iPod Subway Maps - Finding Your Way Around Town
The idea of putting subway maps onto the iPod, and the recently created website for such content are a stroke of pure genius. Congratulations to that genius, Little Bill.
Why nobody has been pro-actively creating such content before is beyond me, especially after we all read about the pPod. Surely, the idea of putting maps onto your iPod would have run into someone’s mind at the speed of light. And having figured out a decent means by which to display the content, it is now only a matter of time before reams and reams of this stuff is pumped out of people’s computers and onto the internet. I for one immediately thought of the benefits of being able to view airport terminal maps, bus timetables, and even guided tours for tourists.
Talking of tourists, I travel to a lot of new places all the time, and there would be nothing more useful than a slew of maps and info for my iPod. Not necessarily a deluge of information but enough that would help me get a handle on the layout of each new city, as well as how to get in and out from the airport and how to get around town.
Before I even touch down I usually leaf through the indispensable little blue section of my “Lonely Planet” guide that tells me exactly what I need to know. But once I am there, there is nothing I loathe more than running around town with a guidebook in my hand. I might as well walk into a tattoo parlor and get the word “TOURIST” engraved on my forehead!
So with 26 million iPod users out there, an obvious target audience and people sending in maps galore to www.ipodsubwaymaps.com, this is an idea that will run and run. Yet, having said that, I would be the first to acknowledge that issuing such content for the iPod is hardly without its pitfalls.
For one, the whole “map-to-iPod” concept suffers from the perennial issues of quality control and of keeping the content up-to-date.
In theory, the idea of keeping the data correct would be simple enough, but actually getting the data feeds from the transport companies would be next to impossible. With so many entities to deal with, operating in so many different ways, the mountain to climb would seem perilously steep.
And in terms of quality, the maps being generated from so many different styles, whether it is a subway map or airport terminal map, that it would be impossible to have a homogenous look across all of your content without having to spend huge amounts of time and money in redrawing them.
At the same time, more attention need to be paid to the target audience. Having a grid-reference cut up of a subway map is probably fine for a regular traveler accustomed to a city’s transport network and who more-or-less knows the in’s and out’s of it, but for a tourist guiding his/her self along a subway map in steps: A1, B2, C3, D4, E5, D6; it isn’t necessarily the most user-friendly manner in which to find your way around. Perhaps this is fine for an A-Z street finder but not necessarily a subway map.
On the London Tube network, along the side of the roof of each carriage there is a map of the single tube line you are traveling on. The map stretches from one end of the half of the carriage to the other and from one end of the tube line to the other. It shows all the splits and joins and highlights the names of the intersecting tube lines at each relevant station. Into the bargain, it also highlights each of the mainline railway stations at the relevant stops. Surely, scrolling through such a map would be infinitely easier than picking out slides from a grid referenced chart.
Anyhow, I know that the concept is of course in its infancy and I am sure, with further input from other users, the level of the overall output will improve. But as is blatantly obvious I think that this is a GREAT idea, for which I give 10/10.
Now all we need is for the transport networks these maps depict to catch up with the modern day and for design companies to start offering iPod content design services as standard, much like they do any other.
