Google Polaris
Google Polaris is a project made from participating in SFU Surge's SparkJam, A week long design hackathon. Polaris is a creation tool, built inside Google Maps and powered by Gemini, designed so that anyone can go from scattered inspiration to a fully crafted, personalized travel itinerary.
Product Design Lead
Daisy Han, Maddisen Ching
May 2026
Figma, DaVinci Resolve
PROBLEM
Ideas are scattered across tabs, saved lists, and more, that go nowhere. People aren’t struggling to find places. They’re struggling to build a trip.
CHALLENGE
How can we make a tool where Google Maps didn't just help you get somewhere, but it gave you the tools to author the entire journey?
84%
of Gen Z draw travel inspiration from social media
70%
of users said itinerary creation takes too long
30%
want to create itineraries but do not have the right tools
SOLUTION
Polaris is a creation tool, built inside Google Maps and powered by Google Gemini, designed so that anyone can go from scattered inspiration to a fully crafted, personalized travel itinerary. It lives inside your Google Maps bookmarks page, where users can view saved lists, recent locations, and existing itineraries. From there, they don't just collect places they build something entirely new.
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FLOW IDEATION
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FLOW
DESIGNINING WITHIN CONSTRAINTS
The biggest challenge that we encountered whilst making this project was the constraints of using Google's design system and being as creative as we can for a new feature. We had to draw from many different Google Applications to find the closest UI components to use or modify for the button and flow we wanted. We also struggled with deciding what the main flow for the MVP should look like, whether it was to have two separate flows, or combine them into one. we then decided to combine the flow below as it had many overlaps.
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FLOW PT.2
FUTURE PLANS
Scrapbook feature attached to ticket (Adding stickers, scribbles, etc)
Explore page where you can search through media → save into a list / place.
creating itinerary through saved media from Youtube
WHAT WORKED
The community aspect, the remix, and the boarding pass was a great hit amongst people we showed the prototype to. To them, it was nice that there was an artifact that they were able to share with others.
WHAT DIDN'T WORK
Theoretically the idea itself is feasible, but it was a generic solution which other apps have done and can do better. It seemed more like a "Curation" tool than actually creating something.
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MESSAGE EXPORT AND LIST VIEW