One Concern Design Challenge
This is a design challenge I did for One Concern in which I design a parking space website.
For this design challenge, One Concern gave me a prompt to design a parking space application.
The prompt is the following:
Goal: Design a responsive web about a parking space finding application.
Deliverables
- Specify the scope of the problems you’re trying to solve.
- Walk us through the steps you took for the design and describe your reasons behind your decisions. We care about process and exploration as well as the final result.
- Create few lo-fi screens as much as you think is enough to present the user flow. One hi-fi screen is required. Put some efforts in the visual language here, and feel free to be creative.
Tips
We would like to see some of these features:
1. Dashboard (profile, settings, etc)
2. Filters of the elements on the map
3. A travel plan (estimate parking time, navigation, etc)
Focus more on the map interaction.
The challenge was open-ended and I was left to define many key parts of the project such as — target users, user goals, pain points, and the context around the application.
Background
Nowadays driving to any destination is no problem. We pop in an address into an app and we’re able to get there. However a big problem is that when we reach our destination, we are unable to find parking and finding an adequate parking space can take 5–10+ minutes and if you’re in the city it can take even longer depending on traffic.
User Storyboard
Problem Statement
It’s difficult to find a parking space near your destination.
Defining User Goals
- Provide the user with a list of parking spaces near their given destination
- Provide the user the ability to view the availability of parking spaces and/or reserve them
Defining Target User
Urban drivers who target destinations in city or crowded areas where there is difficulty to find parking.
Competitive Analysis and Market Research
I conducted a competitive analysis of websites which list parking spaces or have provide a similar service of providing spaces. This exercise was in order to analyze the success of what they did right for users, what they did wrong, and help influence my initial design decisions.
Here’s what I learned:
- Parkopedia does a good job of providing users with a list of parking spaces and ability to reserve spaces for specific time intervals; however, users find it “annoying” that they have to check and search whether the parking garage is trustworthy. Users have said they have run into situations where the parking garage was closed and the information on the website was wrong.
- Yelp is strong at giving details reviews from users and it’s helpful to see when it was posted and by who. Obviously users are unable to book a parking space through Yelp itself.
- HipCamp is a service that lets people find great campsites to book. Through the use of images and user reviews, customers have a great level of trust in the platform. The same is very applicable to Airbnb. The book process is also very seamless and for some sites (or homes in the case of Airbnb) you can instant-book in one-click!
User Personas
Main User Needs
Through research and the user personas, here are the user needs which emerged and that I will aim to meet in my design:
1. Able to use variety of options based on price, distance, availability, and parking type
2. Having a quick and effortless experience to identify and book parking place
3. Ability to book online to guarantee the parking spot
4. Ability to see pictures and rating of parking space from people
User Journey
I wanted to map out the user journey to fully understand what the user has to go through and simplify the process.
After I understood the user journey and each step the user had to go through to complete their goal, I went ahead and went into ideation and made lo-fi sketches.
During ideation and sketching, I initially went with what I thought would be best — having a split screen with listings on one side and the map on the other so users can browse, it went well; however, my first iteration had two listings in each row which brought trouble with readability and spacing. In my second iteration, I only had a picture and the text on the side of it. That led to more spacing and increased readability. I also added a reserve button to the right in order to allow users to start the reserve process without clicking into the listing if they choose to reserve immediately.
Hi-fi Prototype
Desired Impact
- Users seeking a parking space are able to search by the criteria that meets their needs — location, time interval (of when they are parking). Moreover, in the sidebar, users can able to filter by distance, price, whether the place is open, and by garage and street parking. Once users filter by their details and criteria, they can also scroll through the map and view the parking locations. Once they click on a pin, the details sidebar page for the space opens for more options and the pin turns orange. This directly meets the users needs for easily allowing them to identify a relevant parking place based on the factors they stated.
- Before they click on a parking space to learn more, they are able to reserve it or instant reserve it (if the certain spot allows that). Also once clicking on a parking spot, the user is able to see everything they need from address, prices, times, photos, user reviews, directions and number of spots. This information and context builds trust for the user and makes them more likely to reserve the parking space online and visit it because other people have successfully done it and had a positive experience. This directly meets the users need for easily reserving a parking space and having the ability to see pictures and reviews from other users so they can have comfort and trust in the spot and platform.
- After users click on reserve, they launch a 2 step process to book their space. All they have to do is confirm their time and location for parking and approve their payment information. After that, they’re all set and will get an email with their parking information for easy access or they can view they reservations made in the reservations page, which can be accessed in the top right. This directly meets the users need for having a quick and effortless experience to identify and book parking place.
- In addition to scrolling the map and browsing through parking listings, users can visit their profile, view past, present and future reservations, and also list their parking space on ParkFind if it is a legal parking space.
Visual Design Language
Conclusion
Overall this was a fun design challenge to accomplish. I was short on time so next time I would create a full-user flow interactive prototype and conduct formal and thorough user research. Moreover, if we were to undertake a project like this, it would be smart to also research what the incumbents are failing at and doing inefficiently so we can solve user pain points and capture a market they are unable to capture.
If given the opportunity to join One Concern, I would bring very high detail and energy towards user research because if you don’t understand the problems that your users are having and put yourself in their shoes, you won’t be able to design and ship a successful solution.
