Google Maps Live View
Lead UX research for world-scale augmented reality
From 2017 to 2021 I was the lead UX researcher for world-scale augmented reality in Google Maps, the program that shipped as Live View. To my knowledge, I was the first person to conduct this kind of research.
Nobody had built this before. Augmented reality wasn't new, but ours was the first that could respond to your geographic position with high accuracy, out on real streets. There were no established methods, no prior studies, and no benchmarks. A large cross-functional team of product managers, designers, and engineers still had to make consequential decisions: what the product was for, what to build first, and what was safe to ship.
My role was to supply the intelligence those decisions depended on. I developed new qualitative and quantitative methods that could be run in urban streets, then translated the findings into the shared understanding that product and design strategy was built on. That work drew on psychology, geography, neuroscience, cybernetics, and urban theory to articulate the human dynamics of spatial cognition and attention.
Most of it fell into two categories:
1. Improving navigational confidence for people in complex street grids, in new cities, or with low innate navigational ability. This began with understanding how people build cognitive maps and orient themselves, and turned that into principles the team could design against.
2. Identifying and addressing safety challenges of asking people to look through a phone while walking through a city, and defining the safety features the product shipped with.
One of my proudest moments was when Apple Maps copied our feature a couple of years later, safety features included.
Awards & Recognition
Live View received multiple accolades:
- 2020 Webby Award for Best User Interface
- 2020 People's Voice Award for Best User Interface
- Fast Company 2020 Innovation by Design Award Finalist (Mobility Design, Apps & Games, User Experience, General Excellence)
- Honorable mention in Fast Company's 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards
- Gold in International Design Awards for Multimedia/Interface Design
- Named one of "The Best Inventions of 2021" by Time Magazine