Let’s give GPSs the EMOTION feature

Maybe it's because I just arrived from a long drive and stay in New York where I was guided by the nose by my TomTom GPS lady.

Did you know that the Garmin GPS Lady gets a little annoyed when you choose a direction different from what is suggested? She says something like: "Incorrect Route, Recalculating…", which after you hear it two or three times sounds like "Incorrect Route, you jerk, you are wasting my time again by making me do all this work to recompute another route for you. Can't you listen???" The TomTom lady just suffers in silence and provides you with a new route as soon as she sees that you didn't follow directions.

Which led me to thinking of a cool feature that none of the GPSs that I've seen or heard of have. I think it would be differentiated enough that vendors would put it as one of a few features printed on the front of the box. At any rate, if that much doesn't come true, at least it would be funny! Here's the idea.

In addition to picking the voice, as you can today ("American, Female", "New York Cab Driver", "747 Captain") let me also say what the emotion iis. Could you imagine:

NERVOUS: "Oh no, please don't go that way, I can't say what might happen, but it can't turn out well…."

MOTIVATING : "Don't worry that you missed that turn. You're a good driver and I know that you have a good reason to making the change. I am always impressed with your rapid and effective decision making!"

CASTIGATING: "You dope, there you go again. I have applied the computing and data resources of the universe to find you the best possible route. All you have to do is steer. I mean really, are you totally a waste of space?"

Add your own additional ideas. I think it would sell like crazy and who knows, reduce driver fatigue and accidents too!

Originally posted on Jul 29, 2009. Reprinted courtesy of ReRuns plug-in.