HERE STUDIO /

Map Analytical Tool

This one is special

Project Scope:

Redesign

Team Size:

1 Design Intern, 1 Design Lead, 3 Developers, 1 PM

Duration:

5 Months

Platform:

Desktop Web

Untitled

© Summary सारांश

(WDX® — 01)

User Metrics

Outcome

Here is how the final solution moved the needle for the business

Intern to

Full Time

Adoption

Store Ratings

Time Reduction

© Introduction परिचय

(WDX® — 02)

The tata experience

Introduction

HERE Studio

HERE Studio (formerly Here XYZ) was a no-code tool from HERE Technologies for building and sharing interactive maps in the browser. During my internship, an early conversation with my mentor about the product's rough edges pointed us at its interface especially since HERE had just launched LUI 2.0, a new design language the tool hadn't adopted yet. My brief: find what wasn't working, and rebuild it in LUI 2.0.

© Challenge चुनौती

(WDX® — 03)

to overcome

The Objective

The objective had two layers. On the surface, the task was to migrate HERE Studio to LUI 2.0 the design language HERE had introduced only a few months earlier so the product would finally look and feel consistent with the rest of the catalogue. But a restyle alone would have wasted the opportunity. The real goal was to use that transition to fix the problems underneath: simplify how people work with layers and data, cut the redundancy across screens, and turn an empty, unguided first-run into something that actually helps a new user get started. In short not just make HERE Studio look like a HERE product, but make it work like one.

© User Research अनुसंधान

(WDX® — 04)

Custom Quotes

Approach

I worked through the project in five phases:

Analysis
Research
Benchmarking
Implementation
Testing.

I began by auditing the existing product screen by screen to map where it fell short. I then moved into research gathering input from HERE's own front-end team and from the people who actually use tools like this before bench-marking HERE Studio against its closest competitors to see where it stood. With a clear picture of both the problems and the landscape, moved into implementation, building from information architecture through low- and high-fidelity designs, and finally tested the result with users to see whether it held up. Each phase fed the next, so the final design was grounded in evidence rather than assumption.

© Ideation विचार

(WDX® — 05)

Thinking

Analysis

Confusing

(These are 2 separate buttons)

I started by walking through HERE Studio exactly as a new user would, screen by screen, noting everything that created friction.
The sign-in screen made a reasonable first impression it followed HERE's newer guidelines and creating an account was easy but the buttons were stretched far wider than they needed to be.
One of the two sign-in options was reserved for HERE employees without that being obvious.
Past sign-in, the project dashboard left large areas of negative space unused and split simple actions, like switching layouts, across separate controls.
The core map workspace was where the real problems lived. The left-hand control panel had the right idea surfacing only the options relevant at a given moment, with changes on the panel reflected live on the map but the placement of key actions like Layer and +Data was genuinely confusing.
Data uploads were quietly limited to certain file formats. The data section compounded this, the same information was repeated across three different tables in three different formats, and the interface mixed dark and light themes inconsistently.
Individually these were small things; together they made a capable tool harder to use than it needed to be.

© Onboarding ज्ञानप्राप्ति

(WDX® — 06)

All aboard

Competitor Analysis

To understand where HERE Studio stood, I benchmarked it against four of its closest competitors, Kepler, Mapbox, ArcGIS, and Carto.

I started with the most basic question: how long does it take to actually start working? I counted the number of clicks each tool needed to reach its map canvas, the main screen, where the real work happens. Those paths are shown below: for each tool, the screens you pass through, arranged in ascending order up to the map canvas, so the difference in how quickly you can get to the heart of each product is visible at a glance.

From there I compared the tools along two axes. The first was functional: a feature-by-feature comparison of what each could and couldn't do, spanning data handling, filtering,

customization, sharing, and search.

The second was qualitative: how each tool felt to use, scored across things like toolbar alignment, in-context prompts, ease of use, and whether it leaned on a dark or light interface. I went deeper on the areas that mattered most, the home page, sign-up, dashboards, layout, filtering, color, and styling, studying how the strongest competitors handled each.

The comparison made clear where HERE Studio was already competitive and, more usefully, where it fell behind, especially around [getting started / onboarding / the specific area you found weakest], which is exactly where I concentrated the redesign.