Helping Gen Z find outdoor activity communities
Creating an AI search tool in Google Maps to connect new residents with local activities.
Mobile | UX case study
The Google team’s ask: Build communities using Maps
I worked with the Maps team during my graduate capstone to design community-focused experiences. Their ask:
How might we create a more realistic map that better reflects the moment by introducing dynamic data in a way that benefits users’ communities and/or the planet?
Our approach: Focusing on outdoor communities
Since "communities" was broad, we focused on graduate Gen Z students and outdoor communities—an area both our team and the Google team found promising. After user research, the final question that we arrived at was:
How might we provide Gen Z with real-time information to discover outdoor activity communities in new places?
Impact: Building community engagement passively and actively
91.4%
reduction in search time for activity clubs (from ~2hours to 1.5 minutes).
Directional review
with Google design leadership.
1 in 5 users
said they’d switch to Google Maps from competitors if features were added (unsolicited feedback!)
jump to solution
Overview:
Duration
January - June 2024 (6 months)
January - June 2024 (6 months)
Tools
Figma + Figjam, Jitter, Miro, GSuite
Collaborators (5)
UX designer: Ak (me)
UX design: Katherine
UX research: Barbara + Raveena (also PM)
Google mentor: Diego
My contributions
Research (12 weeks): Lit review, Contextual inquiries, User stories
Design (12 weeks): Lo-fi wireframes, hi-fi mockups, prototypes for testing
Deliver (1 week): Presentation and handoff to the Google Maps leadership
User research
How did we find a specific problem?
Gen Z likes spending time outdoors when they move to new cities, but…
3 focus groups, 13 field interviews, and literature study revealed that Gen Z, the most mobile generation in 2023 (great opportunity here), wants to engage in outdoor activities when moving to a new city but faces these issues:
Lack of information about local resources
Initial discomfort in exploring due to unfamiliar places and people
Absence of social network/community
2/3 are socially motivated to go out but lack friends in new cities
Inaccessible transit (money, weather, distance)
Not having a car makes travel a barrier (broke student life)
So they have found a few workarounds, like...
Research revealed that the core motivation for people is finding friends, with shared activities as the medium. To discover these activities, they use workarounds such as:
Methods Gen Z uses to find activities (the graph is for illustrative pursposes only)
But why is Google Maps Gen Z’s last resort for discovery?
Users use Google Maps as the last option for discovery because of:
Lack of trust
Concerned about paid or sponsored content
Low discoverability
High effort due to detailed searches + no personalized content
No visual search
40% prefer social media for its visual search
Wait... did we just discover a new opportunity in Google Maps!?
What are some ways to simplify the process of juggling between workarounds and spending several hours to find activity groups by bringing it all onto Google Maps?
Design goal
Ideation and testing
How did I validate our hypothesis?
Visuals and communities should be the perfect fit for Gen Z!...Or is it?
I brainstormed with my team and created three mockups for concept testing. We conducted quick hypothesis validation, asking users about the likelihood and usefulness of our concepts, especially when moving to a new city.
Testing with mid-fidelity wireframes
But instead, I learned that...
By analyzing people's choices, we considered that their preferences might have been influenced by visual biases. Instead, we treated it as a research method to uncover their motivations while looking for activities. Users want:
01
Activity >>>> community
People find communities and friends through activities that they enjoy.
02
Data and more data!
People prefer social media for visuals but value info over imagery in Maps.
03
Active + passive searches
People do both active (specific queries) and passive (exploring) searches.
Further iteration and testing
Visualizing key data to help find and choose groups
1. Making it easier to find like-minded communities through activities
From feature testing, we learned which data points Gen Z cares about when looking for an activity club. I visually represented that information to make it easier for users to consume and compare.
Visualizing key deciding factors and quick interactions for group information
Prototype for feature 1: Activity pins and activity club information
2. Simplifying discovery with a data-rich visual assistant
One of the biggest challenges was creating something new for Google Maps that solved the discovery problem. People don't use Google Maps for discovery, so I designed a creative itinerary flow. This feature, loved by 10/10 users and Google design leadership, made discovery less overwhelming and time-consuming.
Iterations of how the itinerary UI should be for clarity
Prototype for feature 2: Custom itinerary builder to help you find people through activities you love
3. Making discovery features easy to find
I came up with an idea for a feature (visually refined by my teammate Katherine) to create awareness of new discovery tools by integrating them into the commonly used navigation flow, helping people discover events and communities as they navigate to their destinations.
Along-the-way suggestions to create awareness about activity clubs and events
Final solution
Watch it all come together
Solution trailer: Courtesy of Raveena
Reflections and learnings
Impact and future directions
Impact
Born from Gen Z users' frustration, we showcased these features to Google Maps design leadership. The Google team is really excited about the potential. Plus, our user study with 20+ participants gave us great feedback.
99.9%
Gen Z approved
All the users loved the features and want to use them
3
discovery channels
Multiple ways to discover communities based on preferences
60%
increased trust in Maps
Social proof within features increased trust for finding clubs
"Congratulations on a job extremely well done! You left our team inspired...with your thoughtful, considerate, and iterative design proposal."
Staff UX Design Lead and Manager
If I had more time, I would...
01
Scale the solution
I’d love to scale the solution to other activities as we only designed for running.
02
Consider other demographics
I would also talk to users from other age groups and locations (our user base was in Seattle) to ensure that I’m designing a feature that can be used by everyone.
Team BARK <3
Reflection and learnings
Innovative strategies and team collaboration
01
Learning to innovate within established products
It was a great learning experience for me as I navigated working on a well-established product and found room for new needs within it.
02
The power of team communication and trust
While we faced uncertainty and doubt at times, our ability to communicate, trust, and support each other helped us create a final design that we are proud of.
03
Revisiting user research
One of my biggest learnings throughout the feature testing process was understanding the root causes behind participants' perspectives rather than being too quick to dismiss our own ideas. Perhaps it wasn’t the concept itself, but how we asked certain questions—potentially targeting our design decisions more than the actual concept.
Behind the scenes
