Hi everyone,
Thank you for the great feedback so far. I've communicated the points that I agree with to the designer for revising, and have some final notes on things that I disagree with.
In general:
placement of the buttons will remain where you're used that the buttons are. In the designs we presented some buttons are moved around by the designer for trial purposes, but that doesn't represent final placement.
I also agree with most of the functional requests put forth by @Exilfranke, with the exception of number one (Search for Hotel). I'll write down the arguments below for such decisions though where they differ from you guys. However, in general, I agree that when the waypoint menu is in it's expanded state, it should remain so when going through waypoints. In addition, I agree that the waypoint menu shouldn't arbitrarily close.
Almost all the icons you guys didn't agree with have been edited, where I agreed with the changes. With the following exceptions:
- palette remains as it is, I've heard good things about it and hope it will come to grow on you.
- add note icon, I actually think it's quite clear that this means adding a note. It's also pretty similar to how it used to be, so I kept it like that.
These are the new icons for hotels, and setting as starting waypoint
Argument: why keep a collapsed state?
When you look at the waypoint menu in it's expanded state as an advanced MRA user you're likely to go "Ah, these are the features I need." And indeed, the features in the expanded state are very, very powerful for the advanced user.
These advanced features are even a key to MRA's success. If you use our platform daily, then you undoubtedly have collected a plethora of "favorites", you've skipped many a pesky ferry using the offroad feature, your routes contain colourful waypoints filled with informative notes, and finally you skip all the nasty rerouting issues of some satnav's with the Shaping and Via point controls. For you, these features are key to your daily experience.
However, an even larger number of people will almost never use these features. And we're glad of it. That's because if you just want to "click together" a nice route quickly, you don't need all of these features. If you had to convince someone who has never made a route before to use MRA Routeplanner, I hope you wouldn't start out with "did you know there's an off-road mode?". That's the kind of tip you leave for when someone is already as excited as a puppy.
A lot of comments aimed at our latest developments are that we shouldn't forget what we started with: the idea of a very simple routeplanner for adventurers. That cornerstone led to the collapsed waypoint menu. You have all the most important features at your fingertips, without being overwhelmed with functionality.
All in all, the collapsed waypoint menu allows us to present a set of essential, clean and user-friendly tools for editing waypoints, whilst also providing functionality for our advanced user base. As an afterthought, I'd like to add that with some tweaks to how the expanded menu operates (keeping it open when you haven't collapsed it) will probably ensure happiness among both advanced users and relative novices.
Options/unused:
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