OVERVIEW
For my Product Management class, I worked with an interdisciplinary group (design, business, computer science) to create a product and learn product management skills needed to manage a new product.
Our product, Google Maps Trips, is an addition to Google Maps that aims to make the group trip planning process simple and collaborative. Some of our features include: a voting feature for itinerary ideas, community trips, day-to-day itineraries automated by Google Maps (prioritizing convenience, distances, closing times, etc), and a recommendation list curated to the group’s interests.
I was the design specialist in the team (with the help of Lukas, a business specialist curious about design) and handled prototyping, mockups, and wireframes for our product. I also contributed to the business analysis, research for the product, and pitching + presenting our product and its mission.
🏆 Our team was awarded:
First place for Judge's Choice (product managers in the industry).
Second place for People’s Choice Award (class favorite).
Before following our product manager journey....
1. Group trip planning: Create trips and invite friends within the “Trips” tab.
🌎 Vote on places submitted by group members and see why others are interested in going [in “Places” tab].
🌎 Decide on plans with no miscommunication or confusion.
2. Day-to-Day Itinerary: Receive automated itineraries based on convenience and interests. Location, hours, and busy times are all considered.
🌎 View “Map” to see a visual of the locations, color-coded by day.
🌎 Less stressing over the logistics, easy consolidation of plans.
3. Community Trips: View others' trip itineraries and routes, see their pictures and reviews for the trip.
🌎 Filter trips by location, interests, or see Explore page (ex. "Food Tours, "Arts & culture", "Touristy", etc.)
🌎 Gain trip inspiration from others.
Google Maps Trips eliminates the complexities of planning a trip by providing a way to explore, choose, and organize places to visit in advance.
• Planning elaborate trips is difficult.
• Trip planning takes a lot of patience + research, there is a need for lessening stress on aspiring travelers.
• Users are overwhelmed by options and how to organize an itinerary curated to their interests.
• Group travelers spend too much time voting on the next move.
• Become the "planner friend" without the hassle.
• Leave your complicated travel spreadsheet at home and use Google Trips instead.
• Help you plan the trip you want with easy collaboration and sharing tools.
Our customers are people traveling in large groups with many different interests who want to organize a trip around everyone’s preferences.
• Young professionals traveling in groups.
• Students traveling with friends.
• Adults planning trips with their family.
👩🏽💻As college student,
“I’d like to have an easy way to vote on plans while making sure we have a great time and make the most of our trip”.
👪 As a parent,
“I need a customizable planner that easily incorporates everyone’s preferences, provides family-friendly options, and accommodates to my budget”.
🏡 As a hometown resident,
“I need a way to explore my city more so that I can experience it to the fullest extent. I want to find a plethora of options around me that fits to my interests”.
Haiming Xu, Software Engineer @ Google
🔑 Key Takeaways:
• Some collaboration features may exist already, but they are hidden and difficult to access.
• Focus on the bottom line: Advertisements.
• Prepare for what goes wrong in a trip (offline, traffic, weather).
At this stage in the lifecycle as a mature product, engagement is the key driver to the rest of these business objectives and ultimately to the Maps business model of ad revenue.
The bottomline for Google - creating and managing new partnerships with businesses in order to gain a portion of their revenue from the ads they push on Maps. Users spending more time on app and clicking on locations from placed ads while on the Trips feature will meet our business goals.
Maps needs to redefine the way in which users view the app (from quick usage to something they need to keep open through Trips and increasing engagement time).
Tripadvisor shares many features Google Maps Trips is trying to implement. Like: personalized recommendations, booking services, reviews, and a network/community of other travelers.
• Trips tab with overview of planned trips.
• Inviting external users to trips.
• Others can access and edit of attraction lists and itineraries.
• Automatically create routes/itineraries.
• Community trips: sharing complete itineraries to community.
• Map overview of places to visit.
• Intelligent completion of routes.
• Voting system to create consensus in a group decisions.
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Home tab > Trips tab > Trip details > Map of the trip > Daily itineraries > Communal/Yelp trips
This was an amazing class, and an even better team. A huge thank you to Ken and Derek for being such skilled professors. And the warmest appreciation for my team, they were by far an amazing group of individuals- I’m so proud of all the work we accomplished!
This case study only shows the main and technical parts of our process.
I learned a ton this semester- from creating a product to how to be a great product manager + leader.
⭐️ I improved my business skills and understood the different levels of a new product’s lifecycle in the market.
⭐️ I experienced and learned from managing a team with different backgrounds and perspectives.
⭐️ I realized just how difficult it can be to create a successful product. It takes a lot of work, research, managing, and knowledge from many different disciplines.
