Day 2 (part IV): UX review of Google Maps for editing my saved place info

The last major feature that I want from My Ideal Map App is the ease of editing the list of my saved places:

As an app user,

I want to easily edit the saved places in the app

so the list of places of my interest will always have accurate information

This user story can break down into several sub-stories.

User story #4.1

As an app user

I want to delete a saved place if I learn that it has been closed

so I will not waste time visiting non-existent places

With Google Maps on iOS, I first need to show my lists of saved places by tapping the Saved button in the bottom app bar. Then tapping the relevant place list. Once I find the saved place to delete, tap the overflow menu and select Remove

A screenshot of Google Maps on iOS (version 5.58) after tapping the overflow menu (the three dots) for one of the saved places.

This UI is perplexing, though. “Add note” can be done by tapping the blue text link. So no one will tap the overflow menu to add a note. So the only reason to tap the overflow menu is to remove a place. Then why not just show a text link that says “Remove” or a trash can icon?

Once I tap “Remove place”, a snack bar appears for a few seconds which offers an UNDO option:

A screenshot of Google Maps on iOS (version 5.58) after tapping Remove Place in the previous screenshot.

Alternatively, I can search for a place to remove and tap the “SAVED” button, which will show my lists of saved places:

I can then tap the checkmark to remove the place from that list.

I feel I’m forced to go through unnecessary extra steps to remove a saved place. I simply want to tap the trash can icon and be asked if I really want to delete it.

User story #4.2

As an app user

I want to change the type of a saved place

so the information on the place will be up to date.

My favorite restaurant may stop serving lunch, for example. If this happens, I want to remove this restaurant from my lunch place list, while keeping it in the dinner place list.

Doing this with Google Maps on iOS is straightforward. Search for a place and tap the SAVED button, which shows my lists of saved places. Tap the checkmark to remove the place from that list or tap the empty circle to add the place to that list.

I could add one more user story about editing the note on a saved place. If I use the note as a text link to my note-taking app’s note, however, I won’t need to edit the note at all. So I skip it.

From all I gather, the fully-functioning text editor is really tricky to implement on the web. It’s best to leave it to those apps that use the text editor as their core service. For My Ideal Map App, a plain text and a text link is good enough.

Summary

To implement User Story #4, My Ideal Map App offers the following features:

1. The landing page shows a button to see the list of tags added to saved places. From the list of tags, the user can see the list of saved places for a selected tag.
2. Each saved place in the list has a text button “REMOVE”. Tapping it pops up the confirmation message to check if the user really wants to remove it from the list.
3. Tapping the saved place name will show its information pane: the user’s note and the list of tags attached. Tapping these allows the user to edit them. There’s also a trash can icon, the tapping of which will delete the place from all the lists after asking the user to confirm the action.
4. The same information pane can be reached by typing the place’s name in the search field.