Redesigning Waze to support Cyclists
I took on the challenge to redesign Waze to support cyclists by going through the Five Ws and How process. 5W1H is a process used for information gathering and problem solving. This process is good for interview exercises to test the designers skill, the designer needs to be aware of the “why” behind the design decisions, ready to explain them.
This exercise is from Artiom Dashinsky’s book: Solving Product Design Exercises https://productdesigninterview.com/
Step 1: Why
- Cyclists need to know what is happening on route as well as cars because they are also on the road and deal with hazards.
- Riding through parks and green spaces can avoid exhaust from cars for a more pleasant experience.
- Cyclists use their bicycles to exercise as well as commute while people who ride in cars don’t any exercise.
Step 2: Who
- Commuters who cycle daily and want a more pleasant journey.
- People who want to exercise and find steep hills and different roads to cycle on.
Step 3: When and Where
- Waiting at the traffic lights
- Feeling unsure of what time they will get to their location
- Riders might be riding fast down hills
I needed to think about what is the riders high-level motivations for commuting and exercising on the bike.
Rider’s needs for commuting and exercising
- Getting alerts about traffic and hazards
- Getting there faster with instant route changes
- Arrival time based on the live traffic data
- Instructions to help guide you and on screen navigation
- Routes the riders can take with different levels of steepness for exercising
Step 4: List Ideas (What)
I summarised what I wanted to do:
Build a redesign of Waze to support bike riders who commute and exercise, that would avoid traffic and find harder hills to ride up to get to their location faster and get fitter.
There are several possible solutions below for what I could build:
- Adjust the current Waze app design to include the bike ride navigation
- Build a smartwatch app that would communicate with the users
Step 5: Prioritise and choose an idea
After thinking about this further, only a small number of customers own a smartwatch so it would be better to adjust the current Waze app with the bike navigation because users have access to the app and are used to it.
Step 6: Solve
Looking at the current Waze app interface I came up with the steps the user needed to do:
- Login to Waze
- Search a location
- View location details
- Choose between Car or Cycling to get to the location
- View location arrival time
- Ability to change routes for harder hills
I started sketching out how the Waze application will look like with the cycling navigation in, also considering the current functionality.
When the user gets to the location details screen the only thing that has changed is that they can now choose between riding in a car or cycling with the two buttons at the bottom of the middle sketched screen.
On the last sketched screen the user could stop for parking and fill gas but these buttons have been removed for cyclists. I replaced them with a park icon where the user can stop to go in the park if they wish.
Routes is already integrated into the Waze app so it’s a matter of adding elevation data below the miles for the terrain so they know how hard the elevation will be for hill climbs.
Within the Route screen there is a Navigation settings screen where the user already has access to change the Vehicle Type. I wasn’t aware of this at all when using the application but these vehicles don’t include a bicycle option so this can be included on the list.
Above I’ve included the elevation 339 ft for example below the Miles on the Route screen above. I kept the navigation screen as standard as I feel these options are useful for cyclists as well. On the righthand sketch I’ve included Bicycle at the bottom for vehicle type.
Step 7: Measure success (How)
We’d need to know if this solution is successful or not by measuring the KPI’s such as task success rate of the product. If this solution is successful we’ll see:
- Cyclists saying that their ride is more pleasant and they’ve got to their location quicker.
- People who cycle to exercise and say the application has made them fitter by choosing more challenging routes such as riding up steeper hills.
