What is Waymo?
Founded in 2009, Waymo LLC is an autonomous driving technology company innovating a “new way forward in mobility.” It was previously known as the Google Self-Driving Car Project, and is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. (the parent company of Google). Waymo currently has two subdivisions; Waymo One focuses on rideshare technology, and Waymo Via targets the transport of commercial goods.
The Problem
For the majority of its history, Waymo has focused on research & development. As it now evolves into a commercial entity (available to the public), Waymo is reevaluating its brand identity and searching for ways to connect with customers (primarily younger generations) through its branding and product experience.
My Role
As a design consultant, I worked with my teammates and project managers to conduct research and create deliverables for Waymo’s design team. During bi-weekly check-ins, we presented our findings, ideas, and designs to our points of contact, and then utilized their feedback and follow-up questions to guide us through more brainstorming and iteration. At the end of the semester, we presented one final deliverable with detailed research findings, brand mockups, and key recommendations.
HMW
After understanding the current challenges and goals of Waymo’s brand design team, we started our project by asking:
Research & Synthesis
Ride-hailing Competitor Analysis
First, our team aimed to identify opportunities for Waymo to differentiate itself and stand out in the competitive landscape. We conducted competitor analysis on 6 main competitors spanning both autonomous vehicle companies (Cruise, Zoox, Aurora, and Motional) and traditional rideshare alternatives (Uber and Lyft). For each of these companies, we dove into areas such as their brand positioning & personality, visual & verbal identity, and advertising strategy.
What did we find?
After completing our research phase, we synthesized our findings into 3 key insights:
Key Insight 1
Customizable & Unique Experiences
While younger generations value practicality, they also love unique experiences & customizable options.
Key Insight 2
Personal Connection & Partnerships
Competitors acquire users by appealing to personal connection and partnerships that meet consumers where they already are.
Key Insight 3
Privacy & Peace of Mind
Lack of privacy and peace of mind are primary weaknesses of traditional rideshare (untrustworthy drivers, social anxiety, etc.)
Design & Prototyping
What’s a “Waymode?”
After presenting our research, one question the Waymo team asked was “how can we incorporate a unique experience into our actual product?”. Upon hearing the question, I remembered a specific dressing room experience I had where I was able to customize the room’s lighting & mood. Inspired by it and our conversation with Waymo, I created a mockup of “Waymodes” as a feature proposal.
Pick your "Waymode” is a feature incorporated into the Waymo vehicle that would give passengers 4 distinct modes to pick from during their ride: Music Lover, Sleepy, Work Hustler, and “Normal Car” mode.
Tailored Car Interiors
To integrate the car screen features with the physical vehicle, each “Waymode” would be accompanied by a tailored car interior setting. Based on the mode selected, the Waymo car would automatically adjust the lighting, noise cancelling, and bluetooth features accordingly.
Music Lover
Normal Lighting & Bluetooth On
Sleepy
Lights off & Noise Cancelling On
Work Hustler
Lights On & Noise Cancelling On
Normal Car
Normal Lighting & Noise Levels
The Waymode Advantage
“Waymodes” would create a customizable, unique, and human-centered passenger experience while encouraging people to take advantage of the freedom, privacy, and peace of mind that Waymo offers (and in a memorable way!). Through this, passengers are able to make the most of their ride with experiences unable to be replicated by traditional ridesharing apps or by driving themselves. For example, singing or sleeping isn’t something most would with traditional ridesharing, and working isn’t something we can do while driving, so I wanted to create a feature that utilizes what Waymo has against other alternatives and turn that into an experience in and of itself.
Bill(board)s, Bill(board)s, Bill(board)s
Our team was also tasked with creating marketing mockups that showcased a more exciting, approachable side to Waymo’s brand personality. After familiarizing ourselves with Waymo’s current brand principles and visual branding assets through the Waymo Brand Academy (provided by our points of contact!), our team decided to design a mix of original billboards and redesigns of their existing billboards. Overall, our designs were aimed at humanizing Waymo as a brand, since their existing website, billboards, and marketing materials were all very technical-focused.
Divide and Conquer
For our final designs, our team split up and worked on different deliverables: the deliverables shown below are just the designs and prototypes I created (brand refresh campaign mockups & feature proposal), but other members of my team worked on new photography style mood boards, marketing strategy proposals, data visualizations, and even more campaign mockups!
Final Thoughts
Before our final deliverable, I was worried that the “Waymodes” idea could be too out-of-the-box and difficult to implement for the Waymo team to really like. However, hearing all of their positive feedback and seeing how well-received the idea was really showed me that fresh perspectives and possibly unconventional ideas are always welcome in the industry. Another thing I learned through this project is that getting the ideas out there is more important than aiming for “safe perfection” (of course, this has its limits!). For example, our team had photoshopped changes to existing Waymo assets (ex. adding a woman to the #WhyWaymo car design) in order to showcase our ideas for humanizing the brand while staying true to their current branding. Although our edits were far from perfect, the Waymo team really liked our choices and agreed it to be the most effective way of getting our vision across. For future branding or campaign-based projects, I’d also love to experiment with creating designs that hold a statement in and of itself (creating “viralbility“ without using text).
Experience-wise, this was a super fun project for me as it was my first time working with an autonomous vehicle company! I learned so much about the AV field (+ my team and I now always send photos when we see a Waymo car roaming around San Francisco) and I really enjoyed getting to talk to Waymo’s brand designers and learning about the thought processes behind every branding choice.
Our UMA-mazing team at banquet!
