https://i.imgur.com/Z4FFdzS.png

I'll take that over missing labels any day.

Hard to believe we can write programs to defeat 9-dan Go professionals but not to avoid printing "Northlake Way Northlake Way Northlake Way Northlake Way Northlake Way Northlake Way Northlake Way" on a map.

I understand that maps are hard. But they are also important.

Boston :(

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