Google Maps

Making discovery in Ask Maps more efficient, inspiring, and actionable

Google Maps helps more than 2 billion people every month understand and navigate the world. Ask Maps brings conversational AI into that experience, using Gemini models alongside Maps’ rich, real-world information to answer complex questions, surface relevant possibilities, and help people decide what to do next.

During my internship, I led a 0→1 product design project for Ask Maps from initial problem framing through final recommendations. I owned the project end to end across design, prototyping, research, and iteration, while working with 20+ cross-functional partners across UX, UXR, product, and engineering.

The project began with significant ambiguity and no predetermined solution. I was responsible for creating structure around the problem, defining the design direction, and moving the work from early exploration toward a tangible, research-informed set of product recommendations.

Confidentiality note: This case study intentionally remains high-level. Internal concepts, research findings, unreleased product details, and proprietary recommendations have been omitted.

Public Ask Maps product demo by Google, shown for context. Internship work is not shown due to confidentiality.

A map is becoming a conversation

Ask Maps expands the traditional Maps experience beyond searches with known parameters, allowing people to ask nuanced, multi-part questions and continue exploring conversationally.

That shift introduces a different design challenge. Discovery can require people to understand their options, weigh multiple considerations, uncover possibilities they hadn’t considered, and decide what to do next.

How might Ask Maps make complex discovery more efficient, inspiring, and actionable?

Defining the opportunity

I turned the broad opportunity around complex discovery into three areas I could explore and design against.

01 — Make decisions more efficient
I explored how stronger hierarchy, scannability, and structure could help people identify what mattered with less effort.

02 — Make discovery more inspiring
I considered how Ask Maps could support focused decision-making while still helping people uncover relevant possibilities they may not have thought to search for themselves.

03 — Make the experience more actionable
I looked beyond the answer itself to the broader journey from understanding options → building confidence → taking the next step.

These principles gave me a framework for turning an open-ended problem into something I could prototype, evaluate, and refine.

Designing for a variable AI experience

Conversational AI doesn’t produce one predictable screen. The experience needs to support different questions, amounts of information, user intentions, and paths through a conversation.

Alongside wireframes and high-fidelity design, I used AI-assisted coding to build an interactive prototype, making the experience tangible enough to evaluate, iterate on, and discuss with cross-functional partners.

Accessibility was an important lens throughout the work, particularly around hierarchy, scannability, information density, and cognitive load.

The challenge wasn’t designing one perfect response. It was developing an approach that could remain clear across a variable system.

Pushing the work further through research

As new questions emerged through design exploration, I saw an opportunity to go beyond design intuition.

I proposed and led an independent UX research study, developing the study plan and materials, facilitating sessions, synthesizing findings, and translating what I learned into subsequent iterations.

Research became a way to challenge assumptions, sharpen the product direction, and make more informed decisions about where to take the work next.

Turning exploration into a direction

Throughout the project, I worked with cross-functional partners across design, research, product, and engineering to evaluate the work through user, product, and technical lenses.

By the end of the internship, I had taken the project from early framing through exploration, prototyping, independent research, iteration, and final recommendations.

The work culminated in a research-informed design direction and set of recommendations for Ask Maps. I also had the opportunity to share the direction with director- and VP-level leadership, where the work received positive feedback.

My final host feedback highlighted my organization and foresight, design craft, and proactive approach to seeking and incorporating feedback throughout the project.

The specific concepts, findings, and internal decisions remain confidential, but the work gave the team a tangible direction to evaluate as Ask Maps continued to evolve.

What I took forward

This project changed how I approach problems without an obvious answer. I learned to create enough structure to move forward while staying open to what research, technical constraints, and different perspectives might reveal.

Designing for conversational AI also pushed me to think beyond individual screens and consider how hierarchy, accessibility, and clarity need to hold up as content and interactions change.

Spending the summer in San Francisco with the Google Maps team gave me the chance to learn from incredible designers, researchers, engineers, and product partners working at a scale I had never experienced before.

Moments from my summer with Google in San Francisco!