Google Maps

Reimaging Google Maps Saved Places with an AI Feature

Industry

B2C SaaS

Timeline

4 months

Year

2023 - 2024

Team

Myself - UX/UI Designer

Overview

Reimaging Saved Places in Google Maps using AI

Background
Millions of people use Google Maps every day to save restaurants, shops, and favorite spots. But finding them later isn’t always easy. Long lists, forgotten names, and cluttered organization make it harder than it should be.

Project Overview
As an active Google Maps user, I designed a concept that rethinks saved places for active power users. Instead of relying only on names of places and addresses, this approach uses AI-powered memory recall — letting people search the way they naturally remember.

Business Impact (Concept Outcomes)
By simplifying how people retrieve saved places and adding contextual search, user testing showed they felt more confident and less frustrated with the overall experience.

13%

Faster To find saved places during prototype testing

4/5

Contextual recall made pins easier to remember

Challenge

Saving places is easy — finding them later is hard

People save lots of places in Google Maps — restaurants, shops, hikes — but when it comes time to find them again, they get stuck.

Key Insight: Endless lists make finding places a chore

Solution

Retrieve Saved Places the Way You Remember Them

I designed features that make saved places easier to find, focusing on how people naturally recall information. Instead of forcing users to remember exact names or addresses, the system layers in contextual and AI-powered search to match human memory.

Solution #1 - AI organizes your saved places

An AI assistant scans your pins and automatically groups them by type — like coffee shops, art galleries, or restaurants — so you can find what you’re looking for faster.

Solution #2 - Tag your places for easy recall

When users add simple tags (like “coffee,” “date night,” or “favorites”) while saving, the system can automatically organize pins — making them easier to find later.

Research

Users Struggled to Recall and Organize Saved Places

Through usability testing, I saw consistent struggles around saved places:

Users blamed themselves when they couldn’t recall why they saved something.
Context was missing — without notes or details, pins were hard to remember.
Power users with 30 or more saved lists felt disorganized.
Two common behaviors emerged:
- Map View to jog memory by location.
- List View to try to categorize.

Key Insight: No one had a reliable system for finding saved places.

Ideation

Reimaging How We Access Saved Content

I noticed people struggle to keep track of what they save — whether it’s bookmarks online or items in a kitchen. The solution? Let AI step in as the organizer, making saved places easier to find when you need them.

Design

Using the Existing Material Design Library to come up with a solution

To keep things clear and easy to scale, we tested different flows using low- and mid-fidelity wireframes.

Low-fi: Focused on mapping key tasks like connecting, managing, and re-syncing data sources.
Mid-fi: Refined hierarchy, microcopy, and UI priorities (syncing, alerts, edge cases).

Patterns explored:

Step-by-step setup flows
Progressive disclosure (showing info only when needed)
Cards and tables for organizing data
On-screen instructions and alerts for feedback

Final approach: A hybrid pattern using progressive disclosure and Bootstrap components—scalable, clear, and easy to maintain.

Key Design Decisions

Before

After

Business Impact

Measuring Success – Did It Work?

We validated the redesign with another round of usability testing using the same group of users. The results showed clear improvements: the redesign made key tasks easier, boosted user confidence, and reduced the need for support.

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