Transforming the Caura iOS & Android app into a Google Maps tool and a Carplay integration.
Alex BB.
Founder, Visual Binary
Context
Caura is a mobile app that lets UK drivers pay vehicle tax, insurance, MOT, tolls, parking & more.
During my time at Caura, it was our mission to synthesise complex and often tedious processes of existing workflows into simple, slick experiences.
(how do you make paying vehicle tax sexy?)
We wanted to take the concept of a seamless process to its ultimate conclusion: envisioning what a direct vehicle integration could look like for a UK driver trying to sort their tolls & parking payments through Caura.
The process
We started by prototyping what a Google Maps integration could look like.
The reasoning was that a large portion of vehicle journeys utilise Google Maps (or Waze), and if you could surface a seamless payment integration into the existing UI, you could make the payment process easy and intuitive.
I started by integrating Caura's payment functionality into Google Maps' mobile app.
We then progressed to reimagining Caura in a totally different design language: transforming the payment feature into an in-car experience through Android Auto and Apple Carplay.
Google Maps partnership concept
Android Auto Mockup concept
Takeaways
Whilst this was a fun design experiment, I also think there were some key lessons learned from completing this concept.
Trying to fit the Caura payment functionality inside the constraints of Google Maps' existing UI and Android Auto's minimal design language made it painfully obvious which elements of our existing in-app experience were really necessary, and which parts (including microcopy) were there just to take up the real estate of an empty mobile app screen.
As a team, we had gotten so used to Caura's existing interface that we had lost the ability to see the low-hanging fruit improvements.
Constraints, even if artificial, are a good way of helping you look at your designs in a new light.
Fin.