
Uber Navigation - ghosh
https://medium.com/uber-design/uber-navigation-f662e7611f3#.d96r7jyrn
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dustinlocke
> We set up an eye-tracking rig and analyzed how a driver’s eyes interact with
> the environment vs. a device screen. We built a car simulator in our office,
> which we connected to a gaming wheel controller, a video of typical driving
> scenarios, and a timed navigation prototype. We even built a physical map of
> Amsterdam out of paper.

This is overkill. Hell of a process but they probably could've gotten 95% of
the way there in a week and a couple prototypes.

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rnmp
Agreed 100%. The paper prototype is nice but more likely to be an art project
than a way to think about the product. They have a giant team, they can and
should use internal resources to produce more realistic prototypes of the
product.

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dokein
I have a hard time understanding how a 3D paper reconstruction of Amsterdam
generated important insights. Also not clear what important insights were
generated generally: easy to toggle seems obvious when the target is active
drivers. Am I missing something here?

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dpiers
I think the video of the "car" moving around the paper map shows a lot of the
value. You can rapidly prototype UI elements, experiment with camera
angles/motion, etc. Amsterdam's streets in particular would have numerous
difficult features (sharp turns, driving under bridges, tunnels, etc.) that
would make it ideal for solving edge cases.

Full disclosure: I work at Uber, but not on this team, and have no insights
into their process outside of this blog post.

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rnmp
Interesting point about the angles/motions. But isn't the same true if you
simply plotter print a map of the city and also use your phone's camera? All
the 3d rendering can be done later on…

