I’ve waited for this feature for so long. As someone who has been a loyal gas buddy user (an app that allows users to find the cheapest prices around you), I’ve always wondered why Google Maps wouldn’t streamline this process too. This essentially adds the extra steps and taps involved in finding gas prices around me. Thank you to Google Maps for thinking about user needs and proactively giving us users relevant information. This is good product + content design.

I really enjoy how Google Maps accounts for empty states (or gas stations that have no price data) by simply having it as an empty pin with only a name.

I also love how Google Maps only presents one price when in list and map view. There’s no need to show multiple prices, because often the regular gas prices are a good barometer for how expensive other prices (premium, etc.) will be. If a user is curious about other prices, they can click the gas station to see prices of all levels of gas, which is 🤌. This is a great example of how products can show essential information (avoiding clutter, too much info) initially and account for edge cases as the user explores/seeks it out.

Here are some things I’d like to test, change, or know about this feature:

• Do people usually click and navigate to the closest gas station, prioritize price, or somewhere in the middle? This could drive how Google Maps chooses to feed people results? Could that influence decisions around advertising + filters?

• This should have an option to sort or filter by prices. Currently, Google Maps only allows users to filter by gas station hours and distance. Some considerations could involve how accurate gas prices can be, how quickly they can be updated, and how costly that can be to maintain (essentially, is the juice worth the squeeze).

• How does Google source gas price data? Is it crowd sourced from users? From third parties? This could affect how Google Maps makes decisions around updating this.

These locks are brilliant content design (real word!). As someone who used to work in the restaurant industry thinks about everything through a content design or simply design mindset, I’m enamored by this creation. I’ve seen plenty of awkward restroom lock checks.

No longer does someone have to awkwardly check if a bathroom is occupied or not, knock on the door, wiggle the handle, or stand awkwardly outside a bathroom that is indeed vacant.

This invention is all about proactively giving the user (in this case a bathroom user), the information necessary to know whether to enter to wait. Think about how this piece of design has saved time, given people privacy, and made checking bathroom locks less awkward.

Fun fact: there’s even ADA compliant locks like this, which is so good.