WazeCopied

Waze, the Google-owned navigation app, depends on its community: over 130 million users report traffic and hazards in real time, and half a million volunteers edit its maps. In July 2020 it launched a refresh built around them, by Pentagram partner Natasha Jen with Waze's in-house team led by Jake Shaw, a credit given by Design Week and Creative Review.

The process included conversations with users and a study of 13,000 drivers. Shaw said two needs emerged: consistency and simplicity, and room for drivers to express themselves. The team deliberately rejected the minimal, elevated tech look. Shaw said they were chasing something friendly, organic and joyful, and the palette expanded to bright blue, purple, green, red, yellow and orange.

The Wazer, the smiling speech-bubble character on wheels, was redrawn rounder and more upright, and became the basis for Moods, the avatars drivers use in the app, now expanded to 30 emotions from happy to sick to angry. Pentagram's Block by Block system, inspired by the modular city grid, redraws icons and speech bubbles from flexible shapes that always read as Waze. The wordmark is based on A2 Type's rounded Boing, and the tone of voice was rewritten to be bold, witty and welcoming.

Drivers did not all warm to it. On the Waze subreddit some found the new Moods creepy or stiff.

Creative Review detailed the logic. The Wazer became rounder and more upright to stress its speech bubble shape, because the app runs on drivers talking to each other, 130 million of them in over 180 countries plus 500,000 volunteer map editors. The wordmark moved to Boing, a sans with rounded corners, for a friendlier tone. Around the symbol grew a family of mood avatars, from adventurous to zombified, drawn from research with 13,000 drivers about how they described their commute. It is a rare identity that is built from user behaviour rather than imposed on it.

Even so, this is one of the better tech refreshes of its era because it goes against the trend. While competitors were stripping colour out, Waze added it, and the reason is clear from the product: an app whose value comes from millions of chatty drivers should look like a community, not a utility. The Moods may be uncanny, but they are distinctly Waze.