My road to Parking Mall

Starting point

I am a terrible driver… Sad, but true. I am never relaxed when driving. There are too many cars, road signs, trams and bicycles; traffic lights are always red, and the sun is always shining straight into my eyes.

But my worst nightmare is parking. Try finding a parking place downtown any day of the week and you will agree with me. Couple of times I thought I found a perfect parking place and was very proud of myself, but as it turned out I simply missed a No Parking sign that was cleverly hidden somewhere nearby.

If only there was a magic tool that could help me. Of course there’s already a lot of great parking apps out there, but what I really need is not a simple combination of features and functionality they are offering — starting with planning a route and booking a parking place, but also extra capabilities like checking where I am parked at this moment and providing information on whether or not this parking place is all right.

On the road

I talked to several friends and colleagues of mine about their driving habits and experiences. Turned out I am not alone. And while listening to funny and not so funny stories about driving and parking, I started gathering ideas on what my magic navigation/parking tool might be like.

For example, here’s a couple of stories about finding parking on a Monday morning and paying for a parking place (based on true events :))

These stories helped me start creating paper prototypes and test them. Again, here’s some examples:

In the process I had to drop some of the ideas and then find and test new ones. I must say there were quite a few surprises, when some of the solutions, which I thought would be the best, did not work at all. Some comments from the testers were really insightful and helpful, while others drove me to despair:

Me: What was especially confusing on this screen?

Tester: Everything!

But step by step I moved from ideas to wireframes and mockups:

Then more screens and features were added:

Final destination or … ?

In the end I got the final version of the Parking Mall app prototype. Well, final is kind of a big word for it. To me this prototype is more of an intermediate stage, as I have plans for further development and improvements. But one day my dream will come true and my fear of parking is no more.