Redesigning Content for Google Maps

My Role

Research, design & prototyping — individual project

Thought excercise

Redesigning Content for Google Maps

My Role

Research, design & prototyping — individual project

Thought excercise

Redesigning Content for Google Maps

My Role

Research, design & prototyping — individual project

Thought excercise

Google losing share in food discovery to Tiktok and IG Reels

Losing stronghold in core product -

Is it possible here to

The opportunity

I wanted to tackle food discovery for Google and see how it could stay relevant in an era where TikTok and IG are capturing its market share.


Unfortunately, Google Maps does not currently have a creator ecosystem for creating short-form videos and we must answer:

Challenge #1: Catching Up

Challenge #1: Catching Up

Interviews with Creators signalled that to get them involved we’d need to:
1) Radically reduce friction to create
2) Give them confidence that their content would perform well

Solution #1: Auto-Shorts

I built a prototype for Food Youtubers to turn existing long-form videos into Shorts for Maps in batches

Phase2: Differentiation of content

To get people to start consuming on Maps, we need to find ideas that both address unmet user needs and are difficult for competitors to replicate

Solution: Differentiation Explorations

I explored ways to nail that overlap and prototyped them

→ The Full Design Process
That’s enough for now.


To see my full explorations and design process, please reach out

Illustrated and Designed by Karen Xu, built in Framer.

Illustrated and Designed by Karen Xu, built in Framer.

Illustrated and Designed by Karen Xu, built in Framer.