I am a Designer and my Masters’ thesis during design school was on the wayfinding behaviour in India. During our research, we realised that the wayfinding behaviour in India is very unique. People in India rarely used maps for navigation. They rely primarily on asking around and navigate using landmarks. The landmarks people use during this are prominent but sometimes highly volatile and ad hoc like cows and people sitting on street corners. Some of these landmarks may not necessarily always be popular.
With the growing popularity of Google Maps in India and being a trained photographer myself, I felt that ensuring high quality photos of locations would be one of the best ways to improve Google Maps and its usage among the people here. My photos hence focus on how a location looks from outside or from a car to help in easy and fast identification. I make sure I upload photos shot in the night too as landmarks look different based on the time of the day.
In some cases, I use the photos I upload on Maps as a record or documentation of my visit. It helps me recollect my previous experience by looking at the photos of the location. Photographs with informational content like timings of a museum help in reaching the required information faster without having to search for it on a website or Wikipedia.
I noticed that my photos showing the inside of a restaurant have been quite popular. This lead to a hypothesis that people always want to see the inside of a restaurant before visiting it. This encouraged me to shoot the best possible photo showcasing the ambience of every hotel and restaurant I visited. This hypothesis has been proved to be true in several cases after that.
As of April 2019, I am happy to have contributed over 700 photos with about 9.7 million views, to make Maps a better place for all. And I hope to continue contributing in the future.
May the Force be with you.
(Photo credits: Swargate Bus Depot by Shweta Kamble, Koramangala Social by me.)