Windows @Place

Smart Location Recognition & Deep-linking

Project Context

In conjunction with the Windows Placecards feature, the Windows Maps team want to create a feature that would help user communicate locations more efficiently across the operating system. We would achieve this by utilizing "@" as a trigger method. This would trigger a pop-out control that would help users identify and select specific locations.

This was a 3-month project and I worked with Product Management and Development throughout this process.

Role

Lead Product Design

Primary & Secondary Research
Sketching, UI Design, Prototyping
User Testing, Design Maintenance, Redlining

Process

For this feature to collaborate with Windows Placecards, the team felt that there needed to be control that would help identify and disambiguate locations. I took a look at similar controls across a variety of platforms, focusing on competitors that have different data types and have a large base of users.

The competitive analysis showed that:

All results include a photo
Most include primary information + secondary information (contact)
All controls have the similar size and visual hierarchy

Each of these controls also utilized "@" as a trigger character for the control. We saw that this was a common paradigm for tagging people, especially in the email and communication applications. We wanted to find out if that same paradigm would be effective for tagging locations.

"What do users think about "@" tagging locations?"

I went into the design phase by quickly sketching some ideas out. I used the research and competitive analysis to base the foundation of the design. For our goals, we had to integrate places in a way that kept the control lightweight yet informative.

We decided on a single panel control that would feature up to four people suggestions and two location suggestions based on recent searches and prevalence. Once a user begins typing more, we then narrow down the suggestions until the user has identified their intended option.

Outcome

This feature was designed and developed to leverage the use of the "@" trigger to accommodate locations and location data. As a result of using the same trigger, we were able to maintain the user model of tagging entities in applications. By adding the ability to tag location data, we were also able to increase the usage and engagement of PLacecards and the Windows Maps platform.