Case Study — Olympic Route Avoidance

TL;DR

During the Tokyo Olympics, many roads were restricted and certain highway tolls increased. As main designer, I designed a route-avoidance function that let drivers opt out of restricted roads — shipped across three platforms before an immovable national deadline. During the Games the avoidance dialog was shown over 50,000 times a day, 9.6% of daily active users used the function, and the team won the division's Super-Star Prize.

01The Problem

Yahoo! JAPAN was a sponsor of the Tokyo Olympics, and Carnavi committed to supporting drivers through the disruption. According to the Tokyo Olympic Committee, many roads would be restricted during the Games, and tolls would rise on certain highways. Drivers needed to know about restrictions before being routed into them.

From that background we defined three requirements:

Routes can avoid Tokyo Olympics restricted roads.
Users are reminded of increased highway tolls on affected highways.
The mechanism is reusable for other events with road restrictions in the future — not a one-off.

02My Role & Constraints

I was the main designer from the early stages, responsible for interaction design, wireframing, prototyping, usability testing, and data-collection design, working with the PM, project manager, and engineers across design, development, test, and release.

Two constraints shaped everything: the deadline was set by the Olympics, not by us; and the feature had to ship simultaneously on iOS, Android, and tablet without fragmenting the experience.

03Key Design Decisions

Decision 1: Make avoidance a choice, not a default

Restricted roads were not equally restricted for everyone, and forcing detours on all users would have created its own complaints. The final design surfaces a clear dialog at route-planning time, letting users choose to avoid Olympic-restricted roads or not — informed, but in control.

Decision 2: Design the general case, not the event

From a very early stage I designed it as a "Special Route Avoidance" pattern, so the same mechanism could serve the Tokyo Marathon and other large-scale events with road restrictions. The Olympics was the launch scenario, not the scope.

Special Route Avoidance — generalized design for future events

04Outcome

50,000+

avoidance dialogs shown per day during the Games

9.6%

of DAU used the function

🏆

Super-Star Prize, Mobility Service Division, Sept 2021

The function shipped on time across all three platforms, was picked up by media, and the team received the Super-Star Prize of Yahoo! JAPAN's Mobility Service Division in September 2021.

05What I Learned

A hard external deadline is a design tool: it forces ruthless prioritization of what users actually need on day one. And designing the general pattern instead of the one-off event is what turned a sponsorship obligation into a lasting product capability.