Uber Pool recently changed. By “recently” I mean “within the last 6 months or so.” When you get an Uber Pool you now have the option to “walk a short distance to meet your driver” and “walk a short distance to your destination”. Presumably this eases Uber’s driver routing algorithms and they knock a coupla bucks off the price of the ride, so it’s a win-win, right?

Well…

The pickup bit wasn’t so bad. I was at a happy hour at Stein’s - the de facto go-to happy hour spot - and I needed to get back to my hotel. Uber directed me a few blocks down Castro and I was there in plenty of time to catch my ride. It was a little awkward negotiating a pickup in heavy traffic at Castro and Whatever-It-Was, but traffic/parking in downtown Mountain View at that time of day is always pretty nuts. So far, so good.

We’re riding along. The driver didn’t seem interested in conversation, so I commenced to futzing around on my phone, as one does. She stops. “This is where the app told me to take you.” In hindsight I suppose that should’ve been a signal - it’s a funny thing to say, and the way she said it was almost apologetic - but at the time I didn’t think anything of it. We exchange pleasantries. I get out.

It’s twilight, fading into dusk. I’ve had a couple of drinks. I’m on some unfamiliar side street, presumably (hopefully?) in Mountain view. My hotel is nowhere in sight.

I have no idea where I am.

There are a few things in my favor here:

  1. I can’t see my hotel, but I can see El Camino (and my hotel is on El Camino),

  2. I have a reasonably good sense of direction, and

  3. I’m reasonably well-versed in The Google…and The Google has an excellent sense of direction.

I pull up Maps and it looks like I’m about a quarter mile from where I need to be…on the wrong side of the street.

So now I’m making a decision to either play Frogger or walk down to the light to cross, and I’m actually starting to get pretty pissed off. And not just for my own personal inconvenience…I mean, what if the circumstances had been different? I knew roughly where I was and I’m relatively unlikely to get jumped on The Mean Streets of Mountain View…but what if it had been a rougher part of town? Some place I was unfamiliar with? tl;dr: I went down a rabbit hole of constructing Worst Case Scenarios and thinking “Man, these wingnuts are gonna get someone killed with this ‘feature’!”

The story has a happy ending: I was Just Fine. But it got me thinking about technology and how we measure the success of that technology. It reminded me of one of my favorite xkcd comics. Even more fundamentally: Nines don’t matter if users aren’t happy. (I feel like everyone in tech should own one of these shirts.)

Anyhow…happy inDay, folks. :-)