RETRIEVER
City Parking System
Type : Competition team project
Methodologies: Concept design, Service design, UX, Business planning
The idea of smart parking to combine sensors, parking meter and smart phone app has been a hot topic and is now being developed and tested in many big cities, which intend to solve the problem of circling around and finding a parking spot. However, those half-baked projects have problems such as time collison, vague indication. People need a super efficient and convenient way to park their cars without any stress. Retriever, a revolutionary parking system, allows people to search, find, book and pay for a parking spot at anytime, anywhere in the city. It aims at maximizing the limited parking resources by indicating every parking spot availible to both app users and non-app users. By showing statuses of “Green“(completely available), ”Orange“(limited-time available) and ”Red” (available for booking) on both meter and app interface, everyone in the city is able to find the best spot. Retriever is also a boon for the city management. All data are monitered in real-time so the traffic wardens can response immediately whenever there is a violation.
View full version of 24 steps sales pitch
Parking is often a painful process especially in congested cities. We broke down the key steps of parking that are most frustrating and viewed them as opportunities for a better parking solution. By doing observations on drivers' behavior and in person interviews we managed break down the parking journey and discover major pain points.
Retriever, a revolutionary parking system, allows people to search, find, book and pay for a parking spot at anytime, anywhere in the city. It aims at maximizing the limited parking resources by indicating every parking spot availible to both app users and non-app users. By showing statuses of “Green“(completely available), ”Orange“(limited-time available) and ”Red” (available for booking) on both meter and app interface, everyone in the city is able to find the best spot.
Retriever, a revolutionary parking system, We made paper prototypes that reflects our ideas and take them into imitated scenarios to test if they solve the problems well, and based on the insights from the user-testing, we iterate on the workflow, in which we include the general steps and back-up solutions for unexpected situations.
Input your destination and aproximate time you will arrive, and the system will recommand the available spots around your destination. There are three different statuses of the meter.
Input your destination and aproximate time you will arrive, and the system will recommand the available spots around your destination. There are three different statuses of the meter.
After you arrive, park your car first, then scan the QR code to be confirmed. The light ring turns red and time starts counting, which will be shown on your phone.
The app will remind you 15 minutes before the time is up, you can choose to add more time. The system will keep timing till time is up. After that, the system goes to snooze mode which is every 15 minutes to remind user. The penalty for going overtime will be given afterwards. Meanwhile, if the spot is reserved by another user, the system will switch to another similar spot for them based on previous preferences.
After you remove your car, the app goes to payment mode. You can pay with a previous setting or add a new card.
For non-app users , our meter is as simple to use as any other parking meters , but with something more
The car parks beside the two sensors, then the system notices there is a car on the spot. If the reserver didn’t sign in or if there is no card input within a set time period, the system will inform a traffic warden.The sensors will communicate wirelessly with the parking meters, which will transfer information to the database.The sensors detect ferrous metal within a five-foot radius and therefore can detect both stationary and moving vehicles within that range.
After the concept was awarded. We were thinking about taking the design to the next level. At this phase，we are required to dive into in-depth research, and gather data to prove the validity of this service , in turns of the market targeting, business model, and app functions.
One of the major concerns is that comparing to the traditional parking methods, reservation function does help the driver find a parking spot, but we definitely are going to charge for it, so all together, will a driver save money after using our service? so we did some analytical research on the money saved from reducing parking citations and saving gas consumed for searching a parking spot annually.
We acknowledged that we need to charge less than the money that the driver saves on gas and citations, so that sets a button line for us to determine the price of our service, as well as how much percentage we take from the fees as our revenue, and making sure the government is not making less money from this.
We sketched out, and prototyped the major pages of the app and did usability test. The second iteration removed the navigation bar and added a hamburger bar for setting and profile infos, for the parking phase is a linear process, where steps can be triggered automatically. We also added navigation function to guide the user to the parking spot.
- Acquire authorization and partnership with relevant government departments - Direct and indirect channels to acquire new customers - Self-service that has more than just one revenue streams
Are in no awareness and motivation of changing daily routine by making decisions.
Won't be researching parking solutions spontaneously.
Would be most likely be persuaded directly and informally.
Would like to try new products of low learning cost
Time saving and money saving
Easy to use and instant pay
Relieve stress
Reducing government manual cost
Utilizing public parking resources
Real time synced datas help city management
Install meters to substitute old products at a limited high density region for testing and then expand to other areas
Online Application Store: App store, Google Play, etc
