So our firm has been using the new Android beta Wayfarer App for the past two weeks. We have been in constant communication with Joe on the DevRel team and he asked us to post our feedback for the app in here.
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Hard to distinguish between already approved Waypoints and Provisional Waypoints. Maybe Change the pin color for provisional ones so it’s really obvious when looking at the map.
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One thing that was really annoying for us is we would go out and take photos for all the waypoints and then go back to our office to submit. Problem is each time we would click to add a new waypoint it would default to our office rather than like Lippold where most of the stops were. So we had to keep dragging the map and it was just a little annoying to say the least.
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There is no easy way to know which waypoints you submitted without scans on them. So we put in 50+ waypoints but we had to keep a separate Excel sheet list of them to know which ones we had done.
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I feel like a Waypoint caching system would be a really nice addition to the app. I really don’t like having to click Laod Nearby Waypoints everytime i move around looking at things. Cache the data and auto-load them in.
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I really do not like the whole edit interface for waypoints currently… There was a stop at Deicke Park that had a baseball field number that moved. I really wish there was the same field of Why did you request this change for people to fill out. People will get confused easily unless someone explains it to them and i can easily see a Niantic Staff member not understanding why a move occurred if the google maps data is 10 years old and it looks like the object is in the same place.
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There are a couple bugs we have encountered multiple times but have been unable to create perfect reproduction steps for them. The first is probably the most annoying but sometimes when clicking between waypoints the white information box at the bottom disappears permanently and the only way to get it back is to restart the app.
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The second issue we have run into is when submitting waypoints in the middle of the submission process the app just freezes sort of. We can click on buttons and interact with them but it won’t go forward or backwards in the process. Only way to fix it is to restart the app from what we have found out.
I will try to spend some time creating reproduction steps for those bugs or at least get screenshots the next time it happens. We have an intern dedicating to populating data for our app who says these happen 2-3 times a day.
Thanks again for the teams amazing work in providing a great tool for our developers and we hope to hear back from the team.
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Yes, it’s happening to me, since when it launched and its early days, Wayspots responses even received decision responses about Wayspots, I stopped receiving these emails as of the last email (November 9, 2022).
I also made a request through the form, it is synchronized in the Wayspots base system, but it was not synchronized in the Niantic games, so the application completely stopped and is only used for scanning and in experiments with Wayspots with Scans.
I’m not really worried about Niantic’s games as this app is not designed for those and is only meant for developers building out their own app. We are developing some apps for local Parks in the area. If your using this for waypoints in games the then don’t expect animatic to help you at this time.
I still receive emails on waypoint updates with no issues. Every bug I listed has a known workaround or is just an inconvenience at this point.
I would love to hear some feedback from their team on several of our issues with the app and improvements to the user interface.
Last week was a holiday week so I look forward to hearing from them this week on some feedback. Thanks!
Hi David,
For the bugs, may I know if there are other devices that have had these issues as well or is it just your intern’s device at the moment? If it’s just the one phone, can you provide the device info such as make, model, OS version, processor and graphics processor?
DevCheck-20221129-1239.txt (3.0 KB)
DevCheck-20221129-1234.txt (3.1 KB)
Attached our device reports for each of the phones showing you the hardware/os for each of the 2 devices we have used. If you need any other information please feel free to let me know.
Hi David,
Thanks for sending over the device reports and again for providing your feedback! The team was hoping to get a bit more information on what it is about the edit interface that you don’t like. Was it mostly because of the lack of a “Why did you request this change” field or are there more things that you think could be improved such as the visual elements or general layout?
@Mar_McRae
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The switching of map type each time i go to submit a waypoint should remember either Map or Satelite from my last submission. Each time our intern had to go in and switch the map view because it’s easier to find things on the satellite view.
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When you go to The Title, Description and Reason screens can it be preselected to type in the boxes. Would save a click each time on the entry.
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Review Your submission should really come after the Explanation and the explanation should be included in it. Really doesn’t make sense to have the explanation after the review.
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When you go from one step to the next it would ne nice instead of seeing a generic placeholder image at the top of the steps to actually see the image of the waypoint there instead.
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The show the surrounding area description has new line characters showing on the android version.
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Can any waypoint you submit immediately show up on your local map? I know they seem to sync every 30 minutes but if i want to create scans for it i have to wait for it to appear which is annoying.
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Have a way to upload later instead of using my mobile data plan in the middle of a woods where the connection is terrible.
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I get so lost sometimes in the interface trying to find the Wayspot submit button. It is not apparent where it is in the app and it disappears if you have clicked on a waypoint to view details.
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Have a way in the app on waypoint details to click on them to get the GPS Coordinates auto copied. I can see the coordinates but cannot copy them on my phone. On click it should copy to clipboard.
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I really wish there was a search for both locations and waypoints in the app. For example if i go to a park with 100 waypoints in it and want to find something quickly i have to click on every single one. If there was a simple search interface within a radius it would solve this.
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Do waypoints get stored in a local cache in the app currently or are they redownloaded each time? If not that should definitely happen so they can persistently load in an area without issue. I don’t want to have to keep clicking load waypoints for areas I have been to. Only load new waypoints.
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Specifically for the edit interface each specific change needs to have a reason for changing it. Sometimes there are businesses that change names but all photos say the old name? How could you expect anyone to review that without having a reason field for every change? So yes the big thing is the reason.
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None of my edits have been reviewed that i have submitted through the app so I have no idea how the process works. It would be nice for your team to put some of those through and so I can see the full process and provide more feedback.
That’s what we have for now but I will keep digging into them. If there is any other details you would like about any of the points let me know. Thanks!
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This is great! Thanks for providing such a detailed response. This really helps the team out. Just to confirm, on #7 you’re asking to upload the Wayspot nomination later correct? I only ask because there is currently a way to upload scans later if that’s what you’re referring to. I also am in the process of trying to get more information for #11. I’ll be sure to keep you posted once I hear back.
Yes on #7 I am looking to be able to upload them later when I am on a Wi-Fi connection so that I don’t have to send gigs of photos over our data plan.
If you need any further feedback on anything or need someone to test things out let me know I’m more than happy to spend time doing that with our intern.
Thanks again for all of your hard work and everything you do to help build this community!
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#7 is becoming a very high priority right now. One thing we have realized as we have traveled around from various parks is that cell coverage is still very spotty in a lot of places. 1 Park A certain carrier works perfect wow another carrier is terrible. There was one time when it took almost 8 minutes just to upload a single point because the connection was so bad.
Having this upload later feature is really going to be helpful when we are out surveying parks. Yes we could go by phones for every service and figure out which one is the best but that obviously is not a great way to do it.
Obviously the entries and scans would have to be stored locally on the device but that is perfectly fine. I don’t know what it would take to move this feature up the chain but it’s starting to take our intern more time to complete some tasks. Thanks!
Another feature we are hopping to find is a wayspot search feature within the given viewing area. Some places we go there are hundreds of wayspots but we can’t find the one we are wanting to scan as easily. It would be nice to have a search to narrow down the spots if you know the name of it.
Hi David,
Thank you again for providing so much context! : ) I will forward this feedback over to the team for consideration. As a side note with regards to #7, if your intention is to use VPS poor cell coverage may be something to consider when deciding whether to nominate a Wayspot as your users could also experience connectivity issues which may make it difficult for them to find and/or localize against Wayspots.
Your correct users may face some of these issues but the main issue is the lack of upload speed in the area rather than download speed. We were testing things just fine. It is purely the upload of wayspot nominations that also needs this feature. Thanks!!
Thank you for clarifying and glad to hear that its working out well for you!
Also quick update on the question you had earlier about whether Wayspots get stored in local cache. I was able to confirm with an engineer on the team that at this time they do not get stored in cache. I’ll be sure that this is added as additional feedback for the team. Thank you again!
