The Uber platform currently powers more than 7 billion trips every year. When we launched Uber Navigation, the world’s first navigation system designed for ridesharing, in 2017, the platform was handling 4 billion trips annually.
After 5 years of growing demands, not only in app use but also in terms of ever-evolving products and features, Uber Navigation was ripe for an overhaul. Notably:
- As we continued to ship new trip and navigation features, cracks were starting to show in the product’s design framework. Over the course of a few years, we had shipped numerous feature improvements to the driver experience, but with relatively few accompanying top-level UX framework changes. At the velocity we were shipping, we quickly reached a local UX maximum. To support future product development, we had to tear down our framework and restart with a clean slate.
- Uber’s brand and design system had gone through multiple reskins and visual language updates; we wanted the navigation surfaces to reflect a polished, professional feel consistent with the Uber ecosystem.
So in 2022, a group of designers gathered at Uber’s New York City office to rethink Uber Navigation.
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