How To Redesign Icons For Waze?
To plan the redesign of the icons we will use different creative tools that allow us to visualize the interaction of the existing design with the future redesign.
Creative tools
Moodboard is a starting point for further brainstorming. Considering technological, morphological, and esthetic aspects.
Moodboard is a way of capturing ideas through visual elements as forms of inspiration to carry out the design of the project. This tool is created from a previous investigation of certain factors, such as trends, competition, and user needs made up of different elements giving rise to the aesthetics and essence of Waze
To understand the aspects of use, analysis tools were used of related sectors graph, timeline, sequence of use, and study of context.
This sequence tool of use allows us to observe the number of current minimum movements necessary to perform the different actions within the app, compared with the possible redesign. This will allow us to see how attentive the user must be, detecting the level of consternation and the number of operations that must be done, since he is simultaneously driving, we must minimize said movements.
Context study tool is a complement that helps to visualize the possible sectors where the icons could be placed. These are the places where the user would have to make minimal movements at the time of the report, an essential action in this app, which is fed by the reports of the users.
Analysis tool for related sectors allows a comparison to be made with the app’s competitors, in this case, Google maps. This allows us to visualize the degree of complexity that they manage, the visual load, and how they relate to their users in order to detect possible malfunctions and prevent them from developing in Waze.
With the graph tool, the sectors with which users interact are detected in this context, visualizing how, like himself, he is linked to the elements that are around him, whether they are those that allow the driving action (vehicle, steering wheel) and simultaneous actions through the use of devices. This allows a morphological study to be carried out on the shapes and colors that interact in the parallel actions of using the app.
With the timeline tool, it is possible to detect factors that strengthen the area in which we are working, and that set trends with regard to the road safety, given the increase in vehicles on the street, the installation of cameras for better traffic control, and, with respect to the application, the user’s need to move more fluidly.
With the expressive aspects, the analysis tools of visual resources were used, where we defined lines, fonts, and color palettes.
With the visual resource tool, the universal character that vehicles maintain in their morphology and range of colors is observed, being able to delimit forms and their main characteristics.
Visual resources
Accompanying predominant colors are detected with differentiating colors that highlight the area of action. We observe that there is a wide variety of sensory forms that allow us to communicate in a simple and intuitive way the information that the user can provide, thus defining an increasingly minimalist design style.
Visual resources allow us to detect when we generate a visual overload in the applications, determining that the user must maintain a high level of concentration for its understanding. For this reason, it is always necessary to test the interaction with the target audience. to assess how easy to understand the icons are at a glance.
To design the Waze icons, it is necessary to apply different tools that allow a global view not only of the esthetic aspects but also how they are linked to the user, making this a functional and easily accessible experience while they are driving.
Communicational Aspects
Said application currently has a large number of users, so it will not be easy to introduce the redesign of the new icons, however, we believe that currently, Waze has a highly complex graphic navigation and interaction system, making the action of reporting more cumbersome, this being the most important since the app feeds on reports, that is why we consider the redesign icons.
In the press and web communication resources, Waze handles a simpler illustrative communication, this simplicity and synthetic aspects are what we want to transfer to the new icons of the app interface.
We believe that using the creative tools mentioned above, it will be possible to generate a visual language with less graphic load, making the use of the app more intuitive.
