Google Maps Home Screen Framework
The Google Maps team launched a redesign of their home screen on Feb 9, 2017 for Android and Feb 12, 2018 for iOS.
The new home screen includes a new sheet that contains three tabs, which with their own stream of cards. The places stream includes recommendations for food & drink near you. The traffic stream includes live commute and traffic information. The transit stream includes real-time transit departures.
The effort took about 2 years (it started before I joined Google). I was the main UX designer working on this project for 9 months, working side-by-side with the engineers to create the end product. The team also worked with designers, project managers and engineers across multiple product areas and 4 different timezones to make this a reality.
As seen in TechCrunch, The Verge, Engadget, Mashable, Fortune, and The official Google Blog (Android & iOS).
Google Maps Search Suggestions
Role: lead UX designer
Around mid 2016, my team at Maps and I redesigned the search experience on Google Maps.
When you first tap on the search box in Google Maps, you are taken to a screen that has a myriad of suggestions for you to tap on. Before the redesign, the majority of our users were typing their searches manually, which showed that they were not able to find what they were looking for on this screen.
The team spent about 6 months gathering user needs, brainstorming, running experiments and trying out different types of search suggestions in revising this experience. We added the following improvements:
Search suggest on Android
Home and work are now visible at the top the screen
Place icons which help users differentiate between places faster
Time stamps to help organize search history
Open hours for businesses so you no longer need to click on the place to find this information
When you copy an address from another app, we automatically suggest it underneath the search bar
Search suggest on iOS