Dear community,

As promised to some of our members I've reached out to Sygic to try and see if we can work out a fix for recent connectivity issues with Sygic and MRA mobile.

Kind regards,

Timo

Attention community,

We’re happy to announce a major feature release as we work towards Roadmap milestone 1.2. For those unfamiliar with that term: the Roadmap outlines all of our development efforts relating to MRA Routeplanner, encompassing 10 clearly defined milestones.

Today we celebrate the full release of our new Roundtour Generator and a reworked routelab.

This is a historic moment, because the new Roundtour Generator was designed from the ground up with input from our community. Not only did over sixty-eight thousand people help us in deciding that the Roundtour Generator was to be a priority, over twenty-four thousand people provided input in a questionnaire to aid in designing the roundtour generator. By involving the community we created a democratic and representative basis for decisionmaking. In that same spirit, the core functionality of the new Roundtour Generator is also available for all MRA Routeplanner Basic members.

Some features of the Roundtour Generator will follow at a later date, though before the finalization of 1.5. These include route themes (plan a roundtour around a coastline or through a valley of castles) and further avoidance filters. The reason for this is that these features require more design and development and tie into our ambitions for revisiting the general routeplanning area as well.

In addition to the new Roundtour Generator we’re launching the re-envisioned Routelab. A no-nonsense starting point where the goal is to get you back to your favorite parts of MRA Routeplanner designed to be both recognizable for existing members whilst ensuing a modern, premium look-and-feel.
Special thanks go out to the RouteXperts and MRA Ambassadors, who have provided insight and input in fine-tuning this polished release.
As always with new software, there might be a nasty little bug or two that escaped our squashing efforts. Please let us know if you encounter anything that shouldn’t happen.

May great adventures lie ahead of you,

Your Community Manager,

Timo

Dear members of the MRA Community,

For those of you who have been around for some time, you'll know me as the Community Manager. Our original members might even remember that in 2013 I started at this company in the role of UI/UX designer/creative lead.

Since late 2020 I've been in talks with our management regarding my future in the MyRoute-app team. I strongly believe that transparency, openness and a constructive attitude towards all problems that a small company might deal with are keys to success. Over the past two years I've grown to become a driver for the further organizational maturity of our company (on which I even wrote a blog back in 2019), day-to-day coordination of activities and point of contact for our wide variety of partners.

These are among the reasons that it was time for a formal change of role, as my responsibilities and mandate have grown far beyond the limitative definition of community management. That's why since the first of june 2021 I have been apointed as the first Chief Operating Officer (COO) of MyRouteApp B.V.. With this new formal mandate I will continue our quest for company growth, team fullfillment and community satisfaction. As our team is still relatively small, I'll retain some of the responsibilities I had as the community manager for the time being while we reevaluate how we want to fulfull this role in the future. Other responsibilities have been documented and transferred. As such, I will remain active on the forum, to engage with each and every user for as long as possible as I strongly believe this place to be the true driver of success for MyRoute-app.

Hoping to provide you with ever improving services for many years to come,

Kind regards,

Timo Martosatiman
Chief Operating Officer

Hi Greenham, you're clearly upset. That said I also find it rather hard to follow your entire train of thought throughout your argument, but I'll try to distill some of your comments, complaints and thoughts in a respectable and coherent response. If you decide to answer, I expect the same in return.

Your main point seems to be that MRA Navigation hasn't received enough attention. While that might have been true for a long time, that's no longer the case. Yes, the iOS version of the app suffers from occasional stutters but over the past few weeks we've deployed a major overhaul for the app that significantly improves stability and performance. The entire core of the app that handles Navigation was rewritten. In addition, shaping points, via points and POI's are being implemented as we speak. If you don't believe me: there's a closed beta testing group that's currently testing this version. If you want I could sign you up for it, but note that this will override your main MRA Navigation (stable) version. That's also the reason why our testing group isn't public.

As for MRA Video, we've said it several times and rehearsed it here as well: especially because people have massively turned out to tell us MRA Navigation and MRA Routeplanner should be our focus, we've shifted the main focus there. We remain committed to further expanding on the social features of MRA Video in the future though. MRA Routeplanner and MRA Navigation are our focus; I believe that this aligns with what you expect us to do.

Regarding your comment on shaping and via points not being available: perhaps you've not found them yet. You can now turn waypoints into either a shaping or via point that's compatible both with Garmin. As I said, an update for MRA Navigation is in the works.

Finally a very big accusation is that we're making one million dollars a year for every 100 users. That would be true if they were all members with an annual subscription. I'd like to point out that such accusations are very damaging for our reputation and would only be fair if they'd be based on facts. Note that this is not the case. Over 95% of MRA Routeplanner users is using the free of charge basic membership. In addition: a large portion of the GOLD members are lifetime members like yourself: this means a one-time payment. In addition, the growth we're so happy with is usually seasonal: that's the period where people start riding their bikes or cars. We share this with the community because we find it relevant to let you know that there is growth in the community.

Overall I'd invite you to share your thoughts with me on what could be communicated better and perhaps some thoughts of your own, as to what you thing is missing right now. We've got an entire Roadmap planned out full of features that were literally voted on by the community.

MRA Navigation Next is in full production, designed for improved navigation in landscape and portrait mode. The app offers a recognizable yet modernized overview of your journey, so you can be sure to reach your destinations safely and on time. Watch the first 20 seconds of live footage in both landscape and portrait mode below!

watch the video

Beta
The first beta release for MRA Navigation Next will be available for free to all MRA Navigation Next and MRA Navigation Lifetime subscribers. As it stands, we aim to have a first beta ready during pumpkin season. Note that a beta will be that, a beta. As someone who has beta tested products many times, I have an advice: keep murphy's law in mind for your own sake.

highlights!
To reiterate some highlights of what's coming with MRA Navigation Next:

• Live footage of your journey in both landscape and portrait mode

• Turn-by-turn voice navigation

• Detailed traffic information

• Automatic rerouting

Attention community,

On request of you, the user, I have delved a bit deeper into the ongoing issue of waypoints not receiving the appropriate adress while using MyRoute-app.

As you all know MyRoute-app is a small company. As a result of this, many of our suppliers see this as an opportunity to request huge sums for previously cheap or even free licences. It is a continuous struggle to get fair deals. In recent negotiations Google requested that we would start paying an unacceptably high price for the feature that automatically puts the adress on a waypoint. In light of transperancy on this issue I am informing you that as a result of this we have decided to simply refuse the contract and explore alternatives. This means that all your waypoints will be named "waypoint" upon placement.

As a small company we are sometimes forced to innovate in areas we thought we had covered. At present, it is disappointing to scrap a feature because of that, but, over time, this makes us stronger and more resilient to change. MyRoute-app will never change its position on the availability of free features for our BASIC users and a fair price for paying members.

We, motorists and motorcyclists, have something special here at MyRoute-app. We listen, we do our best and we are transparent even when it would be easier not to be. We do this because you deserve to hold us accountable for our performance. We are not guided by shareholders or sheer profits, we are guided by your trust.

Kind regards,

Timo

@Purrrist

When we started 8 years ago, I was hired as the general purpose graphics designer. No experience, and no schooling. Truly, the original argument really was "I like the doodles you scratched into the school desk". 8 years ago, MRA was nothing more than a nice idea.

Back then, the feedback was that we were one of the best looking systems out there. That's easy, compared to classic Tyre and Basecamp. But times have moved on, and so has the competition. My school-desk-scratching skills aren't always up for the task anymore and there's no shame in admitting that.

Even before people started complaining (which honestly is a pretty recent thing happening, especially with the icons), we were already trying to create more room to hire the right kind of talent to once again blow the competition away with a visual design that matches the awesome functionality.

These days I try to stick to Functional Design and User Experience Design, whilst leaving the visual heavy lifting to others. It's a transitional period, but I'm certain you'll like the end results when they start being slapped over the old.

As for those who are satisfied: it is exactly why I keep control over the FD and UXD processes; our community has specific wishes that need to be taken into account regarding functionality. And while I will concede that the visual design could be better, I strongly believe that we have great functionality.

Attention Community!

Since 2017 we've been at work to not only provide the best routeplanner out there, but also to give real travel enthusiasts the experience of a fully fledged navigation system on their smartphone. This dream is MRA Navigation, and from the very beginning it has been a rocky road for some users.

After years of tackling our app woes on our own, splitting development attention between MRA Routeplanner and MRA Navigation we decided in the second half of 2020 to have our internal development team move their focus fully to MRA Routeplanner. Through a closed procurement procedure we contracted a long-term development partner for MRA Navigation, App-vise B.V. in the Netherlands.

Now, after almost a year of work we're ready to announce that the major Navigation revamp has been completed. On both iOS and Android we experience a 96.8% crashless performance, wih crashfree performance in navigation apps of <90% signalling that MRA Navigation remains a top tier navigation app. Not only that, we have added new waypoint features and POI visibility.

In the very near future we plan to finally release Apple Carplay, as well as nearby routes and a brand new roundtour generator (although experienced users will have figured out by now that using both the MRA Routeplanner mobile app and MRA Navigation provides seamless roundtour generator performance.

To celebrate this major milestone we've created a brand new landing page for you to explore. Check it out here!
https://info.myrouteapp.com/mra-navigation-landing-page-en

Some time ago I wrote about the continuous path of growth that small companies walk. In the past few months we’ve seen the single biggest increase in members at MyRoute-app as well as the biggest organisational changes since the inception in 2013. Finally, we’ve all had a well-deserved holiday break to catch some breath before shifting back and slamming the throttle again. In this blog I’ll tell you all about what we’ve been up to in the past weeks.

Since October, 35.000 new members have joined MyRoute-app. On average, 101 new members join MyRoute-app every single day. In addition, partnerships with both for-profit and non-profit organisations have skyrocketed. We’ve closed contracts with our primary suppliers that incentivize symbiotic growth and we’ve outsourced many non-vital processes to optimize company performance.

For starters, we’ve decided to outsource knowledge that comes secondary to our own programmers. Instead of focussing on many things at once, our core development team will prioritize on the development of MyRoute-app WEB and MRA Video. Specialized expertise such as server maintenance and DevOps is now in the hands of a contractor. Additionally, the development and maintenance work for our apps is in the process of being transferred to a second contractor. Going for outsourcing has created much more capacity on building out MyRoute-app WEB, MRA Video and MRA Navigation. Separating these tasks allows us to work in parallel on features, maintenance and bug fixing.

Directly related to this is how we’re now drastically reducing the number of bugs in MyRoute-app. There’s a big backlog of problems that need fixing, but we’re pushing through them at previously unknown speeds. To immediately reflect on our own performance on where we can improve: we’re not communicating enough about which problems have been resolved. This too will change in the very near future. The support team now uses smart tagging to mark support tickets that demonstrate the behaviour of certain bugs, so that the development team can easily access all the available information regarding a certain bug. In addition, two-weekly sprints are held to review and assign bugs with the team.

As for MRA Video we’re now in the last stages of the closed beta. Having built a stable concept that’s been thoroughly tested we’re almost ready to move forward into a second stage beta for early contributors. Currently the main blockers for this move are not with the core tech of MRA Video, but making sure that opening the second stage will go far smoother than the original MyRoute-app WEB beta and the release of MRA Navigation. We’re trying to learn from our mistakes after all. As for the practical terms of the second stage beta: it’ll become available for MyRoute-app All-in-one members as well as people that pre-order MRA Video. At the end of the second stage beta a survey will go out to gather features for a MRA Video specific roadmap.

Shortly after opening the second stage of MRA Video we will finally release the RoadMap for MyRoute-app WEB. This long awaited plan has crept in scope, which explains the longer wait. Why have we let the scope creep? Because we decided that if we’re making a RoadMap then everything should be on it. In light of continued transparency we will showcase everything on our RoadMap that the team could possibly be working on. This includes things that might be of less interest to individual members, but are important to the continued prosperity of our platform. Contrary to many companies we’re not hiding the commercial parts of MyRoute-app. Having a great route-planner is important, but so is having a high-conversion shop to buy products from. With this we continue the trend of full transparency and high member-satisfaction.

In conclusion we’re at the metaphorical night before the party. There’s plenty of reason for excitement and we’re glad to share it with you.

As always, feel free to discuss and comment.

Your community manager,

Timo

I'm not going to reiterate the amount of effort we put in getting access to either platform, that information can be easily found here on the Forum. We're aware of Android Auto now being available for development and will certainly add the feature in the future, but we' re not going to drop everything we've planned so far because Google suddenly decides to open up. That wouldn't be fair to everyone who's waiting for other features.

If Android comes across as a second class platform, that's likely because it handles like a second class platform. I recently switched back from iPhone to Android because I didn't want to sell my soul for a small piece of hardware (which is a whole other ballpark of problems) but so far the experience has been subpar compared to iOS.

From a more philosophical point of view: I think it is absurd that developing for two platforms requires two completely different skill sets, different development capabilities and in the end, different people. I sincerely hope for the convergence of technology to the point where developing apps is no longer the hassle it is today.

To illustrate, a group we're all forgetting is the WinPhone community. The small percentage of users doesn't justify the possible risks. However, that doesn't mean it wouldn't be nice to include those users too.

@Drabslab Thank you for your suggestion. I strongly believe that based on where and what you are doing you should only be presented with information that is relevant to you at that time. Indeed, someone on a bicycle will probably want to see different information than someone on a motorcycle. Someone in a camper is likely to use a bigger navigation device than someone going for a jog.

Keeping all that in mind, User-generated screen setups are pretty complex to build and don't neccecarily improve the User Experience in my opinion. I know too many people who will skip using software if it gives them too much configurability (and yes, that argument works the other way too. I know that , though that is a far less populous group).

I think the sweet spot would be to have some setups in the long run that adequately provide what a large amount of people like. When we reach that point, then that's the moment we might consider giving more advanced options to configure the screen set-up.

Thanks everyone for the good feedback on our designs, with this in mind we can continue re-iterating until it's perfect. Next week a new internal design delivery is planned, if you can all get your feedback out of the way that would be great. Things that help us:

• clear ideas formatted like @Con-Hennekens and @Tim-Thompson did.

• Examples of who does what right like @Herko-ter-Horst , providing TomTom Go as an example (including what we do better

• Please, do tell us which elements you do like. It's always easier to criticize than to think "hey this is nice". I'm not saying this because I'm fragile like that, but for practical purposes: when (re)designing you also need to know what is a strong element.

Want to add to our community? Share your spooky rides in the Routes section and get a themed Forum badge.

The season of spooky stories and nasty weather, also called "guur" in Dutch, is approaching rapidly. With a few days left before October I'm kicking off this topic in hopes of finding people who've got some nice themed routes to share.

Last year the RouteXperts did a limited-time collection of free Halloween themed routes that will be making their return this season. Now personally, I absolutely love this. I had a lot of fun discovering the grisly spooky history of mundane places. In fact, I guess that's what brings all of us riders together: the love of beautiful scenery filled with rich history.

So, I would like to invite you all to share themed routes in the routes section with the "Spooky Ride" tag. Make sure it's a day trip and contains things that are fun or even scary (but please, no mundanely dangerous stuff like doing the Stelvio at 100km/h).

Thanks Nick and excellent suggestion. The RouteXperts ensure the quality on delivery, but infrastructure is a continuously evolving thing.

Where today we go through the tunnel of St. Gothard or the similarly named alpine pass, to reach beautiful italy from mainland europe, in a few years we might all be using the Brenner Base Tunnel. One previously rightly placed waypoint might then suddenly lead to a very uncomfortable detour.

MRA Navigation Next is in full production, designed for improved navigation in landscape and portrait mode. The app offers a recognizable yet modernized overview of your journey, so you can be sure to reach your destinations safely and on time. Watch the first 20 seconds of live footage in both landscape and portrait mode below!

watch the video

Beta
The first beta release for MRA Navigation Next will be available for free to all MRA Navigation Next and MRA Navigation Lifetime subscribers. As it stands, we aim to have a first beta ready during pumpkin season. Note that a beta will be that, a beta. As someone who has beta tested products many times, I have an advice: keep murphy's law in mind for your own sake.

highlights!
To reiterate some highlights of what's coming with MRA Navigation Next:

• Live footage of your journey in both landscape and portrait mode

• Turn-by-turn voice navigation

• Detailed traffic information

• Automatic rerouting

Thanks everyone, I'm going to keep keep my posts fully in English

Blogging is a good idea.

I personally always liked the idea of 'gamification', i.e: rewards for perforance using the app, such as making routes, tracking routes, etc.

A few ideas I had:

• pop-up challenges in the app. You can open the app, it gives you a nice route and you can score points for driving it;
• rewarding social activity with points, for example positive upvotes on the forum and writing well-liked blog posts;

Hello everyone thanks for understanding.

Perhaps I was a bit fast with calling it arrogance. I do agree that the ideas themselves were very fun and the challenges were good.

I've seen some good posts in the Brainstorm topic and will be looking with great interest at the evolution of that topic.

Locking this thread. For more information, please see:

https://forum.myrouteapp.com/topic/2633/early-stop-to-the-season-challenge-brainstorm-on-the-next

Attention everyone,

We are putting an early stop to the Season Challenge. We have selected the two people who participated to also be the winners. We'll send them rewards and they'll get a profile badge to celebrate the effort they put in.

Every once in a while we try to do something new in our community. To engage 'you guys' to the best of our possibilities both with your hobby and the MRA services. That's part marketing, part community management. For us it's always fun to design and try to organize these things.

The MRA Navigation Grand Tour, organized two years ago, was quite a succes. We hoped to improve on that formula with a 'lower entry, quicker reward' kind of system dubbed the Season Challenge. I thought that after the woes of corona the summer of '22 would be a good time to launch a campaign that would rekindle love for your hobby. Arrogance. You didn't need our campaign to get back on the road.

As such, the Season Challenge doesn't have many visitors and has little interaction. If anything, it has probably made us look silly and like we were not putting the right amount of effort where it counts. I can assure you that the only time wasted is that of me and the community management team. The devs never had to do redirect resources for the season challenge.

To try and keep looking ahead, I'd ask that anyone who is interested in contributing to our community, do take a look at the community engagement brainstorm I just created.

Kind regards,

Timo

Attention everyone,

Every once in a while we try to organize a good community activity. Some are excellent (RouteXperts), some are pretty good (MRA Navigation Grand Tour), and some kind of flop (Season Challenge '22).

Perhaps you can think along with us in this topic and tell us your ideas of what you think would constitute a cool and engaging community activity that would get people on the road and on MRA.

If you have any (crazy) thoughts, go ahead and post them here.