HERE Maps for Samsung

Samsung asked HERE to develop a native maps app for their new mid-range smartphone. The device was running a new native OS called Tizen.

The app was to be released with an upcoming Samsung device in the not-too-distant future. Working in a small team, we had 3 months to design, test and localise the app on this new platform – roughly a third of the timeframe we usually had.

I led a small but motivated design team to explore the visual approach, validate, produce and QA. This project taught me what can be achieved by a small team, with a bit of pressure and clear goals.

Product Design Lead

Key contributions

  • Resource planning

  • Process design

  • UX design

  • Art direction

  • User research planning

To the bat cave!

Looking at what we had set to deliver, most of it had been done before on other platforms already. We didn’t need a discovery phase. However, this wasn’t a pure ‘production’ project. Tizen was a brand new OS with its own distinctive visual style and interaction patterns for selecting and editing content. We needed to allow time to explore and validate approaches for these.

In planning, I proposed to deliver wireframes for each feature separate to visual design. This would enable the engineering team to tackle each feature earlier, while visuals were being prepared. Preparing the content in advance also allowed us 3-weeks at the end of the project to order and test localised strings. It was tight but it was doable.

We would begin with the fundamentals: the map interaction and display logic, and a visual design exploration that would allow us to set a direction for the branding and visual side of things.

It was tight, but it was doable!

Applying the HERE brand to a new operating system

The first task on the visual design track was to find a visual direction that felt HERE-branded but was felt at-home in the new OS with its bold colours, lists with segmented gradients, and large iconography.

Example key screens from Tizen OS.

Tokens and components minimized the risk of future changes

There was no time to test this visual direction across the whole app. As we progressed, there was a risk that design decisions made early on wouldn’t work in all areas of the app.

There was no component library available from Samsung, so we made our own – allowing us to make adjustments to the tokens and components across the app as designs progressed.

Production

I leaned on design documentation from HERE’s other maps apps where we could, simplifying it where it made sense to do so. The specs were needed for sign off by Samsung, to ensure the app would feel at home on the device, and allowed our QA to check that features worked as intended. It sounds very waterfall but in this project it worked well: the specs provided a reference for the target experience for the whole team, and I could still pair up with engineers when we needed to.

Wireframes contained content, logic and string IDs for localisation.

Key screens from the finished app.

User testing

Since the app followed tried-and-true patterns from other apps, there was no need to validate it all. Still, I noted a few areas I wasn’t sure about while while designing, that we could follow up on in user testing.

For example, the device had a physical menu button which was designed for quick access to extra functionality within apps. In practise, we found that users didn’t discover this access point. We added an on-screen access point as a backup.

An excerpt from the test report.

Outcome

The app was released in time for on-device preloading to a 4.5 star rating in the first 3 months.

It was well-received, with a 4.5 star rating in the Tizen app store over the first two months. Two more major releases were added following the successful delivery.

Consolidated specs for future apps.

Until this project, several maps apps had been built by separate teams working on different areas of the app. By the end of the project I had assembled a complete set of specs that could be used as reference for future apps.

Learnings

Small teams can achieve ambitious goals

This is probably my biggest learning from the project. It helped hugely that we knew from the beginning what we were aiming for; the user value and the quality we were aiming for were clear. With the small team and tight deadline it led to some really productive pairing and collaboration between design and engineering folks.

Momentum breeds momentum

As the project charged ahead, seeing the app develop so quickly was infectious. It encouraged the team to keep moving quickly and reinforced our belief that we can make it.

Previous: HERE Platform