Turning navigation into life-saving coordination

Consumer Product

Fintech

Habit-driven UX

Google Maps : Emergency Feature

Google Maps : Emergency Feature

Platform

Mobile Interface

Type

Systems & Infrastructure

Design · Individual Project

My Role

Solo designer — mapped multi-stakeholder emergency coordination systems and redesigned the Google Maps interface to embed life-critical communication without adding cognitive load

Skills

Systems Thinking,

UX Research,

Interaction Design,

Service Design,

Real-Time Communication Design

Overview

When an ambulance is dispatched, the clock starts but the systems don't talk to each other. Traffic doesn't yield. Hospitals aren't warned. Nearby drivers have no context. Emergency response fails not from lack of effort, but from total absence of coordination.

Outcome

A driver-initiated alert system embedded inside Google Maps that simultaneously notifies vehicles, traffic signals, and the hospital ER; no new app, no learning curve, no lost seconds. What began as a screen redesign became a redesign of how cities respond to crisis.

This concept starts right after the emergency call is placed, asking:

This concept starts right after the emergency call is placed, asking:

This concept starts right after the emergency call is placed, asking:

Can an ambulance driver initiate a controlled system of alerts that clears paths

and readies the hospital, all from within their navigation app?

Can an ambulance driver initiate a controlled system of alerts that clears paths and readies the hospital, all from within their navigation app?

CONTEXT

Delays in emergency response often occur due to late alerts, uncoordinated traffic systems, and lack of real time communication between stakeholders.

Emergency coordination is multi-layered — requiring clarity across systems.

  • Condition reported


  • Ambulance dispatched

  • Faces traffic congestion


  • No traffic signal coordination

  • Sirens heard late


  • Delayed hospital arrival

BREAKPOINTS IN THE JOURNEY

BREAKPOINTS IN THE JOURNEY

BREAKPOINTS IN

THE JOURNEY

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ECOSYSTEM STAKEHOLDERS

ECOSYSTEM STAKEHOLDERS

ECOSYSTEM

STAKEHOLDERS

Emergencies don’t fail due to one broken link. They fail when information, action, and infrastructure aren’t talking to each other. This map helps visualize how to design for flow, not friction.

From roommates sharing bills to coworkers organizing lunch runs to students tracking weekly groceries, people rely on apps like Splitwise to manage group expenses.

THE EMERGENCY CHAIN OF COORDINATION

THE EMERGENCY CHAIN OF COORDINATION

THE EMERGENCY CHAIN OF COORDINATION

PROBLEM

PROBLEM

Despite calling emergency services in time, ambulances often face critical delays due to unclear location data, uncoordinated traffic, and lack of real-time communication with hospitals putting lives at risk during the most urgent moments.

From roommates sharing bills to coworkers organizing lunch runs to students tracking weekly groceries, people rely on apps like Splitwise to manage group expenses.

SOLUTION

SOLUTION

A driver-initiated emergency alert system embedded in Google Maps that activates a dynamic traffic corridor notifying nearby vehicles, traffic control, and the hospital ER to accelerate ambulance movement and hospital readiness, while maintaining system integrity and public safety.

From roommates sharing bills to coworkers organizing lunch runs to students tracking weekly groceries, people rely on apps like Splitwise to manage group expenses.

WHY GOOGLE MAPS?

A familiar app to reduce learning curve and cognitive load. An emergency icon or prompt is added subtly so users can discover the feature quickly in panic situations.

Learnings

Learnings

Systems don't fail at the moment of crisis. They fail in all the ordinary moments that came before it.

The ambulance case study began with a simple frustration: why does a vehicle with lights and sirens still get stuck in traffic? The answer wasn't technical. It was structural. Every stakeholder in an emergency : dispatcher, driver, hospital, city traffic control, bystanders was operating with a different version of the same event, in real time, with no shared language.


Designing for emergencies means designing for a user who is not okay. Cognitive load isn't an abstract metric here, it's the difference between a driver maintaining focus on the road and fumbling with an interface. Every tap we removed was a decision we made for the user because the situation already made too many demands.


The deeper lesson lives outside emergency response entirely. Most systems we interact with daily, transit, healthcare, municipal services are siloed in exactly the same way. They were built by different teams, at different times, with no shared vision of the person caught between them.


The next frontier of product design isn't the app. It's the infrastructure the app sits inside.

This prototype opens a larger conversation about city-wide synchronizations, sensor-based auto-alerts, and policy partnerships.




Imagine a future where the moment an ambulance moves, the city moves with it.

This prototype opens a larger conversation about city-wide synchronizations, sensor-based auto-alerts, and policy partnerships.




Imagine a future where the moment an ambulance moves, the city moves with it.

ReFrame.ai

Conversational UI · Interaction Design · Experience Design · Speculative Futures

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Splitwise Reimagined

Mobile Experience · Interaction Patterns · Usability Improvement

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ReFrame.ai

Conversational UI · Interaction Design · Experience Design · Speculative Futures

->

Splitwise Reimagined

Mobile Experience · Interaction Patterns · Usability Improvement

->

Turning navigation

into life-saving coordination

Turning navigation

into life-saving coordination

Google Maps: Emergency Link

3 weeks | Individual Designer

OVERVIEW

In emergencies, time is lost in confusion, sharing exact location, coordinating help, and staying connected isn’t seamless in Google Maps today.

IMPACT

Emergency Link adds a one-tap safety feature to Google Maps. It instantly shares live location and critical details with trusted contacts, enabling faster responses, clearer coordination, and potentially life-saving outcomes.