PollenNav Mobile App Maps City Routes by Air Quality for Allergy Sufferers
An award-winning navigation app created by Lyft product designer Yani Shi helps over a billion allergy sufferers map city routes block by block.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- PollenNav helps over 1 billion people worldwide navigate cities safely regarding pollen allergies.
- The app operates at the block level rather than relying on a single city-wide forecast.
- It merges official National Weather Service data with real-time user symptom reports.
- The project has earned major international accolades including the iF Design Award and Red Dot Award.
Roughly a billion people worldwide navigate urban environments using mapping tools that account for everything except the air they breathe. While conventional pollen forecasts typically stop at a single city-wide number, PollenNav tackles this blind spot by operating at the scale people actually move through: the individual block.
The application works by merging official readings from the National Weather Service with symptom reports submitted directly by users on the ground. By cross-checking these two datasets, the map reflects actual real-time conditions rather than relying on a generalized regional average that fails to capture street-level variations.
The project is spearheaded by Yani Shi, a product designer at Lyft leading experience design for the Verticals team, alongside design team members Ziqi Wang, Yawen Zhang, and Chang Mou. Yani Shi studied at UC Berkeley, previously worked at AKQA and Baidu, and serves on the jury for several international design awards.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
The recognition of PollenNav highlights a broader shift in product design toward context-aware tools that prioritize individual health and well-being over generic convenience. By integrating crowdsourced health data with geographical mapping, urban navigation is evolving to better accommodate vulnerable populations in dense city environments.
This vision has been widely recognized with prestigious accolades including the iF Design Award 2026, the Red Dot Award: Brands & Communication Design, a Silver at the New York Product Design Award, and the European Product Design Award, framing navigation not just as a logistical tool, but as a system that understands the person reading it.
Source: designboom
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