Hacker News Reader

Comment by munificent | Hacker News Reader

Said more succinctly: It's hard to make a successful product that reduces the time people spend doing something they love to do.

Some ways I could imagine addressing this and the problem the article talks about:

* Aim to make travel planning not easier (i.e. less time-consuming) but more fun. Treat the app more like a game or media app where users spend more time planning their trip by using the app in enjoyable ways. Put a ton of discovery and browsing ideas for things to do in it. Pinterest for vacations and activities. Basically Instagram, but with a "book this" button next to that pretty sunset photo.

* Focus only on the parts of travel that aren't fun. Haggling over fares, logistics, reaching consensus with travel partners, etc.

* Support use cases beyond just travel planning. If it's also a commute planner, or "what do this weekend in town" planner, it may get used frequently enough to stay in a user's mind.

View on HN

Even more succinctly: establishing consensus should be fun in and of itself. People dont know what they dont know. They dont want to plan. They do want to daydream.

Make voting addictive and make the tally results easy to interpret, and aggregated. Not only what restaurants got picked, but a sum of them by type. Popeyes may have gotten 3 votes, but "Mexican Cantinas" may have gotten 4, albeit 4 different restaurants.

Things like "what cities I want to visit with my friends" may or may not change between years.

I was thinking "travel", "plan" ... these two words do not go together.

"Travel", "explore". "Travel", "serendipity"....

Then you would probably want to fold it into something like Lonely Planet or a Rick Steves property.

Or of course a feature in AirBnB.

I love the Lonely Planet guides, but I don't like the budgeting that comes with them. I'd quite like an app into which you could say "I have a budget of $THIS_MUCH, plus or minus $THAT_MUCH for the day. I am in $LOCATION and I would like to experience $THESE_SORTS_OF_FUN_THINGS. Please generate, perhaps pseudo-randomly, an itinerary of fun for the next $NUMBER of hours with all that in mind".

One of my favorite things to do is explore a foreign city with a recent Lonely Plant book to guide me. I think there’s something fantastic about that experience that can’t be replicated by an app or website.

When I’m traveling one cool tech thing I’d like is an AI assistant that could actually place calls in any language to book hotels, tickets, or just check operating hours for places I find in the guidebook.

I dunno. I am surprised that there isn't something like "walk score" for a "visit score" - especially one where the score is based on what you want to do on your visit.

I get that when you're traveling to a new city, you usually have an idea for what neighborhood you want to stay in. A lot of cities - there's only 1-3 neighborhoods that are walkable and good for tourists.

Still, I'm surprised there's not an easy way to see what things there are nearby with some sort of ranking order based on what things you want to do.

As someone who travels full time, Google's introduction of yellow blobs on the maps in the past year or two has been an absolute game changer for me. I used to look up the name of a known walking street and then try to make sure I'd mastered all that was worth seeing by doing the perimeter including ended up spending hours on alleys that lead to nothingness (car coridors or residential areas of 0 interest at the edge of the area worth exploring)

Now, I just make sure I've walked the yellow blobs and I can be sure I've seen it all. It's a joy.

Way less FOMO at the end of my trips as well.

what are these yellow blobs?

https://blog.google/products/maps/discover-action-around-you...

> As you explore the new map, you’ll notice areas shaded in orange representing “areas of interest”—places where there’s a lot of activities and things to do. To find an “area of interest” just open Google Maps and look around you. When you’ve found an orange-shaded area, zoom in to see more details about each venue and tap one for more info. Whether you’re looking for a hotel in a hot spot or just trying to determine which way to go after exiting the subway in a new place, “areas of interest” will help you find what you’re looking for with just a couple swipes and a zoom.

We determine “areas of interest” with an algorithmic process that allows us to highlight the areas with the highest concentration of restaurants, bars and shops. In high-density areas like NYC, we use a human touch to make sure we’re showing the most active areas.

Does Google track everyone's phone location with Android to be able to give traffic info? Well I guess similarly they track the foot traffic and can indicate where in cities there is extremely concentrated foot traffic ... I.e. perfect areas to walk and explore.

It didn't do much in terms of ranking or customizing things based on your interest but Niantic's Field Trip app was somewhat like that. I think if it hadn't been killed off it might have evolved into something like that.

Since you mention this, could you provide thoughts on our project if you have a moment?

SAFEROUTE: WALK ROUTING VIA BEST LIT PATHS: https://github.com/kineticadb/saferun/blob/master/start-here...

We're in the process of app-ifying this, though as a fun project and not a business. The idea would be to identify walking routes optimized by a variety of factors:

- best lit (for safety)

- most beautiful

- best mobile phone coverage

Would this be useful?

This would be really useful as an app! I moved to Washington DC back when illuminated pedestrian paths were in weirdly short supply. People were getting mugged on the National Mall in the dark.

Maybe a hotel "ig shop" would be a more popular choice.

In my region people abuse ig for all kind of use cases.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com