Weather integration concept for Yandex Maps
Since Yandex has both Weather and Maps apps, I explored if bringing Weather features into Maps could help improve its product metrics
About product
Yandex is one of the largest tech companies in Russia, often called the “Russian Google,” with around 67–70% of the search market and an ecosystem of over 90 services. It has expanded into search, e-commerce, media, cloud, education, and everyday services such as Yandex Market, Yandex Music, Kinopoisk, Yandex Plus, Yandex Food and Lavka, Yandex Cloud, and Yandex Practicum. One of its most popular products is Yandex Maps, used by over 43 million people to navigate cities, plan routes by car, public transport, bicycle, or on foot, view live traffic, street panoramas, satellite maps, and find local businesses, making it an essential everyday tool in Russia.
My role
As a product designer, I guided the project through the full Double Diamond process. I collaborated closely with users to collect insights, then benchmarked against competitors to identify opportunities. From there, I translated findings into hypotheses, mapped user flows, and created wireframes. After validating a clickable prototype, I continued iterating to refine the user experience.
Business goals
1. Increasing user loyalty through a new product feature.
2. Offsetting the number of target actions (such as building a route, visiting the website, or making a call) by providing alternatives.
3. Improving key metrics: GDU, DAU, WAU, MAU, Retention.
Discovery stage
In Discovery, my priority was to dig deeper into the problem space and reveal the core needs hidden behind surface requests. This allowed the team to align on a common perspective and move forward with decisions grounded in research rather than guesswork.
Competitor feature analysis
At the beginning of my work, I decided to analyze competitor functionality. I reviewed 2GIS, Google Maps, Weather On The Way, and CarPlay, and compared them with Yandex Maps. My goal was not only to explore the weather features that could be added to Yandex Maps, but also to identify broader advantages and growth opportunities for future improvements.
Key weather features of competitors
After analyzing 2GIS, Google Maps, Weather On The Way, and CarPlay, I focused on several key weather-related features. First of all, I really liked the capabilities of the Weather On The Way app.
The feature shows an hourly forecast for each stop along the route, including precipitation, temperature, wind, and visibility. It visualizes weather changes on the map, highlights risky areas, and can suggest safer routes. Drivers also receive alerts about sudden weather changes and safety tips like ‘Avoid this road in the evening due to fog.’ It’s especially useful for long trips, helping drivers plan ahead and stay safe.
I also found that Google Maps and 2GIS apps include basic weather information such as temperature, precipitation, and wind. A small icon shows the temperature and precipitation, and tapping it opens a panel with more detailed weather data.
UX research: maps & weather data
I interviewed four users aged 25–44 to understand how they use map apps and check weather information in different situations. The respondents live in Russia and Serbia, and all work in IT. I had a few specific goals for this research.
1. Understand how users check weather data while traveling, outdoors, and at home — what challenges they face, what is unclear, what is missing, and what they find useful.
2. Identify what functionality users may lack and what could be added to the app to gain a competitive advantage.
3. Discover the main difficulties users encounter when working with maps, and what causes the most frustration, in order to address these problems in Yandex Maps.
4. Determine which features require improvements to increase user retention by solving key pain points in Yandex Maps.
User personas
I created two user personas based on the interviews I conducted to better understand people’s goals, needs, and frustrations. They helped me check design ideas against real user needs and served as a foundation for building Customer Journey Maps. One CJM was made for the driver persona and the other for the pedestrian persona, since their experiences are different.
Definition stage
At this stage, insights from discovery are analyzed and organized. The goal is to define the core problem clearly by spotting patterns, pain points, and opportunities. This helps shape design hypotheses, align the team, and prepare for ideation with a well-framed problem statement.
CJMs
I created two maps based on the user personas I had developed earlier. One CJM describes the driver’s experience and the other the pedestrian’s. They showed me where people get frustrated, what emotions they go through.
Job Stories
I developed 15 Job Stories to capture real user motivations and contexts. They helped me focus on the problem space, clarify user needs, prioritize the most valuable scenarios, and explore different solutions.
Hypotheses
Because the main goal was to bring Yandex Weather capabilities into Yandex Maps, I focused on the problems and job stories most relevant to this task.
1. Users want to see basic weather information (temperature, precipitation) in the Yandex Maps app, so they don’t have to search for it in a browser or a separate weather app. They also feel frustrated by having too many apps and shortcuts on their home screen, and want a single entry point for Yandex apps.
2. Truck drivers and long-distance motorists need more detailed weather information during their trips. In conditions of heavy rain or snow at night, driving on highways can become extremely difficult and unsafe.
Impact / Effort Matrix
I discussed my hypotheses with the developers. Since our task was to bring existing Yandex Weather features into Yandex Maps and create new options, we didn’t reject any ideas. Instead, we decided to implement all of them in order of priority: first from the "Easy wins" category, then "Incremental," and finally "Big bets".
Development stage
During the Development stage, I turned concepts into prototypes, tested them with users, and improved them based on feedback.
Weather data: user flow & wireframes
I had to design how the weather layers would look and how the general weather data would open when tapping the temperature icon. Instead of separating them, I decided to merge these features into one, since both were needed anyway. This way, I created a flow that gives users the most useful information with the fewest taps.
Weather for drivers: user flow & wireframes
I designed a flow that shows weather conditions along the planned route depending on the departure time. I also added a weather hint at the moment of route selection, so users can immediately see potential risks. The same flow works for walking routes.
Usability testing
I built clickable prototypes from the wireframes and ran usability testing with five participants. The sessions helped me uncover problems in the interface, understand how users approach these tasks, and see how quickly and effectively they could complete them. These insights gave clear directions for improving the design and making the product easier to use.
Improvements and final UI
After usability testing, I refined the design based on user feedback. I improved clarity, made alerts more visible, grouped weather data for easier scanning, and adjusted fonts for better readability. Finally, I polished the UI to look cleaner and more consistent.
New components and styles
I added new components and styles to support the weather integration. These additions kept the UI consistent while making the new features intuitive and easy to use.
Specification
I created detailed design specifications to document how the weather feature should work across different scenarios. This included behavior rules, spacing, and interactions.
Final result
I went through all stages of the Double Diamond process — from research and defining the problem to developing and delivering final solutions. I analyzed user needs, created scenarios and wireframes, tested prototypes, and finalized the UI. Here’s the final version of the design.
Weather data
1. In this scenario, the user taps the weather widget to see more details. A bottom sheet appears with hourly weather data, and a precipitation layer shows up on the map. When the user scrolls through the timeline and the weather data, the map updates to show the precipitation for that time.
2. The user can also expand the weather panel to see more details. The data is time-linked and updates accordingly.
3. In the top-right corner of the panel, there’s a “10-Day Forecast” link that opens a separate page with weather information for the next 10 days.
Weather on the route
1. When the user selects a route and bad weather is expected, an alert appears at the top of the screen. It shows when the bad weather will start and how long it will last. The route button also displays a weather icon. The user can open the panel to see the same information in more detail.
2. While choosing a route, users can tap the weather widget to view weather points along the path. The ‘Let’s go’ button hides to make more space for weather details and hint that the panel can be scrolled. Users can also select a departure time to see how the weather changes if they leave later, or tap ‘Best option’ to instantly choose the nearest time with good weather.
3. Users can also swipe the panel up to see a list of locations along the route, the estimated arrival time for each point, and the weather there. This information updates based on the selected departure time. The maximum number of locations displayed on the map and in the panel is eight.
Weather alerts while driving
1. While driving with Yandex Navigator, it’s possible to add voice alerts about severe weather — similar to the existing ones like “Turn right in 200 meters.”
2. If sound notifications are turned off, a weather alert appears on the navigation screen showing when bad weather will start and how long it will last. The alert stays visible until the driver swipes it away, ensuring the message is noticed and not missed.
Research findings on maps and weather
During the interviews, I learned a lot about the problems and challenges people face when using map apps and checking weather information. All issues are described in detail in the report, and this information will be useful for further work on the app and improving the user experience. The main goal was to identify problems that appear at the intersection of using maps and weather services. The respondents had two problems that could indirectly be solved with the help of competitor features.
Empathize Driving between cities can be risky during heavy rain, snow, or strong winds.
Define The issue is that Yandex Maps does not provide weather information.
Ideate The idea is to add a feature that shows hourly weather conditions along the route and gives alerts about sudden weather changes.
Empathize Users get frustrated when the weather turns mid-trip, for example when it starts raining shortly after they head out.
Define While planning a route, Yandex Maps doesn’t show rain, temperature, or wind.
Ideate Add weather information to Yandex Maps, so users can choose the best way to reach their destination.
Designing the survey creation interface
To meet the needs of the property management company, we had to make the survey interface flexible. When residents answered a question, they needed different options:
a) choose a single answer from the list;
b) choose several answers;
c) write their own answer in free text;
d) combine a single choice with a free-text answer;
e) combine multiple choices with a free-text answer.
Feedback from developers
The best reference I found for creating custom surveys with the needed functionality was Google Forms. Before moving on to design, I showed Google Forms and its features to the developers. After that, we aligned on the functionality using the wireframes I had created.
I also suggested adding the ability to:
a) save a publication as a draft;
b) schedule the time when the publication would appear in the resident’s mobile app;
c) schedule the time when the publication would disappear from the app.
This is important because the property management company often publishes ads and promotions that have a start and end date. The functions described above allow a manager to simply create a publication and set the display time in the resident’s mobile app. This frees the manager from a lot of extra manual work.
Designing the publication distribution
To address the needs of the property management company, we had to ensure the distribution process was highly flexible. Administrators needed the opportunity to send publications to:
a) all residents in all cities;
b) several residential complexes within one or several cities;
c) houses in different residential complexes and cities.
Feedback from stakeholders and developers
This task was challenging to design, but I understood that its implementation would be even more complex. The most important part was making the interface clear and intuitive for administrators. At this stage, I created wireframes and a simple clickable prototype, and tested it with three administrators. After making adjustments, I showed the result to the developers. They confirmed there would be no backend issues since the system had already been designed to be highly flexible. After that, I created the final design, wrote the specification, and handed the project over to development.
Designing the publication distribution to accommodations
In order to meet the property management company’s needs, publications must be distributed to residents' accomodations in different buildings, complexes and cities.
Feedback from stakeholders and developers
This task was the most difficult to design, but since the backend system was already highly flexible, I had some freedom in the process. I followed the same workflow: created wireframes and a simple clickable prototype, tested it with four administrators, and made adjustments. Also discussed with engineers and developers how apartments are grouped by entrances and risers in the database, since this is important for the interface. Then I shared the result with the developers, finalized the design, wrote the specification, and handed it over to development.
Interface features
1. Accommodations are grouped by several categories: apartments, storerooms, parking stalls, and commercial premises, since accommodations in these categories can share the same number.
2. It's possible to select a building, and the accommodations will be also grouped by entrances and water risers. It’s also possible to select all apartments or storerooms (as accommodations are grouped in categories). For example, during a power outage, only one entrance may need to be notified. And if a pipe bursts, the notification should go to the apartments connected to that riser.
3. Accordingly, after selecting a building, it's possible to choose all apartments, an entrance, or the apartments linked to the water riser.
4. All selected accomodations are displayed on a separate card "Chosen". This allows everything to be seen on one screen.
5. To remove an accommodation from the Chosen list, the user can either click the cross next to the accommodation number in the Chosen list or click the selected accommodation number again in the main list under the address filter.
6. The user can quickly open the house address from the Chosen list to view all apartments within it by simply clicking on the address.
7. To clear all accommodations from the Chosen list, the user can click on "Clear all".
Delivery stage
After launch, we began gathering user feedback and tracking key performance metrics to measure success. We received numerous positive reviews from the administrators of the property management company.
Notification time: 2 hours → 12 minutes
The time it takes to notify residents about unpaid housing and utility bills was reduced from 1.5–2 hours to just 12 minutes within one month. Instead of manually calling each debtor, administrators can now send a single publication to specific residents, and they instantly receive a push notification reminding them about the debt.
+26% CSAT for residents in 8 months
The ability to send notifications to residents grouped by entrances or water risers allows administrators to instantly inform them about power or water outages through the mobile app. Residents are immediately informed about the situation and know when the issue will be resolved, which makes them feel more at ease. The property management company, in turn, earns greater trust.
8% fewer calls to the call center
The ability to quickly notify residents about an emergency reduced call center workload by 8% and decreased tenant call-outs by 15% within 8 months. Administrators can send a single publication using the new survey interface, and residents immediately receive a push notification.
3 hours of work saved monthly
Administrators no longer need to spend hours calling residents to collect feedback about the quality. With the new publication system, they can send information through the mobile app in just a few clicks. As a result, about 3 hours of work are saved each month for every administrator. This not only reduces routine tasks but also lets staff focus on more important responsibilities.
8 hours of work saved per survay
Previously, administrators had to print paper surveys, distribute them to residents, and then collect and analyze the results manually. With the new digital survey interface, the entire workflow is now automated in the mobile app and the admin panel. Residents can respond in just a few clicks.
Outcome
Thanks to close collaboration with administrators and developers, we improved key business metrics, built intuitive interfaces for surveys and notifications, and reduced manual work for staff. Residents now get timely updates and quick access to information, while the management company earns more trust and higher satisfaction scores. The publication distribution interface also proved to be scalable, as this solution was applied across multiple sections of the admin panel.
Takeaway №1
Collaborating early and regularly with developers and engineers helped align database structure with interface logic, avoid technical blockers, and make sure the final design could be implemented smoothly.
Takeaway №2
This project showed me the importance of constant communication with the business to truly understand its goals. I learned how crucial it is to validate hypotheses early and test solutions quickly with users to make sure the design delivers real value.