Google maps redesign — your all in one travel companion
A systematic redesign of Google Maps on mobile.
At the time of writing: Google Maps has updated their website with the latest preview of a new Explore feature, though it remains unreleased. Any mentions of the “current” Explore refers to the pre-August ’23 version of Google Maps. I compare our solutions below.
It all started one Saturday night. I rarely use Google Maps to do anything other than route my navigation, but today I was feeling adventurous. I opened it up, and noticed a little white tab at the bottom, with the header “Latest in the area”.
Having never noticed this before, I was so excited. This whole time, there was a way to explore the area around me that I never knew about? A feature that could help me overcome the infuriating challenge of not knowing what to do that night? The possibilities, the new places, what could it-
Sublime.
For reference, I am not against promotional Bodhi meditation events. I am, however, quickly reminded of why I’ve never used this feature. I’m agnostic, 24 and in college. Three things that are not quite synonymous with Bodhi meditation.
Google Maps on mobile has, in recent years, been trying to move into the exploration space. There’s a clear market space and opportunity for it — Google has the wealth of resources and information capacity. Then why is it not working?
Enter, the Pepsi to the Cola.
Respondents generally agreed on the visual clunkiness of Google Maps as compared to its younger, more attractive counterpart Apple Maps. Simpler layouts, lots of visuals, and an Explore feature that makes sense.
The consensus was that Google Maps on mobile should be made more visually exciting, as exploring and comparing options should be if you were, say, doing these things in person.
But to really develop a framework for improvement, I would have to be more specific. In finding a new place to explore, what is the issue at each step of the user flow?
Let’s consider the following scenario. It’s a Sunday, and I’m fresh out of ideas on what to do. It’s a little chilly, I’m feeling lazy but also don’t want to waste my weekend. What do I do? I have to:
How can I achieve all of this within the Google Maps mobile client, whilst keeping it visually stimulating?
This will be the framework of my explorations.
First, find something to do that matches what I’m feeling.
Passive exploration is a term I give to experiences like Instagram or Tiktok, where there isn’t an express purpose [such as finding a pizza joint near you], and instead you browse amongst your interests with big visual aids. Clearly, Google Maps isn’t doing so well on this front.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could explore a neighborhood through a passive, associative visual browsing experience?
The traditional blog style representation in the current Explore page precludes passive exploration. It’s wordy, you can only “consume” one location at a time, and there’s an emphasis on the review itself and the author, as opposed to the experience or vibe.
I took the opportunity to redesign the Explore feature:
The key to this was establishing the use case clearly. The Explore feature would be to passively explore what was popular in the area, not sorted by the activity or food but by the “vibes” it could offer, as a sort of mood-board inspired from social media like Instagram or Pinterest.
As far as I was concerned, the active exploration use case, where there is a pre-determined purpose, was already covered by GMaps:
In addition, users remarked that for exploring an area, it would be helpful to filter searches by day and night. By introducing a day and night toggle, not only can users specify their time of exploration but also have a status indicator that shows them of the “world status” outside, and whether or not it’s conducive to whatever explorations they wish to do.
To compare the before and after:
So after some exploration, I’m thinking I need something cozy this Sunday afternoon. What next?
Second, find credible places that allow me to do 1.
If there’s one thing I learned from user research is that Google reviews are hard to trust on their own. Google Maps has its very own Local Guides — the very people responsible for recommending me Bodhi meditation (no spite intended).
However, users simply have no vested interest in them. The truth is that Google should focus on integrating existing social media instead of trying to push yet another one on its overwhelmed consumers.
Users prefer outsourcing credibility to sites like local blogs or other social media, where they have people they trust and follow. That’s why user flows for finding new places generally start from the browser, not the GMaps mobile client.
Case and point, this incredible speed-run of finding the best burger place nearby:
Cross-checking, tabbing in and out, and yet respondents claimed this user flow was “usable”. Perceived usability != actual usability. There’s an incredible amount of actions being taken for one task. How can we fix this?
Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could just do all your cross-media research
in one place, so you wouldn’t have to tab back and forth a million times?
Introducing… “play”-Lists! (Okay, that name’s not going to stick.)
By focusing on allowing seamless transitions, Google Maps can offer outsourced credibility in the form of “play”-Lists.
For example, from the Explore feature within GMaps, we can explore a public list that is linked to a local publication:
And, of course, this has to work in the other direction. The biggest issue with the “tab back and forth” syndrome is the connectedness of social media lists and the actual locations themselves.
By exporting a graphic public linking feature, your favorite bloggers and foodie pages (Instagrammers, local bloggers, Tiktokers, who are already using Google API on their platforms) can link all their locations to a consolidated list for a seamless, packaged mobile experience.
Also, I introduced a way to search for Lists, outside of the Explore feature, in the active exploration use case.
Okay, so I’ve found a local publication which I trust, and a list of credible places for cozy, lazy spots.
Thirdly, find the best out of all the places that offer 1.
Ever try to find a good place to hang out with your friends and find a million different options?
As much as it is Google’s strength that it offers a wealth of resources, this sheer quantity makes it incredibly difficult to choose where to go for even a simple coffee break.
Let’s examine another speed-run (quite a fan of these, as you can see), this time constrained within the app, to find the best café nearby:
Again, comparisons require so much painful tabbing back and forth. How do we make this easier?
How do you find the needle in the haystack? You can painstakingly comb through each strand manually, or you can use a metal detector.
In this case, the metal detector has a two-pronged tip.
1. Heatmaps : a visual approach to choice-making
Users need an easier time making choices, and what better way to do that than offer visual cues to do so?
Turning on filters engages the heatmap function, color coding locations by how well they match your preferences. This means having location previews also color-coded, with what exactly makes it a good or not so good fit for your search filters.
2. Compare : a metric approach to choice-making
Next is the compare feature, what I called Tinder for locations in my earliest notes. Okay, maybe that name won’t stick either.
Let’s revisit this user flow — to find a place to eat — in my previous user needs assessment testing.
What’s actually wrong here is a violation of “recognition vs recall”, one of Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics.
There’s a constant overflow of information that you want to compare, and a need to check between each option, whether cross-platform or in platform, because information does not stay visible. So you tab back and forth to check and check again.
Introducing… Compare!
By having direct, 1 on 1 comparisons using recognition, users are able to narrow down the best choice according to their filters, giving them a more usable experience of research and choice, which makes researching using the mobile client of Google Maps less painful.
Of course, the downside to this is that users cannot view the map at the same time, the same way it is for the current List view option. But that’s what Heatmaps is for.
Heatmaps as the aid for map exploration, and Compare as the aid for metric (and photo) exploration.
So Heatmaps is activated through filters. But how do you access Compare?
Activating two or more filters or tapping on more than 2 locations will initiate this pop-up flow, to remind you of the Compare button, placed next to the filter feature.
Also, this. The first time you encounter the Compare button on a location preview screen, a pop-up will remind you of the feature. Through these pop-up reminders, Compare can be adopted into the user toolset for making choices.
Using Heatmaps and Compare, I now have the best cozy spot in town scheduled for the weekend. All without furious finger-swiping dexterity.
And a little something to help explore NEW places…
Emphasis on new.
Privacy concerns was a topic brought up by every user when asked about curated content exploration. It’s why I added the Explore icons at the top to narrow the Explore scope without sacrificing your privacy.
In Google, it’s called activity controls — and you can change and disable what Google has access to, and across Google platforms. You can change access to web activity, Chrome history, and even location history.
So how do you explore new places without compromising privacy? I added an “Explored” and “Unexplored” mini-feature. This was implemented in two forms, one in the Explore feed, to mark places you’ve already been to, which you can filter out:
And the other as an indication on location previews, that can act as a filter metric for active exploration use cases.
As of the time of writing, the Google Maps website just updated with previews of their new Explore feature.
What a way for me to validate myself and my findings.
Though unreleased, it seems Google Maps also wanted to place more emphasis on public lists and a more visual way to explore an area. Since the opportunity is there, let’s examine our Explore solutions, side-by-side (or as much as I can really, with neither of these being released features).
Aside from the battle of the pretty icons, let’s talk approach.
1.Exploration through activity vs atmosphere
Google’s Explore is done with a lot more text and description, whereas I kept mine more visual. Their version — whether the icons or the category carousel below — is labeled to specific categories, like “Bagels” or “Attractions”. This is exploration via activity category, and it follows the meta of “shopping cart browsing” that is more systematic and organized.
I focused more on passive exploration, exploration via atmosphere instead of activity or amenity, as you would through products like Instagram or Pinterest, and as you would in the real world, through image association.
2. List credibility through authorship vs platform
Google focused on promoting its Local Guides system. Their version of Lists are designed with an emphasis on the person, with the profile picture and the name displayed on the preview. As can be seen by the direct comparison, my version has more of an emphasis on experience and platform, specifically the top three pictures preview and the cross-platform label.
In review.
In terms of product, Google Maps Explore has such an incredible potential to be great — with the backing of Google’s database, everything can happen on one platform. Exploring a neighborhood, making more informed choices visually and critically.
There’s so much more to think about moving forward. How does this extend into a travel context somewhere unfamiliar? I understand Google Travel was another product that was abandoned for mobile experiences. Maybe this is a chance to reboot that initiative and integrate local and unfamiliar explorations. Or maybe not.
I’m an architecture student. I enjoy building experiences. That’s what this transition into digital product design has been about. What kind of experience does, conceptually (sorry, I’m an architecture student and I can’t help it), something built for exploration entail: passive, active, categorical, or ambient, and how can these subtly different approaches end up as successful (or unsuccessful) products that serve a user need? What kinds of upsides and downsides does each approach have?
Architecture and product design share another common ground: the foundation of people and empathy. The users. Products exist in relation to people, and by finding out more about them you’re able to build better experiences for them. I had a lot of fun talking to and observing people, noticing the discrepancies between what they say and what they do (in the case of actual vs adopted usability), and the subtle actions that indicate a frustration point.
By taking these lessons in, I aspire to become an awesome product designer one day, designing experiences that are built on the foundation of human understanding, iterative learning and tons of good conversations. Until then, I hope that this was an interesting read that had, at the very least, some interesting insights into GMaps users.
Jun Oh Koo
UX designer with 2 internships.
Architecture + Interaction Design at Cornell. Graduating May 2024.
Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Website Portfolio // LinkedIn // jk2324@cornell.edu
