Introduction

Parkify aims at taken advantage of the shared economy model for parking spaces. People or companies that are legal owners or renters of under-utilized parking spaces can post them on the Parkify mobile app and increase their utilization. On the other hand, people that require a parking space have a broader supply for parking their vehicles.

Understand the problem

Find a suitable parking slot in the area and book. It is hectic these days due to the limited parking slots. Users get annoyed during this whole parking experience, which becomes a real problem for parking managers. Therefore, we should look at this situation from users’ and managers’ perspectives. Here are the issues that I’ve identified.

• Parking spaces in city areas are very limited.
• Users will know if parking has vacant spots once they reach there.
• Many parking places use physical tokens or tickets that can be easily damaged or replaced.
• Most of the private parking spots don’t accept online payment.
• Most of the parking app doesn’t allow booking for multiple days to extend the duration.
• People may need to remember the area/slot where they have parked their vehicles.

Who are the users

Here we have two types of users,

• Suppliers: people that can offer parking spaces to the wider public
• Customers: people needing a parking space on an on-demand basis

Goal

I’ve identified three key areas that need to be covered. 

Make it efficient and easy to use

People don’t have much time to spend finding available parking spots in their day-to-day life. So showing available parking spots in selected locations and allowing them to book them quickly as possible was the key goal. Same for people who are looking to rent out their parking spots. There should be an easy way to do this over their mobile. 

Much accurate guidance

Guiding the user through the parking lot directly toward their booked parking spot. Similarly, helping the user find their parked vehicle on the slot.

Easy way to handle payments

Let users pay for their parking slots online. This will help to save time and paper waste too. Also, let the renter handle their earnings perfectly. 

Design process

My client came up with a list of features he wanted to have on this application. But before diving in and bringing my solutions, I’ve decided to do some competitive research by checking some of the top parking finder apps in the app store. Here are the three main apps that I chose,

• Parknow
• Park+
• Easypark

I downloaded all three apps to examine them and see what they lack based on the user experience. In addition to learning from their mistakes, we should also see what they did, why they did it, how this app works, and what services they provide for a better experience. I found some excellent time-saving features, but most apps weren’t intuitive and didn’t seem like they brought the best solutions for their users’ needs. Also, here is some user feedback that I found interesting on those apps,

also see what they did, why they did it, how this app works, and what services they provide for a better experience. I found some excellent time-saving features, but most apps weren’t intuitive and didn’t seem like they brought the best solutions for their users’ needs. Also, here is some user feedback that I found interesting on those apps,

“Takes a lot of steps to register, no proper search for parking, unclear if you will pay by minutes or by hours, not clear how the parking and paying process goes, only a few parking locations available, cumbersome user interface.”

“The worst parking app ever. Ask all your private information.”

“So many steps and then the verification email won’t show up right away. Frustrating when you just want to get going and have to spend 10m signing up to just pay for simple parking. “

“Super expensive, complicated, did not give information about fees before.”

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User flow

I identified the user goals by looking at the competitor apps and based on the features list. I’ve validated every single user story with the team. The team wanted to be involved in as many tasks as possible so that everyone could better understand the project.

I created the user flow while defining the user stories because it was the easiest way to handle both without spending too much time on each separately.

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Wireframes

Before bringing the ideas to life, I digitally sketched the layouts and shared them with the team to get their opinions. There were a couple of iterations in this stage where we experimented with a couple of different options/ features to identify the ideal solution.

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UI screens

I started working on UI screens based on the finalized wireframes. I did many iterations until I got the design that everyone liked.

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Conclusion

Creating a product from scratch gave me a fantastic opportunity to learn many new things. And it helped me to find more ways to validate my ideas and improve my design process. Thank you for reading through! I hope you enjoyed learning about my design and thought process. :)

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