> Forget the map, just tell me if I should get off the Eisenhower Expressway and take Roosevelt, Madison, or Lake back home?
> Is there a meeting happening anywhere right this minute that I’m supposed to be in?
> You can go on and on like this. These all sound trivial. That’s the point. They’re normal-life problems nobody would have built serious programs around, because the audience sounds too small.
Waze does not answer my commute question for me. Waze finds what it believes to be the quickest route from west loop to my house, but that route is virtually never reasonable. There's only 4 reasonable routes; I just need to know which one to take.
It’s not the fastest route, because the algorithm is stupid as a result of trying to be smart.
It sees a small side road and thinks “I will take the user down here because there’s no traffic”
But it doesn’t consider that the side road is empty because you’ll have to turn across four lanes of traffic in rush hour. So you get stuck for twenty minutes.
If your answer is you tell it, then the obvious solution to improve the app is to provide a way of specifying a road exclusion list, and that is extremely feasible.
c-hendricks · · focus · HN ↗
> Is there a meeting happening anywhere right this minute that I’m supposed to be in?
> You can go on and on like this. These all sound trivial. That’s the point. They’re normal-life problems nobody would have built serious programs around, because the audience sounds too small.
Waze and Calendars. Both have huge audiences.
tptacek · · focus · HN ↗
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗
MisterMunchkin · · focus · HN ↗
It sees a small side road and thinks “I will take the user down here because there’s no traffic” But it doesn’t consider that the side road is empty because you’ll have to turn across four lanes of traffic in rush hour. So you get stuck for twenty minutes.
duskdozer · · focus · HN ↗
If your answer is you tell it, then the obvious solution to improve the app is to provide a way of specifying a road exclusion list, and that is extremely feasible.