Address numerous issues (usability, errors) with tests in Portland

[barbeau]

The below comments were from several users tests in Portland. The below issues should be split out into separate tickets, we're just documenting here so we don't lose any feedback for now.

---

I have an original Motorola Droid (it's 2+ years old now) with Android 2.2.3.

I downloaded the app from the Play Store and tried planning two trips with it. Both ended in the same failure to get results of any kind, but the process was different for each and resulted in different errors along the way. Here is what I did:

First, I opened the app. It couldn't immediately detect my location, so it asked for a server. I selected Portland since that's where I am.
The map showed a location in rural Clackamas County near Estacada.
This was surprising; I was expecting to see an overview of central Portland at some reasonable zoom level (ie that that center of the map should be about the center of the Portland metro area).

I didn't/don't understand the significance of the guy with the flag that shows on the map at this point. The compass is a nice touch, but I wasn't able to test whether it does anything or whether I could rotate the map or whatnot.

1st try on planning a trip:

1. Click on the first address text box since I don't want to use my location (I was inside so it wasn't surprising that this wasn't picked up right away). Immediately get popup box saying that there's no information for this location. This was annoying since I already knew that. I would suggest that this error not appear when you click into the box, but rather if you attempt to click out of it before changing it.
2. Notice that the My Location text is not behaving the way uneditable placeholder text normally does, and discover that it is actually editable text that I have to delete. This was annoying. It should be uneditable text like the equivalent item in Google Maps.
3. Enter my home address, "4047 NE 14th Ave".
4. Click into second address text box. See "Geocoding..." popup. This was annoying because at this point I wanted to type in my next address, not wait for a box. It would be better if this could occur in the background while I'm typing in the next box (not ideal) or during typing in the first box (as Google Maps does, preferable).
5. Select Portland 97212 as the city/zip when prompted.
6. Type my work address into the 2nd box, "2525 SW 1st Ave". The geocoding popup doesn't appear when I click out of the 2nd address box...hm.
7. Select Transit and Bicycle (this is actually a real problem I am trying to solve because we just moved to this office, so I have been trying different transit/bike routes).
8. Notice lack of bike "custom" optimization. This means the app will rarely produce bike routes I want to take. I am in the middle in my preferences, so that "Safest" routes are too slow and "Quickest" are too dangerous/stressful. This is a feature without which that the app will not be very useful to me (since its main advantage over, say, Portland Transit would be the bike+transit planning).
9. Click Plan Trip. Nothing actually happens for a long time even though it says "Generating trip".

At this point it was not clear what to do because I didn't see a trip, and I didn't see any way to plan a new trip in the menu. When I pressed back it exited the application instead of taking me back to the planner. There appears to be no way to get a new trip within the app. This was very annoying. I would expect both the back button to take me back, and there to be a menu item for "new trip".

I tried the same sequence again, except this time I entered the city/state for the second location (my work) since it didn't seem to have a chance to geocode it. This time it said I was trying to plan a trip outside the boundary, which I doubt is true because my work is located in the city center (there is a TriMet bus stop less than 300 ft from our front door). So something went wrong, but I don't know what it might be.

I again restarted the app since I couldn't work out how to get a new trip.
When restarted it returns to the middle of nowhere, Clackamas, instead of to the previously-selected location, or the center of Portland.
This was unexpected.

This time I used contact addresses since I figured that at least they would be fully qualified and not difficult to geocode. I took the following steps:

1. Click on the bookmark next to the first address text box and select "Contact address".
2. A black screen shows with no information about what is happening. I would expect a "Loading" dialog here while it loads the addresses.
   Eventually they appear.
3. Select a contact address in Portland.
4. Repeat the process with the second box.
5. Leave trip type as Transit.
6. Think "hm, what about walking distance?" and notice it's not listed in the planner boxes. Check the application settings. Note that walking distance is a setting but it's measured in meters. This is unexpected as the standard (even in OTP apps, on the user side) is fractions of a mile. Also, this is usually a per-trip setting. It's nice to have a default (although I would suggest 800m or 1/2 mile as the default) but it does need to be a per-trip setting as well since you also need to be able to set the bicycling distance, which will be quite different, and adjust based on expected route or mobility level on a given day.
7. Click "Plan Trip". At this point the geocoded points were not shown on the map. It was still in rural Clackamas, or somewhere else weird.
   This was unexpected; I would have expected to see it show the two points at an appropriate zoom level. Not seeing this meant that at that point I had no idea if the geocoding was correct or how far apart the points are (I happen to know how far apart they are in this case since I am using contact addresses, but generally this would not be the case).
8. A dialog shows "Generating trip" then "Processing geocoding" then "Generating trip" again. Then the boxes disappear but I cannot see the trip.
9. Instead of clicking "Back" which I knew would not work, I select "My Location". Then I see my location (which I guess it eventually picked up) and the two points that it has geocoded (which seem correct), but I still don't see the trip.

---

1. Some issues with the collapsing button (man with flag) for the to/from dialog at the top. After inputting a destination, I collapsed the dialog to pan the map and couldn't open the dialog again until I force-restarted the program.
2. Slow tile loading, but understandable.

[barbeau]

I think all of the individual issues discussed in this general feedback summary have been addressed in the current master branch, with the exception of #67 (which is ticketed individually), so I'm closing this issue.