Smart car parking solutions — UI/UX case study

“Now, no rush and stress over your car parking spots; we have got you covered.”

Skip the dry documentation if you want, head over to this more fun but concise mode of presentation here

Problem statement

We are launching fully automated car parking centers in certain cities for tourists and locals. The centers are multistorey, and each floor has multiple parking spaces. People are required to book parking space as per their requirements and pay the charge on an hourly basis.

We would require an app to help people explore, decide, and book parking space and use them for the booked time. Since it’s a fully automated system, consider that the whole experience is technology-driven without any human intervention.

Design wireframes & flows covering the following phases in a user journey:

1. Discovery
2. Decision
3. Booking

Why it’s a NEED

One of the most common parking problems in cities is the saturation of parking spaces. Vehicles continue to outnumber existing parking spaces.

Most of the commercial and residential buildings do not have enough space for parking for the space owners, so they end up parking their vehicles on the road. This results in various ill effects for both the cars which are in transit and cars which are parked improperly. Also, it affects the route of emergency vehicles like fire brigades and ambulances, which is a serious concern.

Extracting crux from the statement

What do we know about target user segmentation?

• Tourists and travelers from other locations.
• Local people living in that city or area.

What do we know about Booking parking spots/centers?

• The parking spots are fully automated with no human intervention.
• Only in certain cities and near certain locations, preferably metropolitans.
• These centers are multistorey with multiple parking areas on each floor.

What people will do using this product?

• They will book parking spaces if they want maybe prior to or at the time of reaching the destination.
• Paying the charge on an hourly basis, like ₹10 per hour.

What does the problem statement demand?

• A different and unique/new app that fulfills 3 major tasks for the users.
• Exploring the map and seeing what the possible locations to park nearby are.
• Choosing the place where you will park the car and then enter all the details that are needed accordingly in the app.
• Booking the place for your parking spot, payment, and using it for a specific time depending on how much time you reserved the space.

User Research

Although we know the user segmentation but to get a more detailed view of what our users can be and what they do to get their car parked, I conducted user interviews over a call with my friends who generally use cars for their commute.

Reason for doing interviews:

• To understand customer behaviors, psychology, and needs during the process of car parking.
• Gather information on their end-to-end steps and various touchpoints from their journey planning, traveling to parking.
• To Identify customer pain points.

Several questions were asked based on finding parking lots, the time required, and parking rates.

Here are some of the questions from the interview:

1. Do you use a car for your travel? If yes, how frequently do you use it, and for what major purposes?
2. Do you think about your car parking spots before leaving for the respective destination?
3. How much expected time do you spend from finding a parking lot to finally parking your car after reaching the destination?
4. What type of parking spots do you prefer the most based on accessibility, price, and safety?
5. Would you prefer a subscription plan and reserve your parking spots at your daily destination to save your expenditure?
6. Any one of your worst parking experiences and one of the finest experiences you had?

Key Pain points identified

After concluding the interview, I also performed the user survey for my secondary research to get more insights into what people think about the Indian car parking experience. This helped me to get information on people who face trouble while traveling and parking their cars, more specifically.

Here are some of the pain points that were recorded from the user surveys:

• Users do not get parking spaces when their destination is crowded. Most of the users said they spent over 2-5 minutes actually finding a place to park and sometimes even much more time.
• Overcharging fees make them not contact the parking service, and they try to park their cars across the streets.
• Unable to find their car makes a huge problem for them.
• Users do not even know how many parking spaces are available at the destination and how many are already booked.
• Car owners are often worried about the safety of their cars since they can be towed anytime by police if parked in the wrong places.
• They are willing to pay any amount of fees unless and until their car is safe and near to the destination.

The link for the detailed survey report is here. To see results click on “see previous responses”

User Persona

Since there were multiple types of people based on usage, occupation, and location. I decided to perform this step so to narrow down my process of thinking and prioritize only targeted people right now for the problem statement.

In this statement, I validated that most people are young adults who use their cars for professional work. Based on this information, I created the following Persona, which best suits most of our users.

Competitive analysis

This is the market study phase where I researched pre-existing parking apps that are solving a similar problem in the hope that we can find a better alternative solution than them.

Since our core experience of the app is parking, I went ahead to check on some apps that are doing this already and are our direct competitors. Also, I checked and studied some navigation apps, which made me get to know how they work in real-time.

At last, since it is a booking app, which lets you book the tickets. I also analyzed how the experience of a booking app works.

Assumptions

Some of the assumptions that I made for the problem statement were to narrow down the scope of the project and to ideate the design in given time constraints quickly.

• The app will show a sufficient number of parking spots around the destination.
• I also considered the solution for the instant booking of tickets.
• The parking centers are open 24/7 and are accessible at any time of the day.
• For the sake of solving this problem right now, I’m considering that once a user has booked a place, he/ she can not modify its details.
• Also, I’m assuming that the parking space has systematic parking lots with each block with its specific area plate, making it easier for users to navigate from their phones.
• Assuming that the user will reach the parking destination on time and avail his/her booked spot.

User flow

Once all the assumptions and our target users were listed, I quickly went on to make a thorough user flow that I wanted to incorporate in-app. This helped me build a clear vision of various touch points that the users can have in their journey of booking a parking space.

Healthy user flow of the user according to the problem statement, is:

• Discovery/Exploration of parking spots.
• Choosing the parking center from the map where you will park your car.
• Booking the parking spot at that parking center.
• Payment of Parking ticket
• Parking the car via QR code scanning.

Wireframes

Following are the rough wireframes that I sketched to gain some idea and overview of how the app will look like.

Feature Ideation & Final Design

According to the 3 journey phases, a user will walk through to book a parking spot, as discussed in the problem.

For the Discovery phase:

I tried to encapture all the necessary details for the consumer to finally decide on booking a certain parking spot. This design can work both for instant booking and for scheduled booking. This will help users to explore the map and gives them a birds-eye view to find possible locations for parking.

• The good thing about the app is that it gives you the power to personalize your results based on the applied filter on your screen (Time, Price, rating, etc.)
• Also, right after you open your app, it automatically finds the present parking spots nearby. This is also a type of personalization based on your location.

For the decision-making phase:

I ensured that the user did not get baffled and confused about the features that a parking spot provides. Choosing the place should be trustworthy and a life savior. The following are the screens below.

Finally, for the Booking phase:

The user will go through a certain process ending up with online payment. After that, users can also share the Parking ticket with their family, and this receipt with the QR code will be used when parking the car at the parking center.

Improvements and Future Scopes

Some of the features were there in my mind while solving this problem statement which I might incorporate in my app to make it more useful for our users.

1. The subscription model of the Parking Center: Users who are regular office employees can actually use this feature to book their specific parking spot in the center for the entire month and save their expenditures.
2. Facility to edit the booking order: This will help users to edit booking if they miss going to a specific destination, or they can also cancel the booking.

Thank you for reading till the end; suggestions are always welcomed.

Currently looking for Product design internship opportunities. I’d love to have a conversation with you at Linkedin or akshat@bt.iitr.ac.in

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Thank you for reading :)