Park here — parking app UI/UX case study
Did you know that a commuter spends over 80 hours annually looking for parking spaces? The parking issues are worsening with every passing year.
The problem is simple — even as the number of vehicles has expanded, parking space in cities has remained constant or reduced due to a growing population. Especially when land is limited and expensive, like in metropolises, rising parking demand spaces puts immense pressure on it.
Aim
The aim is to design an experience that would easily connect users to multiple parking locations which would help to reduce the time spent searching for a parking location and minimize the chaos.
Pain Points
- One of the most common problems today is a saturation of parking spaces. Vehicles continue to outnumber existing parking spaces, thus clogging roads.
- Incidences of violence over occupancy, deformed cars due to a space crunch, and overcharging for parking are some problems that result.
- Another problem in metropolises is the skewed demand for on-street parking since it’s cheaper than off-street parking. On-street parking issues in India often cause delays, especially on roads with heavy traffic.
- A balance in tariff is necessary for both types of spaces to be optimally utilized.
- Another problem that arises due to a lack of parking spaces in cities is cruising i.e. vehicles looking for a parking space causing long queues, congestion, and pollution.
- Once occupied, low-cost parking isn’t vacated for hours and instances have been recorded of cars being parked for days.
Research
To understand the pain points of the users in the existing apps and to gain insights how parking systems are operated . I started with exploring different apps that are already in the market and how they help in solving these problems.
I started going through reviews and feedback on the Google Play Store for the existing apps. The feedback I read helped in gaining clarity as to which features should be included in my app.
The target audience for this is everyone who has a car and is in search of a parking location on an everyday basis so that they can reduce their time spent on searching for looking locations.
Plan of Action
After doing the market research and reading the reviews & feedback of different users who are already using apps to solve their market problem, I came up with a few ideas and features which can enhance the overall user experience and reduce their time in finding parking at different locations.
Some features which can help the users :
- Properly define the existing parking slots to get a heads up count on the number of parking spaces available.
- Clearing the deformed car parked at the existing parking place.
- Fixing the price for on-street as well as off-street parking places to reduce burden on a particular form of parking.
- Pre-booking of parking space to reduce the traffic as many vehicles cruise on the road in search of parking which creates chaos at roads.
- Clamping of vehicles which are parked at parking spaces for many days.
Design
Based on key insights and pain points, I design the best solution for increasing the user experience while interacting with the platform/app. To start with, first I can organize the information and arrange it to get a clear picture of what I am designing. This process is called Information architecture.
Mood boarding
Mood board helps in art direction for the projects, as the purpose of mood board is to meet user needs and problem-solving. Basically mood board is a collage of images, fonts, interactions, features, icons, and UI elements to communicate the artistic direction of a project.
Low Fidelity design
Once I decided on the flow of the content and mood board. I started sketching my ideas. After simplifying and refining the paper wire-frames, I came up with the low fidelity wire-frames.
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I read in a study that for such applications and platforms, there is no option to cancel your booking. Also the refund option is not easily accessible to users. Secondly, there is no point of contact if the parking gets full even if you have booked earlier. Therefore, a contact/helpdesk option needs to be designed.
Visual design
Onboarding
Login or Create your Account Screens
Parking Slot Booking
Select Vehicle, Date, Time & Slot
Payment & Booking Confirmation
Booking Details
Extend Time Slot
Cancel Booking
Conclusion
I started this case study to discover the difficulty I was facing with Park Here App. My whole idea was to focus on user experiences more and design the platform so that new users will not face the same difficulty as we all have to face.
I enjoyed every step of this design thinking process and hopefully you will find worth reading it.
