Add a Feature
Google Maps of Car infotainment System
Project Overview
Project Type:
Add a feature on an existing application
Team:
Independent project with the help of Mentor and Peers
Tools:
Figma, Mural
Problem Statement:
Google Maps in car infotainment systems lacks essential usability features, such as an exit button, integrated music controls, intuitive zooming, and efficient location search, making navigation cumbersome and distracting.
Research
Competitive Analysis
Competitive Analysis helped in understanding industry standards, identify gaps, and uncover opportunities to differentiate our solution through better features and user experience.
Key Takeaways
Waze, TomTom, and HERE WeGo offer strong in-car navigation features—Waze excels in real-time, crowd-sourced updates; TomTom in system integration and accuracy; and HERE WeGo in offline access and global reach. These highlight key areas where Google Maps can improve its infotainment experience.
User Interview Insights
User interview insights are key findings gathered from conversations with real users about their needs, behaviors, and pain points. These insights help identify common patterns, validate assumptions, and guide design decisions to create a more user-centered product.
Personas
A persona is a research-based profile of a typical user, highlighting their goals, needs, and pain points. It helps guide design decisions by keeping the user’s perspective at the core of the process.
Key Takeaways
The two personas—a homemaker and mother, and a Consultant—showed different lifestyles but similar needs. The homemaker wants correct time estimation that she can trust on, to reach to her child's school. The Consultant looks for Zooming In and Out feature on map to know the traffic and journey situation.
Affinity Map
To analyze the user interview data, I created an affinity map by grouping similar responses and observations. This helped us identify key patterns, recurring pain points, and user needs. Organizing insights visually allowed us to better understand user behavior and define clear design directions for the project.
Feature Roadmap
The feature roadmap outlines the planned features of the product in a phased manner. It helps prioritize development, and ensure that user needs and business goals are met over time.
User Flow
Created a user flow to visualize the steps users take to complete key tasks. This helped streamline navigation and ensure a smooth, efficient user experience.
Design & Prototype
Low Fidelity Wireframes
As an early step in the design process, hand-drawn sketches were created to quickly explore ideas and layout options. These low-fidelity visuals helped visualize the structure of the interface, brainstorm multiple solutions, and communicate concepts before moving into digital wireframes.
Existing Interface v/s Intuitive Interface
The existing interface was functional but lacked clarity and ease of use, leading to user confusion and longer task completion times. In contrast, the redesigned intuitive interface focuses on user-friendly navigation, clear visual hierarchy, and simplified interactions, making the experience smoother and more efficient.
High Fidelity Wireframes
The high-fidelity wireframes showcase the improved Google Maps car infotainment interface with a clean, driver-friendly layout. Key features include a clearly visible exit button, integrated music controls, easy-to-use zoom in/out buttons, and a simplified location search bar for quicker access. Designed with safety and ease of use in mind, these wireframes represent a more seamless and intuitive driving experience.
UI Interaction
Usability Testing
User testing is a process where real users interact with a product or prototype to identify usability issues and gather feedback. It helps understand how users experience the product, ensuring it meets their needs and expectations. Feedback from user testing is analyzed and used to refine the design, addressing pain points and improving the overall user experience to better align the product with user needs.
Since participants were already familiar with Google Maps, they found the improved version even more convenient to navigate.
Fortunately, no changes were suggested, as the design met their expectations and needs.
Prototype
A prototype in UI design is a working model of a digital interface that allows designers and users to interact with the layout, flow, and functionality before development. Unlike static wireframes, prototypes simulate real experiences to test navigation and key interactions. This helps identify usability issues, gather feedback, and make informed design decisions early, reducing the risk of costly changes later.
