PARKPAL

TIMELINE
  • February 2024
  • 1 Week
ROLE
  • UI Designer
  • UX Designer
SKILLS
  • Figma Prototyping
  • User Interface Design
Description
ParkPal is a parking garage app that allows parking garage operators to maintain their parking garages and find real time insights.
Final Design
Takeaways
1. Researching Surrounding Systems helps... a LOT!
Though I didn't know how to drive, it was easy to make design decisions as I prioritized researching the system surrounding parking garage lots.  By doing extensive research on the hardware that surrounds systems,and how data moves around each of the components, I could create pages by sorting them into pages.
2. Importance of Copywriting
When this case study was reviewed by other designers, the biggest critique was the text on the headers and the inconsistency in graphs. Because I prioritized the text less, it prevented me from seeing critical flaws in my design.
Systems Research
As I’ve interacted with parking garages for apartments and the ones in NYC, I envisioned them as the initial target users and started my research. After looking through secondary sources such as a handbook on parking garage operation, I mapped out my understanding with a systems map.
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It became clear that operators interact with a lot of parts, which can be overwhelming as the parking garage scales up.
Parq's Pupose
I envisioned that the app would collect data from the parking garage hardware, database, and the server used to handle payments, so that the operator does not have to do so. With the data flow in mind, choosing the features
became easier.
Problem
Current parking garage operations suffer from manual tracking and inefficiencies as parking garages scale up.
Initial IA
When starting information architecture process, I divided it into three tracks based on anticipated operator preferences. Each track has a dedicated flow, complemented by a dashboard providing an overview of the contents.
Challenge
The Issue of Scalability:
What if the parking garage was for a mall or even an airport?
Taking a few steps back...
I created an updated information architecture to integrate the new page while condensing other information. Initially, an Activity Page was introduced to enhance efficiency, housing content such as occupancy, monthly activity, and entry exit Data. Over time, the data began to feel more unified.
Initial Feedback
I completed a low-fidelity prototype and conducted brief testing with designers and acquaintances, though not the intended audience. Feedback received included:
1. Headings in the first page is confusing
Initial home screen had 3 cards, with two being from the same parking lot. As the address on the card was the only indicator of it being in two different parking lots, it was a lot less intuitive.
2. Why are the four buttons gone in the first page?
Per parking lot is a new set of data, and having the option to see analytics without initially choosing a parking lot in mind would not be possible. To still give users an option to see a brief look at all of their parking lots, the occupancy and amount of alerts per parking lot are also on the card.
3. There’s a peek of the analytics page in the dashboard, why not the vehicles as well?
To see the history of the cars that visit each parking lot, an extra component was added to both the dashboard of the parking lots and the vehicles tab.
Figma Prototype

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