
Valet: an app concept for a unique user
a retrospective on rapid prototyping a UX in just 3 days
By Missy Davis
“I am a uxdesigner.” My cohort was instructed to start practicing saying this on day one of our General Assembly #uxdi immersive course on Monday. Little did I know that I’d be presenting my first app prototype by Friday. Yes, exactly 3 days after I’d learned my fellow students names. Suppose this is life when you enroll in a course with the word immersive attached to it.
After getting a crash course introduction to both UX design and rapid prototyping, we learned about methods of design research and development. Followed by the major tools we’d be using for the week, paper and pencil! Our assignment was to interview someone from our cohort that would be randomly assigned to us. From there we were to find a problem of theirs we could solve with an app. We would then hand sketch our designs and place them in a digital prototype tool and present them to the cohort.
To begin the process we all worked individually to compile a list of good interview questions. Keeping in mind all that we had learned thus far - start with simple questions to build rapport, keep them open ended & leave room for follow ups that naturally come from responses. Once we had our questions we were randomly paired up with one of our cohort mates.
“Tell me more…”
I started the interview with simple questions like:
- What was the last Spotify playlist you listened to?
- What profession did you want to be in kindergarten?
- Name three items you’d take with you to a deserted island.
Then proceeded with trying to get an idea of what life looked like for Allara:
- Walk me through a typical day in your life M-F.
- Tell me about the most annoying part(s) of your day.
- Tell me about the best part(s) of your day.

After the interview I added her responses to sticky notes to start my affinity map. Organizing what I learned into likes, dislike, routine, relationship & how she engages with technology. What I learned from Allara was that she wants more time in her day, quality time is VERY important to her and she is someone who keeps a consistent schedule.
Feeling a bit overwhelmed with this notion that I need to fix TIME I decided to sketch out a story Allara shared with me during the interview:

The story:
Allara spends her morning cuddling with her boyfriend and dog. They then wake and make breakfast together. She takes the dog for a walk, gets ready then drives 30 minutes to her parking garage. She has to wait in a long line to park. Post her day she has to wait again in the line to leave the garage. The time for waiting varies and she can’t plan for it which makes it a frustrating situation for her.
Sketching made me realize Allara spends a fair amount of time parking M-F. Which on one particular day made her so late she had to reschedule plans and she hates breaking her promises. This lead me to follow up to investigate how much time I could save her if I solved her parking issues. I went back and asked these follow up questions:
- On average how long does it take you to park your car in the mornings?
- How long does it take you to then walk to GA?
- On average how long does it take you to leaving the parking lot in the evenings?
Allara spends 45–1 hour a day round trip dealing with parking her car M-F. This adds up to 4–5 hours a week. During the 12 weeks of our program she will spend 48–60 hours of time on parking. This was a very clear problem and I felt confident I could solve this for Allara.
To begin I created my situation/solution statements:
Here’s the situation: Allara is a very social person who is consistent with her routine and conscious of not wasting time on unnecessary activities. She gets anxious and frustrated when she gets delayed causing her to break her promises.
My Solution: Create an app that allows Allara to free up some extra time by having someone else do the waiting. Eliminating frustration and removing car parking related delays from her life.
My next step was to sit down and brainstorm apps that are already on the market that help users either manager their time or off load tasks in some way which frees up their time. In this day and age we can have someone else do our grocery shopping, come put our Ikea furniture together or deliver a hot meal to our doorstep. All of these apps are win/win. The paying user gets more time to do what they need and the user who has free time makes money. This lead to my app:

Valet
- Schedule a car pick up/drop off with ease
- Track car in real time from pick up to completion
- Get an hour of your day back!
Baring in mind that my user likes simple, clean technology I kept my app design basic, yet utilitarian. It features:
- the ability to schedule valets for the future
- receive real time updates on where your valet is located both from the start of their trip to you until your vehicles is delivered
- see your calendar of valets you have scheduled
- populates a list of all valets you’ve used in the past
With Valet Allara would be able to schedule a valet to come meet her at GA and take her car to the parking garage for her. They would do the waiting in the parking line. The valet would then return the vehicle to GA at the time she’s scheduled. This would allow Allara to gain back 48–60 hours to then plan out how she sees fit.
I would love to see future versions have the following:
- Ability to book on demand
- Ability to rebook your favorite Valet
- Ability to schedule a valet to drive you so you can work in the car!
In closing I’d like to keep with the design rules of 3rds and give you my three take aways from the week. 1. I AM a uxdesigner! 2. Learning to time block is keep to rapid prototyping. 3. Hand sketching can be sloppy & messy and it is a really beautiful, therapeutic process on the design path. I can’t wait to see what week two has in store for us!
