Digital Indoor Map - Mapxus

Background

Mapxus is a startup that focuses on a City-based Indoor Map and Data Platform. It started in early 2018. I joined them at the beginning as a product designer to focus on UX and Application design.

When I onboard Mapxus, we only have the basic MVP and some branding-related designs. I have to go through everything with the stakeholder. As I am the only designer in the company, I almost have to work on anything related to "design".

Challenges

Mapxus is a fast-growing digital map platform. It is a must to understand how users use the service by user research and stakeholder interview.

By talking to both internal and external users, I found out the three main problems:

1. Users do not know which building has the indoor map.

2. It is hard to read the map info, like the store info...etc

3. User cannot focus on the indoor map.

I also did a quick online survey to understand what do our users think about an indoor map.

We also know what is a good digital map to our user from the research.

How might we enhance the experience for people to look for what they want in a digital indoor map?

We heard the feedback from the user and re-designed 4 types of digital indoor map experiences.

Although the map is focused on indoor, users still think it is difficult to read the map info.

Some people like it while the other dislike as it is difficult to read the information

Only 30% of users like this, the other think it is still hard to outstand the indoor map from the outdoor area

Over 70% of users like this map. It is easy to read, focuses on indoor, and look cozy.

Based on the comments from the users, I fine-tuned the design of the new digital map.


  • Users can understand which buildings have the indoor map easily, They can see the building name when zoomed out.

  • People can read the building info easily -- redesigned icon and color for all the POI.

The Design System

I also led the initiative to create a design system for mapuxs.

A Design System is to have a library of reusable elements/components for the team to design, develop and realize the products.

Mapxus is a service company that provides an indoor digital map, indoor wayfinding, and indoor visual map. We provide an API and SDK to let other company or developer develop their own products based on the map data.

How can we provide a similar experience, from macro to micro, to the end- user? How can we speed up the developing time of our clients?

How can we provide the same UX of the floor controller to the end user?

My idea is to have a coded-package for every component, so developers can simply copy & paste the code and use the default components.

Before that, we need to identify what is our key default components.

To understand, we conducted research to ask the developer and clients, and they want the following:

  • the ability to customize the default components.

  • good to have basic components like a search bar, listing, floor controller

  • easy to integrate with the existing app on mobile and web.

some of the components from the design system