Voices Navigation Interface

I wanted to post with my recomendations on a menu interface for mainly SilentAdmirer but also for everyone elses input.

SilentAdmirer has tasked me with creating a well thought out interface for Voices.

After installing Routis 2004 (and being very pleased with it by the way) and looking at a few other Navigation packages i realized that the interface that VOICES needed had to be pop up menu driven. For instance look at these screen shots of routis

Notice the small unobstrusive menu button on the lower left
http://www.carnetix.com/GPS/3Dday.jpg

There should be a button like this for VOICES

Then a Pop up Menu follows with large easy to read skinnable buttons (as I invision it for Voices)

http://www.carnetix.com/GPS/Menu.jpg

Then when you click on each buttin a series of Options follow as below

http://www.carnetix.com/GPS/RouteOptions.jpg
http://www.carnetix.com/GPS/SpeecAlert.jpg
http://www.carnetix.com/GPS/Vol.jpg

Not all of the information or options will be the same but it will definatly be close...easy to navigate and structured. I think that there is a reason that every navigation application has used this method... becasue it works

What do you guys think?

Pictures curtisy of MikeH

thanX antimatter will start working on it rite now.Lets see what I can do about it

Satish

You may want to evaluate the way that your skinning is done aswell . Percent as opposed to pixles is supporsed to be a lot easier to work with when having an interface with multiple variations in resolutoins (as is all applications)

Elaborating on the menu idea and looking at your current skin I like the Full screen function and the ability to make the map take up all of the screen.

I think that the The full screen function should toggle from full screen map mode to split screen with the driving instructions. By taking away the menu that slides up from the bottom and making it a pop up menu (like in the pictures) I think that it would definitly simplify things.

We should come up with the a set of 6 or so general buttons and place all of the items within the property pages of the repective categories.

Have you this tested also on a 7" Display in your Car with a distance from for instance an arm length between eye and display? If you can read then the Button, without eyeglasses, and it on a Touchscreen also hit, it is large enough ;)

Have we tested what? We are designing this with the touchscreen in mind and I ahve a 7" touchscreen for beta testing as does most people here.

Here is the breakdown of the menu driven options that are in Routis/Iguidance. Customize these to the options that you have available in the Voices Nav App. I have insicated with italics the options that I think would apply with Voices and bolded the main menu buttons.

Destinations
Address
Intersection
Points of Interest
Favorites
Recent

Route Options
On/Off Buttons for Quickest/Shortest/Local/Major
Reduce Turns enable/disable
Toll Rodes enable/disable
Carpool enable/disable

Speed Alert
number pad to enter in max speed
checkbox to enable/disable speed alert

Volume
Mute button
Test Button
Volume Slider

Map Options
Show POI icons
Map view 3D positions
Map View Heading Up
Map View Heading North

Record
Save your location and Route

GPS Info
Pop up screen with satilites locked/Longitude/Latitude/Alt/Speed/Compus

I posted this information as a guide incase you havn't seen Routis or Iguidance.

Cheers

I agree about pop up menus, tomtom works on the same.. but it doesnt have a menu button.. you just tap the screen and the menu appears

I've been using Routis so I have a couple of suggestions that I think Routis lacks. Overall I think Routis is a very touchscreen friendly application, it's more features I'm thinking of.

1. Routis has a box that displays your toute to a destination. It allows you to highlight each road. It would be great to be able to highlight the road and toggle it for avoidance. It gets dropped into a new window listing avoids. You can then on the fly move it from avoids and have it reroute. This is for when there's a traffic jam or accident and you want to hop off the highway to get around it then get back on the highway. So, this is partially interface and partially a new functionality.

2. It would be nice to have speed displayed somewhere in the top or bottom bar that show your current street and your next street to turn at (rather than have to have the whole GPS data info box pulled up). There's plenty of room for some data in these bars.

3. Around the edge of the map, there is an arrow showing north (if it's set to rotate). I'd also like one to show the bearing of my final destination in case I'm ignoring the route suggestions and just want to try to head toward my goal (maybe it already does this, but I don't see it).

Ok, so I guess most of this is functionality but they all have GUI components :). I've only used Routis and Mappoint so I don't have anything else to compare it to, but I really like the Routis interface and the way it minimizes the menus to use the full screen for a map.

Good comments