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How come the screen is essentially so hard to read?

Alexander Repenning
over 5 years ago

Having done many rides using my iPhone for navigation but running out of juice I took the plunge and finally got  a Garmin dedicated GPS device. On the positive side I do like battery life time. On the negative side I basically don't understand how Garmin, after years and years of being in the market, has produced such a terrible device with UX from the nineties. Feels like an MP3 player just before Apple hit the market with the iPod. Yeah, you can play a song but the UX is lousy. You had to be a geek to use these things. Specific complaints:

  • show the path so that I can actually SEE it. I realize these displays have very narrow color bandwidth but please. You can do better than that. Use texture, width, .. something to make the path that I am suposed to take be clearly identifiable. Is that so hard? 
  • show the location marker clearly: Not matter what color scheme you select the location marker is way too hard to see. A tiny triangle with weird shading blending completely into the trail background info. I am not looking for a Where's Waldo kind of experience. Show me WHERE I am and WHICH WAY I have to go. Please add something more visible. How about a cross hair cursor? Look up the term "reticle" . Some good UX hints there.
  • NEVER automatically zoom in or out. I don't want the display to change in any way just because I stop. This is a terrible idea because it makes me not want to stop which can be dangerous is some cases. This is UX that can result in accidents!
  • NEVER change the orientation of the map just because I stop. This is what my 1030 plus is doing. I stop and loose the bearings because of this. Again terrible. Can I turn this off somehow? I am reading something about US versus European version. Don't understand. Are there fundamentally different laws of geometry in different parts of the world?

Garmin, instead of adding a million features for geeks please focus on the fundamental functions including UX. I looked at several people getting lost on the trail. The start changing track colors and other things to figure out where they are and need to go. Now I know exactly why. Please fix this.