MapBrowser Annotations
Feature improvements in geospatial app
Company: Nearmap
Platform: Web app
Year: 2022
Project Context
Business requirement
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Deprecating the old platform ‘MapBrowser Classic’, which relied on outdated technology with limited scalability.
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Encourage customers to switch to MapBrowser (increase account migration rate)
Hypotheses
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Customers think MapBrowser Classic is better to use than MapBrowser.
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MapBrowser doesn’t fulfil user needs so they are reluctant to switch to new platform.
Gather user feedback
What we want to know
How do users currently use MapBrowser Classic/MapBrowser?
Why don’t they want to switch from MapBrowser Classic?
What challenges do they experience in MapBrowser?
Why do they request new features in MapBrowser?
Sythsise user feedback from support tickets and user interviews
Findings
Identify the key problem in the workflow
Based on the research, we found that most of MapBrowser users share a similar workflow:
Explore → Mockup → Share. Mockup is the stage where people spend the most time and struggle to get their work done.
Problem - Limited annotation tools
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Not available to set values for measurements
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Not available to duplicate the same shapes rapidly
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Organise layers inefficiently
Impact - Inefficient workflow
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Users spend huge amount of time working on MapBowser inefficiently
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Users seek other tools (MS paint, Photoshop…)
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Low tool usage, low monthly active user
A user from a US snow removal company marked and annotated the aerial imagery with MS paint to share with his drive where to clear snow on the site.
Ideation
MapBrowser is a tool with an open canvas that doesn't limit users to where to start with. Designing the user experience requires well-though planning and mapping of the interaction holistically on the user interface in order to create sensible user flows.
Every type of annotation tool has its unique micro-interactions by states (hover, selected, dragged) corresponding to the cursor style to give affordance of what users can do with the tool. The state of the tool also reflect the UI status on the layer manager, map and inspector panel.
Usability testing
To ensure the new design doesn't break users' existing workflow, we invited a couple of existing users from different industries with different levels of tech competency to test the new annotation tools and test whether the new feature improved their work efficiency.
The testing result came back with participants' positive feedback and a high task completion rate, which brought the team confidence to release the new feature. We also identify some small issues that we could address by educating users in the onboarding materials.
Results and outcome
Over a year since the success of the new annotation tools reflected on:
20% ↑
MapBrowser MAU
18% ↑
Monthly tool usage
95% ↑
MapBrowser migration rate