Robert Stephenson
Parking finder and consolidated payment to make the process of finding and paying for parking more convenient.
What was done
- Market research
- UX prototyping
- Usability research
- Assest delivery
Overview
“Americans waste $73 billion a year looking for parking spots. The average American commuter spends 17 hours per year looking for parking, costing $345 per driver in wasted time, fuel, and emissions. Those costs jump in major metropolitan areas: Drivers in New York spend 107 hours and $2,243 annually.” (36 Parking Statistics and Industry Trends [Updated for 2024] (townepark.com)
Parking management and payment sector faces challenges in optimizing urban parking and payment to create a smooth safe process for customers. Currently, customers have to contend with the inability to: track real time parking data even though the GPS technology is at a level to integrate parking data as a feature and Pay for private and public parking because payment is decentralized and cumbersome as customers have to use multiple apps to pay for parking in the same city.
The absence of comprehensive solutions exacerbates problems such as heavy traffic congestion, inefficient parking space usage, and frequent parking fines. There is a need to leverage current technology to democratize parking for all consumers. This brief explores the potential of integrating existing GPS systems, and public parking payments apps to develop an consumer grade application that can assist users in locating, securing, and paying for parking spaces in both public and private areas.
3 Big Takeaways
1. Identify opportunities
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2. Prototyping
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3. Assets
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Primary research
Identifying Opportunities
The parking industry is a $50 Billion dollars industry that has many pain points:
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The cost of building and managing parking is increasing due to increase cost to purchase land, contract labor, and maintenance.
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Municipal Parking management inefficiency
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High price parking garages and valet services
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Urban sprawl causing increased demand for parking spaces
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Urban crime rates raising as criminals take advantage of the availability of cars
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Competing parking payments services within the same zip codes.
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The pain points are resilient and seem to last generations. This provides a unique opportunity to optimize parking location and payment services. Using existing technology to allow consumers to get more reliable parking data from a distance while providing a consolidated payment service would revolutionize the parking industry. This would eliminate the wasted time and money giving consumers of sense control over a very uncertain process.
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User Persona
Who our typical user would be.
Value discovery
If you have ever traveled to a large Metropolitain area you have probably experienced the uncertainty of finding parking, and then determining how to pay for it. Through our research we discovered that empowering the user with a reliable way to find parking, and a consolidated payment method provides.
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Peace of mind as users park and pay with confidence of no uncertain outcomes.
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Time/cost savings from optimized parking proces
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Parking Sense:
User Flow
Prototyping
The Parking Sense application is a modified GPS UI that has the added feature of predicting parking availability for all basic parking type to include free and paid street parking. The application also consolidates parking payment for all parking types (private and public). Below, we model how a user might navigate through this process to help us develop our lo fi mockup.
Parking Sense:
Prototyping
Parking Search
This advance feature works through users sharing their location data providing Realtime transit information for that specific location. Users are empowered with a tool that analyses parking with a 5-block radius of the destination area. The application ranks availability of parking block by block reducing the uncertainty of searching parking.
Parking Sense:
Consolidated
Payment
The Parking Sense application most impressive feature is consolidated parking payment. Parking lots, garages, and metered parking can all have different payment apps and terms. Consolidating parking payment is the ultimate convivence for users.
Parking Sense:
Style
We payed particular attention to the details that represent information, knowledge, clarity, and minimalism were our inspirations.
User Testing
User testing helps to reveal important insights that help validate assumptions. We conducted the following test:
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Background Survey (qualitative/quantitative, n/a): This is a brief survey capturing background information of the study participants as it pertains to their driving behavior.
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Task Completion (qualitative/quantitative): Task completion test the users experience and usability of a product or service. We aim to understand the user journey operating the applications.
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High Fidelty
Prototype
Assests
We produced the high-fidelity assets for presentation to stakeholders. These assets include product functional demo, usability test results, and UX design elements. Select the link to demo:
User Test
Results
The useability test results revealed he following insights:
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Insight 1: Users would like a "find your location" feature, which will allow users to locate parking in their immediate area.
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Insight 2: Users want parking rewards for loyal customers.
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Insight 3: Users want a option to where they can reserve a parking space another user will soon relinquish as users broadcast their departure time with the user community.
Takeaways
Key takeaways while developing this application:
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As one of the most recent products I've worked on, I've validated that I can work with work and articulate my vision with cross functional teams.
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Validation of user needs is priority 1 and requires communication across stakeholders to effectively capture.
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The ability to create a compelling mood board can generate buy in.
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The design test iteration is your best friend, if you have the time and resources.
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Domain knowledge is a critical component.