Waze Creative Concept

Your favorite navigation app, revitalized with new features to make traveling fun and more enticing. Featuring new community forums that keep the fun and safe in driving.

Role

UX/UI Designer

Industry

Tech

Duration

3 Weeks

Project Brief:

Waze's intention is to help create a better community to keep our roads safer. The more we become integrated with tech, the more it is important to have a shared purpose with each other. Waze will continue as much as possible to drive that community.

Problem:

Defining Waze’s identity crisis to solve its declining community. While Waze's parent company, Google, has over 6 million active users, they have seen an average monthly user decline of 7% per year and 14% total since 2022.

Context:

Target Users: City drivers, especially those who value time and want to feel connected with fellow drivers on the road with them.
User Needs: Users need a sense of community in a community-based mobile app so they always feel connected.
Constraints: Users feel disconnected when using a navigation app, leaving the desire to use a community-based app.
Role: UX/UI Designer — responsible for research, user flows, visual design, and interaction design

Process:

Research: Users are using Waze less over the years as other live websites continue to integrate Google and Apple Maps as their preferred choice of maps.
Competitive Analysis: Audited similar navigation apps (Google Maps, Apple Maps, Citymapper)
User Flow Mapping: Created simplified flows for entering a destination, interacting with the real-time chat, and using the community forums.
Wireframing: Sketched and prototyped screens (Home, Navigation, Community Forums)
Visual Design: Refreshed the current branding identity to a more bold, minimal UI system with the likeness of the original icons and colors, so users feel a sense of familiarity with the app through Figma.

Proposal:

Research and findings have determined that people still use navigation apps, with over 77% of total mobile users have downloaded a navigation app on their devices. Waze's goal to gain and retain an active community is through featuring an online community forum, similar to threads. Additionally, a real-time chat for live updates on road instances will provide a safer and more engaging driving experience that's unique compared to any other navigation app.

Summary:

Waze is a mobile product and branding concept designed to improve the daily commute by addressing the decline of active, crowd-sourced navigation communities. Leveraging social, real-time features, it aims to save users time while reducing frustration and rebuilding community connectivity during city travel. Commuters face renewed challenges: heavy traffic, complex route navigation, unexpected road hazards, and a lack of engaging utility features across traditional mapping alternatives. Research shows Waze has faced an identity crisis leading to a 14% total user decline since 2022, and less than 20% of U.S. adults actively use existing in-car voice assistants. Through competitive analysis, user persona modeling, and empathy-driven user journey maps, key user needs emerged: