Explore the world with Google Maps — Pros and Cons

Snehal Ghume
Jul 24, 2017 · 5 min read

We are just thankful of Google to invent google maps who guide us to explore the new places always. We just blindly follow it as its giving us approximately correct information weather you are in your personal transport or public. Maps provide the route information to make sure user is reaching at his place conveniently. Also Maps introduce new feature to show how much traffic is there on the route, it notify by colors. The visual presentation is always better then the text content.

Here I have mentioned some pros and cons of Google maps. Recently Maps introduce new features and which are more relevant and genuine. It give seamless user experience to make the journey truly happy.

Pros

  1. New Google Maps features helps to find parking to user
  2. Suggest better time to travel
  3. Shows traffic rules
  4. Give detail information of public transport
  5. Mapped with private transportation facilities like Uber, Lyft, Ola

Cons

  1. Real data doesn’t reflect at the time of journey to mentioned distance covered
  2. There is no alert for the ongoing construction or the hurdles

I will start my case study with cons as I feel those issue are primary and need to resolve. I have decided to run usability testing with other user to empathise it and try to solve it.

Empathise

Empathy is important to understanding users holistically.
Shlomo Goltz, User Researcher at Hearsay Social

N’ number of people are using Google Maps, so its very easy to figure out user for the usability test. I don’t have any budget for this test so I preferred to go to the places where I can found end users easily like colleges, coffee shops, joggers park n so… After talking over a dozen people I have finalize 2 personas for my case study. Both are using goggle maps to explore more and more places by professionally or for their recreation.

The Process

By following the Design Thinking process for the human-centered design, I started the process with empathising the exact problem and ended with usability test. This process help me to give perfect solution in my hypothesis.

“Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.”
— Immanuel Kant, German philosopher and key figure in modern philosophy, active in the 18th and 19th centuries: his impact endures, particularly in how the main concepts of the mind structure human experience

Story Board

Where user is facing a problem in getting exact and detail information of route, and not able to confirm how much distance he covered. Maps helped him to overcome his issue. Imagining the scenario helped me empathize the users pain points and find the better solution.

Job Stories

I personally fall into the first category, I use google maps while exploring the new location. I noticed some that I couldn’t flash on the exact distance or time ever.

Guerilla Testing

How you will drive in the anonymous places if you don’t have any idea, the route, near by stations. How you will survive in new city?

For usability testing I went to coffee shops, college campus, sometime I took Uber and Ola to collect the key information from the actual cab driver

Define

Pain point 1: User were not able to recognize how much distance the covered and how much pending. They need to calculate the distance to get the answer

Pain point 2: Obviously the user only use Google Maps to find the way easily so how come they get to know the temporarily closed ways as he is new in the area. So it will take 5 to 10 mins to return on the factual turn.

Here I have added the visual of the actual Maps to understand the concern.

Solution

To be a great designer, you need to look a little deeper into how people think and act. — Paul Boag, Co-Founder of Headscape Limited

Colors play important role in Maps, its indicate speed of the traffic, so user can forethought and revise the route. So using one more color for the completed distance it may be overwhelm the user. So just a Grey color plays a very important role over here.

  • Green means there are no traffic delays.
  • Orange means there’s a medium amount of traffic.
  • Red means there are traffic delays. The more red, the slower the speed of traffic on the road.
  • Grey means concluded distance by user

Latest features are very helpful to user in day to day life, it’s like WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) the approximate information about the speed of traffic, the rules which are applied for the particular road and the latest accepted trend of Private transport i.e. Cab, which user can book in one go, no specific application required, just link your account with Maps and they will serve you what you want.

https://tenor.com/search/wow-gifs

Here I have uploaded the Google Maps new features , which are so exquisite and make life more accessible.

K.I.S.S

Google maps can help to explore the world on the real scenarios. It just not giving information based on satellite but the providing effortless experience to the user. Related information helps to make things more handy. Here I have mentioned some pros and cons as per the latest updated features. Google Maps work as Local Guide where User can find nearest things, can check review and decide. I think Google Maps is always better option then Waze and Apple Maps.

*Opinion expressed in above article are personal. I did this UX case study as I am User experience designer and I like to find new solutions.

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