MAP SELECTION

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Illustration

Map selection of departure, destination and interstations in SMARTPATH City [1] using a context menu.

Context

…you want to provide versatile and easy to use functions to support users in entering DEPARTURE AND DESTINATION as well as INTERSTATIONS.

Now you want to design an easy to use means for selecting a location out of a map.

Problem statement

How can users communicate a location to the system without cumbersomely entering address information or selecting addresses out of large lists?

Problem description with forces

If users do not know an exact address but only a location in a map where they want to go to or they just do not want to cumbersomely enter an address using text entry or list selection, they need some other means for telling the system locations which should be considered for route calculation.

As locations in the map can be of different types (departure, destination, interstation), there must also be a possibility to communicate this type to the system.

Examples

As shown in the opening picture, SMARTPATH City provides a context menu to define the type of a location. This context menu pops up by pointing to a location for more than two seconds and displays different actions as well as the name of the selected object.

Falk City Guide [2] also allows selecting departure and destination through a context menu.

Unfortunately there is no indication about what location was selected.

Destinator 2.0 [3] uses a different approach for selecting destinations in a map.

In the applications menu users can use map selection to select a destination. After that a location can be selected using the finger pointer provided in the toolbar. As Destinator 2.0 does not support departure and interstation selection so this approach seems to be a good idea. But as users have to choose the option in the menu first the map selection approach is much slower and less usable than direct selection using a context menu.

Solution

Therefore:

Let users select locations like departure, destination and interstations directly out of maps.

A context menu is probably best suited for this task as there may be several different actions that can be applied to a selected object or destination.

Also show detailed information about the selected object (like name or coordinates) to let users determine if they have chosen the correct object.

A different approach could be to let the user choose the action first and after that provide a pointer to select the object. But make sure that this approach does not make map selection slower than direct selection.

Diagram

References

This is a basic pattern and has no further references in this pattern language.

Literature and Links

1. SMARTPATH City, Version 1.10 (161); http://www.navman-mobile.com/html/city-pc.htm
2. Falk City Guide CeBIT Hannover Edition, Version 1.0 (Build Mar 7 2003); http://www.falk.de
3. Destinator Version 2.0.06Fx; http://www.destinator.de