“At the light, take a sharp left onto Washington Street.”
“So the second value prop—”
“Turn right onto Third Avenue, then at the next stop sign…”
Charles Armstrong, the product manager on Google Maps, is trying to explain how the platform’s turn-by-turn directions are getting their biggest update since the service launched in 2009. Maps is an almost unfathomably impactful platform that reaches around 2 billion people worldwide; it dominates navigation apps by commanding as much as 70% of the global market share.
But as Armstrong attempts to walk me through the rich redesign, he keeps getting interrupted by his own demo. And I have to admit…anyone who has ever attempted to converse in the car while navigating would find the moment more than a little vindicating.
Schadenfreude aside, I have to admit, the updates, launching on March 12, look promising. In an exclusive discussion with the Google Maps development team, here’s a look at the most significant UX updates.
Maps’ single most significant update is to the 2D navigation we’ve grown so accustomed to over the last 17 years. Now, the camera has been tilted down to reveal a real-time 3D map—complete with buildings, crosswalks, and off-ramps.
What may sound like a glitzy gimmick is all about lowering cognitive load by de-escalating the oft-stressful experience of being told where you need to turn next but not actually following where that is in real life.
“Hopefully [3D] means that it’s more relatable,” says Paolo Malabuyo, director of UX on Google Maps. “So it’s much easier for you to know, ‘Oh, I’m here and I know where I need to go in a couple blocks.’ ‘Oh, there’s a stop sign. ‘So as I’m coming up to that maneuver, I’m much calmer than I normally would be.”
Practically speaking, it’s easy to see Malabuyo’s point. Overpasses, for instance, are tricky to scrutinize on a 2D map. But in the redesign, natural shape and shadow demonstrates that they are different than a flat intersection.
Buildings don’t block sight lines as you turn around a bend thanks to dynamic x-ray views that kick in automatically as you drive. Instead of photorealism, Google opted for a more abstracted, wireframe look to reduce noise and focus your brain on what matters most.
Notably, much of the 3D map is generated with Gemini AI, which the company used to translate their own satellite street scans graphics. Elements like off-ramps don’t just come in one or two widths; the map is built to closely mirror the proportions of real-life roads. At the same time, AI adds some elements, like parking garages or landmarks, dynamically based upon choices like your final destination.
Google Maps’ old camera floated over your car, mirroring your turns at 1:1 speed. On paper, this should work perfectly: the map shows exactly what you’re doing. In practice, the team says it’s the sort of design decision that made drivers feel more stressed.
The new Maps changes the perspective so that the “camera” zooms in and out, with real cinematic heft, depending on your speed and road position. This doesn’t mean all that much for straightaways on the highway. It’s during those turns in particular that Google Maps will actually send the camera ahead of your car by just a little bit, giving you a preview of the street and landmarks to come.
“We refer to this internally as giving the driver the ability to see around corners,” says Malabuyo. Coupled with dynamic x-ray vision, which turns any building blocking your view transparent, it looks like Google Maps will make congested downtown streets far more forgiving to navigate.
That camera is accompanied by what the team calls “more colloquial” voice guidance, also powered by Gemini AI. This entire redesign is focused on triaging 14 particularly error-prone moments for drivers that cause them to miss turns. Sharper audio instructions are meant to help during many such scenarios—like when you’re on the highway with two back-to-back exits, and you don’t know which is the right one.
“There have been solid improvements to reduce the amount of rote, repetitive, and sort of awkwardly timed streams or language, so that [it] speaks more like a human,” says Armstrong. “If the highway has two different highway names connected with a forward slash, we’re not going to just keep repeating that.”
This more conversational interface is a two-way street, because Gemini AI will also field your questions through a new “ask Maps” button within Google Maps. Google says it allows you to ask plain language questions, like “My phone is dying—where can I charge it without having to wait in a long line for coffee?” While I didn’t see it demoed, the system will answer your question verbally, then generate a custom map to show you the way.
Google sits on decades of driver data, which it says informed many of these decisions. It further validated the work by running eye-tracking driver simulations in a lab, and even challenging its own staff to drive what it calls a “platinum route.” Based in Seattle, this route would probably be better named “hell route,” as it features all 14 of the most challenging situations to navigate. The team would drive the route, film it, and drive it again with new UX prototypes in attempts to validate which decisions actually assisted drivers the most.
While Google is reluctant to share any data demonstrating how much time or frustration its maps redesign should save drivers, they insist that the UX updates will make a measurable improvement to driving.
Via simulations and test drives, the team is closely tracking a state called “total eyes on road,” which follows how long we’re looking at a navigational display versus looking through our windshield. Even though the new Google Maps has a far richer interface that ultimately conveys more data, it’s simultaneously easier to grok. Google says its own testing confirms that drivers using the new Google Maps should look at their screens less than they did with the old version. That’s important, because while the entire auto industry seems to be admitting the danger of touchscreens, it’s hard to imagine reversing to a world before turn-by-turn directions. Google needs to be optimizing its UX to keep lowering cognitive load and encourage driver awareness.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Wilson is the global design editor at Fast Company, who covers the entirety of design’s impact on culture and business.. An authority in product design, UX, AI, experience design, retail, food, and branding, he has reported landmark features on companies ranging from Nike and Google to MSCHF, Canva, Samsung, Snap, IDEO, and Target, while profiling design luminaries including Tyler the Creator, Jony Ive, and Salehe Bembury ...
