ParkPods

UX | UI Case Study Assisting users find/book parking spaces in Melbourne CBD

1 Week Design Sprint

For my personal project at General Assembly I decided to make something that would impact people in their daily lives.

Mistake N#I — Jumped on the 1st idea which came into mind and two day into the research Ifound out that it wasn’t a very good project to work on.

Mistake N#2 — The second idea that I started off with would have required extensive research which time didn’t permit.

Third Time Lucky — I gave myself an hour to do research on each remaining idea before deciding upon a project. (NOTE: Give yourself a time frame to decide upon a project, instead of jumping on the first idea that comes to mind).

Aim

Design a app which allows its users to easily and efficiently find & book car parking spaces in the Melbourne CBD.

(Its funny how just by giving your friends a call can factor your decision in choosing a project. A common problem which you thought existed only in your world).

(Provide its users with options to help them find the ideal space)

Empathize

I started my research by exploring our target market of users wanting to find parking in the Melbourne CBD. Discovering that finding an ideal parking space was a big problem.Representing a market opportunity that showed people turn to technologies like the smartphone to help them in making decisions.

Research

You can’t create anything of value to a user unless you understand what kind of problems they want to solve and how you can solve those problems, so that the user will want — or better still, need — your solution. You can only get that understanding by interacting with users.

The more research I conducted the better insight I will have to the problem.

Research consisted of doing Guerrilla interviews at a local car rental company. Did six one on one interviews with users who occasionally drove into the city and had trouble either finding a parking space near to where they were going or got to the parking place and it was fully booked out.Also shopped around to see the available apps that were out there from which I conducted Competitor Analysis, Feature Comparison and contextual enquiry.

Key Findings

• Very limited filter options were provided in the available apps
• Users had a difficult time navigating around the app
• Basic information wasn’t provided on the home screen
• Booking the car space wasn’t available
• Street parking information wasn’t available
• Limited information was given to the users
• People travelling from overseas had difficulties understanding parking signs on the streets

Problem Statement

Users didn’t have accurate parking information.

Competitor Analysis

The key competitors were:

In competitor analysis my aim was to find out what features users found helpful and how can I refine features that people said that would be of great help if it was iterated.

Affinity Mapping

Had every piece of vital information in stickie notes out in front me and now it was time to sort them out and do a mental model.

Ideation

Had the MVP out in bold so i can concentrate on that first.Divided the features into Primary, Secondary and futures features which laid out the platform on what to work on after the MVP.

Solution Statement

Providing users with accurate parking information.

Sketching

Paper Prototype

Started of sketching by doing a very rough draft and iterating from there based on user testing. What features worked and what didn’t.Spend a lot of time iterating and getting the design flow right to make it easy and intuitive for the users.

Things that i worked on were

The Look — The Product doesn’t only have to look nice but look right too. Establish a bond of trust and credibility between the product and the user.

Feel — Provide a pleasurable experience and not just a functional one.

Usability — Create products which can ideally be tailored to meet a user’s specific needs and also provide functionality that is predictable.

Prototypes

Check out the Prototype — Parkpod

Clickable Prototype — Parkpod

Outcome

Through the use of competitor and user research I was able to make informed decisions when designing and implementing the search function. Thanks to usability testing and feedback I found many improvements to make on the initial designs, and also plenty of additional features that could be developed in future iterations. Conducting usability tests throughout the process gave me a final product that met the users needs.

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