Sometimes users can face obstacles following a specific route: there may be stairs and the user is handicapped, a gate is closed at certain times, …
It would be great, if the author of a tour could give the user a choice between alternative paths, when such obstacles are already known to the author. The interaction by the user could be minimal, but of course it would require taking out their phone. Unless the could respond to a question asked in the audio via their microphone, but that is probably too much of a hassle and might not always work.
This feature could also facilitate optional content such as “do you want to take a short detour to see xxx?” or “would you like to learn more about yyy?”.
This would be a great feature. I am currently working on a driving tour of a national park, but adding in a few short optional hikes/walks would really add to the tour.
This isn’t exactly what you have in mind @kian.vm, but the Resume option on the start screen allows users to get directions to the 3 locations closest to them. These open up in their choice of map app – Google, Apple, or Waze.
The problem with any turn-by-turn direction is that they need to be contextual. To tell you where to go next using left or right or carry on straight, I need to know where you’re coming from first. As a result, optional detours get complicated quickly and would only be possible if we either:
Used automated directions that would sometimes need to speak over the tour publisher
Made the detours forks in the route that either never rejoined the main route or rejoined it later while travelling in the same direction, sticking to the same time restrictions
This is actually a reasonably common request from publishers, but I’m not sure how many are thinking about how much extra content they’d need to create – or about the additional testing that would be required. It isn’t something we’ve heard from users, doing the tours.
Still, it’s somewhere we’ll consider down the road. Right now, you could say it seems like a bit of a detour!
I’d make walks or hikes that link up with a drive into new, standalone tours if possible. People play audio too differently in each situation: on a walk, they’re generally using headphones on their own device, but in the car, they’ve got a single device connected to bluetooth.