Los Angeles Street Parking
Modified GV Design Sprint | UI/UX Design
Using an agile process to develop an application that can help drivers better navigate street parking in Los Angeles.
Read more below
Day 1 - Map 🗺️
Problem
There’s those ridiculously long and detailed parking signage that requires drivers to get out of their car to read (which is often impossible to do without immediately impeding traffic). And then there’s weekly street sweeping, with no noticeable sweeping but still a ticket on your windshield if you forget to move your car.
And speaking from personal experience, it feels wrong to get a parking ticket in your own neighborhood; but this is life in Los Angeles. So how might we present a straightforward way for drivers to know these rules of the road (or should I say curb?).
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Give drivers confidence to find street parking in unfamiliar areas
- Remind neighborhood parkers of street cleaning schedule
- Clarify long and confusing parking signs
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Legal doesn’t mean available, lots of open street parking is taken after 6pm
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Street signs could be changed and would need to be reflected immediately in-app
- Ability to access or create a database of Los Angeles Street parking signs
photo taken by me
(took a short walk around my neighborhood to find this gem)
Day 2 - Sketch ✏️
Lightening Demos
A condensed version of competitor analysis and preliminary research. There weren’t any competitor apps on the market specifically for street parking, however there were several popular apps for similar spaces. As mapping will play a huge part in my design, I landed on three popular apps that utilize maps on their interface. I chose one app for finding parking lots, one for finding cheapest gas stations, and another thats designed to help drivers navigate obstacles as they drive.
SpotHero Parking
What I really enjoy about SpotHero is the ability to put in the time of entry to exit. On this Spot Details page there’s information sections of location amenities, how to get there, and access hours dependent on the day of the week. For my application, this could translate to having a section that interprets hours on a parking sign parses that information only for the time that’s necessary for you.
Waze
A great feature that I appreciated on Waze was the ability to add key/common locations. It’s also not just limited to home and work, you can add as many as you need. If there was an in-app navigation function for my design, having this as a feature would be vital for a keyboard light experience.
GasBuddy
The large map iconography is great for users that need a quick visual. Not sure if the display is like this on the mobile app, but having the list on the same screen is helpful for drivers to quickly scroll an select in whichever way they find to be more convenient. Having a list option could be an intersting and unconventional way to display legal to park street curbs...
Crazy 8s
An exercise for creating 8 quick sketches for potential screens of what a “Street Parking Search” might look like. I was exploring ways of showing as much key information whilst still keeping the map the star of the screen.
Solution Sketch
The last sketch in my crazy 8s exercise felt like the best balance of information with clarity so I expanded upon what the flow of that screen might look like. Users will land on a competely open map screen, when they click on the search bar, drop-down options will become available to input. After information is inputed by the user, the map will popular with streets that fit the selected criteria. When selecting a street, information on the applicable (time-sensitive) parking sign as well as a button to view times of estimated busyness will be available on the map screen. When clicking view, the user will be able to view more in-depth information about parking laws on that street.
Day 3 - Decide 🤔
Storyboard
A rough “wireframe” expanded from my solution sketch on Tuesday. I ended up adding a nav bar at the bottom of the app so that users could click between searching an area, reading up on Los Angeles Parking rules and regulations, checking important street alerts, to viewing their personal vehicle profile. Again, the key screen I focused on was the search/map screen but having supplementary tabs felt necessary to provide users, local and tourists alike, with all the information they need to be able to successfully and comfortably navigate through parking in LA.
Day 4 - Prototype 💻
Building out a Quick Proto
I opted to use Figma to create my prototype. While it’s more common to use programs like keynote or powerpoint to build out the prototype, I felt more comfortable building my concept out in a program I’m more familiar instead of working in a more simple app and feeling frustrated with the limited tools. I used snazzymaps.com (I love them, cannot reccomend enough) for a general map of Los Angeles, and color picked from the map I chose to use as a quick cohesive color scheme of the interface.
Final Screens
I opted to use Figma to create my prototype. While it’s more common to use programs like keynote or powerpoint to build out the prototype, I felt more comfortable building my concept out in a program I’m more familiar instead of working in a more simple app and feeling frustrated with the limited tools. I used snazzymaps.com (I love them, cannot reccomend enough) for a general map of Los Angeles, and color picked from the map I chose to use as a quick cohesive color scheme of the interface.
Final Screens
Took me a full day to create 20+ screens. The simple iconography I created from scratch to best suite the style of the project, and photographic images I had sourced from google image search. I wasn’t the happiest with how the palette came together, I felt that in certain screens there isn’t a clear hierarchy of color and from a distance the information could be muddied to drivers. But alas, knowing myself, I could noodle forever nudging the color picker back and forth before settling on something so I decided to continue on as is and focus more on the content and function of the screens.
Figma Prototype
Here’s my interactable Prototype. In this mockup, I wanted to show users options for:
- filtering for types of street parking within a set radius
- info on LA street parking rules and regulations
- setting parking alerts
- and keeping tabs on their parked car location
Day 5 - Test 🧪
By coincidence or genius planning, I happened to be hosting a party Friday night, so I ended up pulling some friends aside that drive in Los Angeles to get some feedback on my prototype.
Live User Testing
To start, I gave a little context to what Design Sprints are, the problem (finding street parking in LA) I was designing for, and they would be testing out a limited prototype. Then, we jumped right in, I asked them to narrate their thoughts as they clicked through and to start at the search screen and to find parking at Echo Park. Here were some of the key insights I learned.
User Insights
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Information on street sweeping on selected street
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Parking Alerts both for sweeps and parking limits
- Having your license plate in-app for paid parking
- Info section of app, categories were in-line with biggest user needs
- BG blur during location search
- Ability to change preferred distance from location
🔨 What needs rework
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Colors of the highlighted streets were not intuitive
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The ability to show multiple signs from one street
- Ability to edit search on the results screen
- Results # should change based off of selected filters
➕ Features to add
- Filter for metered or unmetered
- Automatic prompt when parked car on new street
- Parking alert/timer from app on the lock screen
There was an overwhelming positive response to this app! While there are definitely kinks to iron out when it comes to a few features in the proto, users resonated with the core function of the app and after testing asked when it was hitting the market!
The design sprint was a success in determining the viability of this project. The ability to find and interpret street parking signs would be absolutely instrumental in cutting down on illegal parking and easing the driving experience in Los Angeles for tourists and local alike. (LADot if you’re reading this, collab?)
© Anna Hemsworth 2024