Do Navigation Apps Think We’re Stupid?

As a hamburger enthusiast, I often need directions to some burger joint I’ve never tried. Recently, my phone’s instructions sent me toward the on-ramp for the interstate. Then the app urged me, in 500 feet, to merge onto the freeway. By that time, though, what else could I have done? Did the app imagine that I might get confused, and turn around instead?

Mapping software is incredible. Having instant access to every storefront, building, park, and transit stop on every street, almost anywhere in the world, has changed my life as much as any other single innovation of the cellphone age. But also, mapping software is a little weird. Seemingly random places show up as landmarks in my neighborhood: a Bitcoin ATM, a nearby hotel I’ll never stay at. And when I need directions, my app likes to tell me things that no one ever needs to know, such as when to merge onto the freeway from an on-ramp. Why is it so obtuse? Or perhaps the better question is: What makes the software think that I’m obtuse?

Simply put, the maps don’t see the world the way the people who use them do. In the data that underlie a digital map, a road network is represented as a bunch of lines. Those lines have a beginning and an end. Seth Spielman, a geographer who worked for a time as a data scientist on Apple Maps, explained to me that a driver often gets instructions from the app at transition points between those segments. When I turn onto the ramp, then merge onto the freeway, I’ve driven through a pair of segments—and from the map’s perspective, I am thus in need of extra guidance. But I don’t feel that need at all. From my perspective, just a single phrase—Get on the freeway—would suffice.

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