Selected UX Work

Spot

The mobile app that erases all doubt about where you can park.

Role

Primary UX Designer

Context

Creative Labs, a semester-long Rutgers design program

Responsibilities

Interaction & UX design, research

Tools

Figma, Figjam, Google Forms

The Problem

Finding parking downtown is stressful, time-wasting, and disorderly.

Say you found parallel parking downtown, but there are no meters or signs with instructions. Did you really get free parking, or will you come back to a ticket on your windshield?

Or take a curbside spot in a busy city that does have signs, several of them, with convoluted rules you can't piece together. Do you take the risk of parking there, or keep circling for another spot and waste even more time?

These experiences are shared by millions of drivers across the U.S. A study from transportation analytics company INRIX puts numbers on the pain:

17 hrs

the average American spends searching for parking, per year. In New York City it's 107 hours.

$97

overpaid on parking annually per driver, driven by a lack of knowledge about nearby spots.

$20B+

the total that overpayment adds up to for all Americans, every year.

So an open spot is hard to find, and even once found, its legality and value are a gray area. There's no simple process for finding and understanding parking anywhere. That leads to being late to or missing events entirely, wasted money on tickets, gas, and overpriced parking, and unnecessary stress every time a driver has to decide on a spot.

How might we help drivers make a quick, informed decision on where they should park?

The Solution

An app that assists with every step of the parking process.

Spot gives the user all possible information to park in the best spot for their needs, before they ever start circling the block.

User Research

Learning where parking actually hurts.

We started with a survey built to understand which parts of the parking experience cause anxiety and confusion, what motivates people to park where they do, what they look for first when searching, when and where they'd actually use an app like this, and which issues were prominent enough to build around.

The 70+ responses strongly supported our initial read on the problem:

Less than 25% of people find parking right away in a new place. 60% say it takes 5 to 10 minutes.

Only 12% always know if their spot is legal. Half know only some of the time or less.

80% of respondents have experienced confusion trying to comprehend parking signs.

Translating research insights into features

We followed the survey with in-depth interviews, which surfaced the specific pain points in people's parking process and rounded out our research goals.

Across the survey and interviews, the biggest hardships fell into three themes: time, information about legality, and money. Grouping the recurring insights under those themes pointed us directly at the features that mattered most.

Problem Solution

Looking for parking takes too much time.

Make browsing every nearby option fast and easy, on an interactive map, with the ability to check parking ahead of time.

It's hard to get clear information about parking rules.

Give every spot a details section where all the important legality information lives in one place.

There's no easy way to compare the cost of parking options.

Clearly show the cost of parking in different areas, and make free parking stand out.

Process

Beginning the design.

With the key features outlined, we started brainstorming. A crazy-eights exercise got everyone's main ideas down fast and showcased each person's thought process, and from there we discussed variations on the app's structure and features, then compiled the common themes into one main design we collaborated on as a group.

The team and our messy (but super important) sketches.

Most of our individual sketches revolved around an interactive map, with nearly every function living on that single map screen. We committed to that approach for the final design: people use this app while driving or sitting in their car, and features buried behind menus would be impossible to navigate without a user's full attention.

Wireframes locked the layout and the placement of the core features.

Final Design

Every detail a driver needs before parking

Explore all parking nearby

Free curbside parking shows in green and paid parking in blue, so they're distinguishable at a glance. Curbsides where parking isn't legal or available show as gray dotted lines, so even the absence of parking is explicit. Everything visible on the road in real life is explained, leaving no room for doubt or overthinking.

Learn about parking spots

Tapping an icon or a highlighted curbside opens the spot details, all the in-depth information in one glance, so the user immediately knows whether a spot works for their needs. From there they can navigate with their default maps app or pay the meter with Parkmobile.

Show only spots that are useful

The filters cover every aspect of a parking spot, so users can narrow down to exactly the spots that suit their needs.

Find parking ahead of time

The search bar lets users look up any destination and see what parking looks like there, how far the best options are, and navigate straight to them, eliminating the search entirely on arrival.

Takeaways

What I learned.

What was new to me?

Working on a team, every week, on the same project and schedule was new in this context. Brainstorming ideas and deciding which problems to solve together taught me to cooperate under pressure and make sure everyone had equal contribution.

What was most challenging?

Choosing which problems to focus on, and making sure the app cleared up all the confusion around parking. Designing something that presented that much information while staying simple, clean, and easy to use was a real challenge, and I'm happy with the result.

How does the solution help users?

Spot shows every possible place to park on one map, where similar apps only cover some kinds of parking. That saves users time and money, relieves the stress of deciding on a spot, and can even be the encouragement to go out when parking would usually be the excuse not to.

How would I measure success?

Given more time to develop and launch, success would mean peace of mind after parking: certainty that the spot is legal, no more circling blocks, safer roads with fewer illegally parked cars, and parking no longer being a reason to be late or miss out.

Back to work