[Talk-GB] New map style

[Mark Goodge]

On 01/11/2015 09:46, Stuart Reynolds wrote:
> I don't like it for the simple reason that I think it will fail to
> win over new Uk users. There are plenty of people who just want to
> use default tiles to show a location on - sports pitch, scout hall,
> whatever - and those people will inevitably go to Google. Sure, we
> understand the differences between a map and data, but we need to
> engage first and then draw them into making active improvements. And
> this won't do that because it is so contrary to people's experience.

I agree. I think that meeting ordinary, non-map-geek (and non-technical) 
users' expectations is important.

It used to be the case that both Google and Bing used local mapping 
conventions for their colours. So, for example, in the UK, motorways 
were blue, while primary routes were green, while in France  toll 
autoroutes were green and non-toll autoroutes were red. Those colours 
may be arbitrary, but they were well-established. But both Google and 
Bing decided to stop following local conventions and impose a single, 
global style based on a US-style classification of roads.

That really doesn't work very well. In particular, it breaks really 
badly for Google, because their classification system doesn't map onto 
UK usage. You end up with stupidities such as slip roads at junctions 
being coloured differently to the roads they serve, for example, and an 
inability to distinguish between A roads and unclassified roads based 
simply on colour (and width of a line really isn't good enough, 
particularly at overview levels).

When Google made that change, therefore, it provided an excellent 
opportunity to evangelise for OpenStreetMap, precisely because OSM 
hadn't made the same mistake.

Now, I appreciate that OSM had the opposite problem, in that it imposed 
a UK-style colour scheme on the rest of the world (due to the lack of 
ability for local colour schemes). So something did need to be done 
about that. But I am not at all convinced that the right thing has been 
done about it.

To begin with, I find myself agreeing with the comments made by others 
(possibly more intemperately, but no less valid for all that) that 
creating a system to allow different countries to use different colour 
schemes (like the old Google and Bing did) would have been a better 
option than simply changing the colours. But, assuming that, for 
whatever reason, that's impractical and the colours did need to be 
changed, I still think that the new colours are a long way short of ideal.

Specifically, I think that white is the wrong colour for anything other 
than an urban street or a farm track. It's too indistinguishable from 
the background and makes it hard to get a visual overview of the local 
road network. I have a feeling that this choice may have been driven by 
mappers who work primarily in urban areas, where white does work. But 
for rural roads, it just plain doesn't.

At the other end of the scale, I think that the three shades of 
red/orange used for motorways and A roads are too similar. While they 
are different enough to be distinguishable when placed next to each 
other, the colours shouldn't need the presence of a comparator to be 
identifiable. If you see a section of road on its own with no 
surrounding context (and, again, this is more of an issue for mid-zoom 
levels in rural areas), you have to make a conscious effort to think 
about the colour to be sure whether it's a trunk or non-trunk A road, or 
a trunk road or a motorway.

That's bad UI. The colours should be different enough that if you see a 
line of just one colour on an otherwise entirely featurless background, 
it is immediately obvious (to someone who knows the colours) what 
category of road it is. I'm not intrinsically wedded to the idea that 
motorways must be blue, or that trunk roads must be green. But I am 
certain that whatever colours are chosen should be chosen with clarity 
in mind.

Mark