Shai Pal | Portfolio

PROTOTYPING at Google

PROTOTYPING at Google

PROTOTYPING at Google

2019 - Today

2019 - Today

2019 - Today

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In recent years, I've been at the forefront of prototyping efforts at Waze, collaborating with other prototyping leads at Google and crafting sophisticated prototypes for impactful projects - from delightful micro-interactions, to full blown end to end flows.

Designing prototypes for a navigation product is critical, as they are instrumental in evaluating how well users grasp information in real-life road scenarios. This is particularly crucial for ensuring safety, both for the users themselves and for fellow drivers sharing the road.

Micro-interactions:

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In recent years, I've been at the forefront of prototyping efforts at Waze, collaborating with other prototyping leads at Google and crafting sophisticated prototypes for impactful projects - from delightful micro-interactions, to full blown end to end flows.

Designing prototypes for a navigation product is critical, as they are instrumental in evaluating how well users grasp information in real-life road scenarios. This is particularly crucial for ensuring safety, both for the users themselves and for fellow drivers sharing the road.

Micro-interactions:

Note: this page is heavy with content, give it a few seconds to load.
In recent years, I've been at the forefront of prototyping efforts at Waze, collaborating with other prototyping leads at Google and crafting sophisticated prototypes for impactful projects - from delightful micro-interactions, to full blown end to end flows.

Designing prototypes for a navigation product is critical, as they are instrumental in evaluating how well users grasp information in real-life road scenarios. This is particularly crucial for ensuring safety, both for the users themselves and for fellow drivers sharing the road.

Micro-interactions:

These micro-interactions were created using Principle / Protopie / Framer or After Effects. For our users, micro-interactions guide them in their journey, create a positive emotional experience, and humanize the interface.

For our developers and stakeholders, they enabled deeper understanding of interactions that may not be easily grasped using conventional tools such as Figma and Sketch.

Full blown prototypes:

Assessing navigation understanding solely through static screens is extremely challenging, posing a major hurdle for those involved in navigation product development. To address this issue, I created extensive prototypes that simulated a driving experience, alongside additional tools within our UX Lab's driving simulator in numerous instances.

Full blown prototypes:

Assessing navigation understanding solely through static screens is extremely challenging, posing a major hurdle for designers involved in navigation product development. To address this issue, I created extensive prototypes that simulated a driving experience, incorporating additional tools within our UX Lab's driving simulator in numerous instances.

Full blown prototypes:

Assessing navigation understanding solely through static screens is extremely challenging, posing a major hurdle for those involved in navigation product development. To address this issue, I created extensive prototypes that simulated a driving experience, alongside additional tools within our UX Lab's driving simulator in numerous instances.

Project: Alternative routes in Waze (rolled to production)

Engineers needed to understand the transition from navigation to route overview and the alternative routes below, while research participants needed to comprehend what they are looking at and what kind of actions they can perform.

Extreme waiting time (2000ms) was another thing that was tested (example below).

Project: Alternative routes in Waze (rolled to production)


Engineers needed to understand the transition from navigation to route overview and the alternative routes below, while research participants needed to comprehend what they are looking at and what kind of actions they can perform.


Extreme waiting time (2000ms) was another thing that was tested (example below).

🎉 The tests passed with flying colors and the feature was rolled to production in Q3 2023.

Project: Alternative routes in Waze (rolled to production)

Engineers needed to understand the transition from navigation to route overview and the alternative routes below, while research participants needed to comprehend what they are looking at and what kind of actions they can perform.

Extreme waiting time (2000ms) was another thing that was tested (example below).

🎉 The tests passed with flying colors and the feature was rolled to production in Q3 2023.

Project: Revamped search (rolled to production):

This prototype was utilized for UX research in the lab, along with a motion demonstration for engineers. It was aimed to help them understand the timing of each element's appearance and the behavior of switching between lists of results.

🎉 The tests passed with flying colors and the feature was rolled to production in mid 2023.

Project: Carpool pickup (R.I.P)

We used this prototype to validate our solution to various pain points risen from past UX research among riders: Understand where is the driver at all times, who is he, how much is the waiting time, and what happens after the pickup. Safety was also an integral part of the testings, especially in our market in Brazil.

Project: Search - loading skeleton principles (in production)

Breakdown aimed for engineers to show the appearance of the skeleton framework, in high and low server response time. The framework has been adapted across every product launched since:

Project: Camera movement in routes buildup

Created for engineers to understand the complete picture of route drawing, depth of field and how it can impact the user's patience (we bumped up the speed here :)

Project: Traffic meter for CarPlay

I also created prototypes for infotainment systems, this one was created for research participants and engineers, using Protopie and mirrored to an existing head unit.

Full documentation for engineers and designers

An internal prototype portal was created for product managers, engineers and designers with full guidance and best practices.

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