Make Your Mark: The Insignia™ Blog

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I’m Ari Silkey – Product Manager for Insignia’s GPS Solutions line. I joined Best Buy in February 2007, and have been in the GPS business since 1999. Perhaps you’ve had a chance to learn more about the Insignia story on our website? This blog is another way I can stay connected and engage with people like yourself, who can help us make better products. I hope you’ll share your comments.

This is some background on our new Insignia GPS solutions, which we launched in the fall of 2008. To develop and bring to market a consumer electronic product takes a significant amount of time – and the Insignia GPS products are no exception. It took 18 months from initial idea to in-store availability. Along the way our focus was always on the needs of our customers: this is what we kept in mind as we made technical decisions about the final products launched.

Our GPS units feature a cellular modem that allow them to connect to Google Local Search, receive real-time traffic updates, and check gas prices wherever you are.  You can also email directions from your computer to your GPS. We think they are remarkable when you consider how all the components have to work in concert – like the touchscreen, interface design, Bluetooth-phone connection (on the NS-CNV20 model), managing drivers and updates, the physical shape and controls of the product – many features which have never been put together in this way before.

We actually talked to dozens of companies before choosing partners who we felt had the right vision and flexibility to put the experience together. It’s really more art than science in many ways, because there are so many unknowns at the beginning, and opportunities for synergy throughout. Our goal is to be ahead of the technology curve in ways that benefit our customers, but grounded enough to bring a product to launch. Given the rapid pace of technological change, it’s compelling to keep adding newer features while you are developing, but it’s not always a good idea to do so.

One goal we did shoot for and succeed on was being the first Personal Navigation Device (PND) to pass the Cellular Certification process. I’ll talk more about why I think that's important to our customers, and other parts of the development story, in future posts.

On our home page intro movie we talk about how we do real-world testing for the products we make: in the case of the GPS units, we also enlisted our own employees. We installed units into 65 Geek Squad cars for 90 days. Their feedback resulted in some very useful changes, like a 90-degree connector to fit vehicles better, adjustments to the mounting bracket, and changed the interface to display the destination address more clearly.

Are you an Insignia GPS owner with ideas or suggestions? I’d love to hear your comments.

Ari

Message Edited by Ari-INSG on 05-15-2009 06:08 AM

[#2]

I have one each of the model 10 and 20. I find them acceptable and the 'live' search is hard to beat. Wish list is the ability to:

1 Save a location

2 Change voices

3 Better map detail

4 Ignition/power auto on and off

5 Touch screen can be quirky (too sensitive or double entry)

I have found that the units often get confused especially in conjested areas and end up getting me lost. I just got the units updated and hope this fixes the problem.

[#3]

Thanks for the comments and feedback.  We are working on all the items from your "wish list".  

Look for a very exciting line-up of new Insignia PND's this Holiday season.

[#4]

I've been using the Dash Express GPS for the past couple of years, primarily for its live traffic capability, but that service has now been discontinued so I'm looking for a replacement.

I saw the new Insignia CNV43 in the weekly flyer so tried to check it out in the store, but even though the display was plugged into the alarm system it wasn't getting power...

Regardless, my question is on traffic, which I probably wouldn't have been able to check out on the store model anyway. I'm just wondering if the CNV43 will provide a similar view?

All I'm looking for is the same thing you see if you go to Google Maps and click 'Traffic' - it shows an overhead view of the highways, color-coded red, yellow, and green based on how fast traffic is flowing. This is what the Dash would show on the regular map view, without having to go to an alternate 'traffic' screen, or view static snapshots of various incidents.

Most of the time I'm just driving between work and home and don't need (or want) to input a route - there are several possible routes I can take depending on the traffic, and I want to see for myself how "bad" it is, not have the GPS estimate the delay and take me on some strange detour that might be counterproductive.

It's hard to drive without the live traffic now - if the CNV43 does the same thing I'll buy it immediately! Any thoughts?

[#5]

Thanks for the posting.  We do implement traffic in a different way then your Dash product, but should get you to similar results.

A route is required to show the traffic information.  We do have the ability to create "pre-defined" routes and check traffic on these anytime (regardless of where you are).  Once you select a route, we do traffic checks every 3 minutes to the server and update you with traffic alerts and adjusted ETA's as traffic changes.  In addition, you have the alternate traffic routes option, which calculates 3 possible routes and allows you to see all the traffic in the area for this snapshot.

I would encourage you to go to your local Best Buy store (ask the sales rep to get the unit properly powered) and you can see the traffic implemention in more detail.

Let me know if you have any questions.