New User Feedback - UX & Feature Requests

[Fifield Nick]

As a new user, I'm still getting used to the website interface. To be honest, it needs a serious UX overhaul as several areas are not intuitive and I REALLY want to like MRA.
Anyway, please can I ask for improvements in the following areas:-

a) I plan to use the MRA mobile navigation app. From studying the manuals and videos, I understand it uses HERE for routing calcs and hence is the preferred (read as must) map format if I want things to route as intended. Why is this limitation in place?
b) I like some of the features of the other maps - openstreet and tomtom. As a new user, I don't really care which map offers which features. It should be hidden from me - abstracted away.
c) Rather than manually comparing a TomTom map/route to HERE and adding dozens of shaping points, can we have an automatic way to say "make my route like this one" ?

[Con Hennekens]

@Fifield-Nick, While most MRA users are very happy to leave Mapsource and BaseCamp as a thing of the past, and are enthusiastic about the intuitivity of the MRA planner, there are always things that can be improved. As a new user you will need to adapt to some new methods anyway. That being said, a serious overhaul of the interface is in the works as we speak. Do not expect it to be operational this year though.

a) planning in the same map as you will be navigating it in really is a nobrainer, not a limitation.
b) MRA is the ONLY tool in the world that lets you combine features of maps anyhow. "Abstracting those away" would only lead to limiting to features that are sustained by all of them.
c) Just use the "Navigate route as track" feature, that gets enabled automagically if you start a route based on OSM or TomTom maps.

[richtea999]

@Fifield-Nick said in New User Feedback - UX & Feature Requests:

...I understand it uses HERE for routing calcs and hence is the preferred (read as must) map format if I want things to route as intended. Why is this limitation in place?

I have no insider knowledge, but from the mobile app point of view (as opposed to the planning/web side), one solid reason to use the HERE platform is because it offers a Flutter API.

The cost & time of developing for both Apple AND Android is effectively halved if you use Flutter since it's effectively a single codebase.

The other reason to use HERE as a single API is just the overwehlming cost of supporting multiple routing platforms, not to mention the API purchase costs. The MRA team is small, and time & resources are tight.

I guess more success = more income in time, and that might lead to further platforms being supported in future. But let's get this one sorted first, eh.

[Fifield Nick]

@richtea999 makes sense. thanks.