A few usability suggestions

[carleeto]

First,

I believe where Waze has succeeded is in gaining my trust as a user. It is now the only GPS app I really believe when I see an ETA - good job on that. It is also the only reason I use Waze over everything else - because what I care about the most is knowing when I will reach my destination. The social aspects for me are all secondary.

I am using the Android client.

Next, here are some suggestions:

1) It would be nice if I could re-order my favourites. I live in NZ and when I search for an address, chances are Waze is usually not able to find it. I work around this by browsing around on the map and adding it to my favourites.
2) Please add the option to use Android's built in text-to-speech engine to speak road names out loud. This request comes from my wife as she hardly ever looks at the map, but just listens to road names while driving.
3) Right now, Waze is unable to locate to locate my home address. I have worked around this using the procedure described in (1). However, the Waze application still does not know that this is "home", but rather a favourite that happens to be named home, if you get my meaning.
4) Is it possible to use Google Navigation's strong address search to find an address, but Waze to navigate to it? I find Google Navigation to be extremely unreliable in terms of ETA calculations - even after live traffic has been added.

Thanks once again. Apologies if this sounds a little abrupt, but this is pretty much what I could put together right now. I really appreciate all the hard work that has gone into this app and I heartily recommend it to my friends, if they're willing to work around the current inconveniences listed above.

I am more than happy to help test stuff if necessary. Do let me know.

Cheers from New Zealand.

[carleeto]

Quick update for anyone reading this.

I found the uservoice.com links and thought I would post links to the relevant features:

Speak street names: http://waze.uservoice.com/forums/59223-client-how-can-we-improve-waze-on-your-phone-/suggestions/957621-speak-street-names
Set existing favorite as "Home" or "Work": http://waze.uservoice.com/forums/59223-client-how-can-we-improve-waze-on-your-phone-/suggestions/2801029-set-existing-favorite-as-home-or-work-
Ability to order favorites: http://waze.uservoice.com/forums/59223-client-how-can-we-improve-waze-on-your-phone-/suggestions/1560157-ability-to-order-favorites-locations
Use Google Maps as a fallback when searching for addresses: http://waze.uservoice.com/forums/59223-client-how-can-we-improve-waze-on-your-phone-/suggestions/2801038-use-google-maps-as-a-fallback-if-an-address-is-not

[gerben]

1) Re-ordering of favourites is allready possible in the Iphone version. It will become available on Android in a future version.
2) Already possible on the NA server. On the world server a hack of the preferences file is needed to enable this in English. Waze will need to add support for other languages before they can enable this function on the world server.
3) Delete the favourite with the special icon, and add a new one named 'Home' or 'Work' with the proper location.
4) At the moment, Bing is used as the main provider for address search results in Waze. Depending on your country, this provider is just as strong as Google.