KOKO

Helping drivers find parking spaces quicker & easier and

in return getting shopping discounts & perks

Summary

Finding a parking spot isn't always easy. Drivers can spend anywhere between a few minutes to an hour to find a spot that's big enough for their car and close enough to their destination. Drivers are spending too much time looking for parking due to a lack of uncertainty and information.

I developed this MobileApp for KOKO team to solve the above issues for the drivers. This App helps drivers find free parking spaces available in or nearby their destinations and also get rewards against bookings such as discount coupons and points for redemptions.

Role

Lead UI/UX

My Activities

Research, Workshops, User interviews, Information Architecture, Hi-Fi interactive Wireframes, Client Demo,Visual Design, Usability Testing

Development Coordination

Team Size

1UX/VD, 1PO, 4 Dev

Timeline

(April-June) 2021

Target Users

All Vehicle Users

Tools

Adode XD, Photoshop, Illustrator, Miro Board,

MS Teams

Problem Overview

Finding a parking space can be frustrating, especially when using an app, on the go and searching for relevant information takes too much time. According to the public on a forum, many existing parking apps don't fulfil their needs and 35% of users drop off due to frustration and difficulty in terms of using the app.

The Challenge

The clients objective was envision a an innovative and efficient parking app that could help drivers as well as shopkeepers or store owners mutually. The App helps drivers find the right parking spots and in return the shop owners provides discounts which motivates the vehicle owners to shop more. Provisions to book slots in advance , All time camera monitoring of the parked vehicles, valet parking et are some additional features to be incorporated.

Roadmap

#1 Discovery

In this phase I discussed and identified the business problems, its objectives and understood what makes Koko brand unique. I also studied the market, analysed competition and figured out users' needs and pain points.

Observational Research

For exploratory research and to form a basis for my survey questions, I observed high car-traffic areas. To be inclusive of different parking structures available in an urban area (garages, multi-level garages, lots, and street, etc.), I visited an IKEA, Kings Plaza Shopping Center, and two of my local Brooklyn grocery shopping areas.

I noted the time it took for drivers to find parking spots, pay for parking, and overall driving patterns. For example, I watched a single car make more than 12 turns and 3 circles before finding a parking spot and then wait 5 minutes in line to pay for parking.

Findings

Many popular areas have limited parking place.
No way of knowing if parking has vacant spots until you reach there.
Many parking places use physical tokens or tickets that can be easily damaged or replaced.
Most of the private parking spots doesn’t accept online payment.
Most of the parking app doesn’t give facility to book for a multiple days and to extend time duration.
Hard to find your car afterward, especially if you forget your spot number.
The map of most of the apps doesn’t offer a great map service to find & locate parking slots.
Bad Experience when it comes to map & services to find & locate parking slots.
No Security provided for parked vehicles

Contextual User Interviews

To find out more about the problems people face when searching for parking in more depth, I interviewed five random people from office. The interviewees were private car owners who always drive their own cars for daily activities, such as to college and office. After transcribing the interview, we found that there were so many scattered answers that we couldn’t draw conclusions easily from.

Questions

Responses

Competitive Analysis

Next I proceeded to make a competitive analysis of the available car parking apps out in the market, and make a comparative analysis of apps that have similar elements to our clients’ app.

As per the above analysis, ParkMobile and Ring Go came closest to what the app could ultimately look like as they both offer map views of available cars and parking spots, navigation tools, and reserve features. On PayByPhone, I was interested in the pay-for-a-spot and extend stay features. On SpotHero I looked at their parking reservation services. On Strava I looked into mapping, and on Sharvy receiving kudos, collecting badges, follows, and stats sharing. Finally, I also had a very close look at Google Maps’ characteristics as well.

#2 Strategy

This is the phase I worked on setting up correct goals, determine product features and estimate the scope of work that will provide an optimal business impact. Here I conducted thorough Brainstorming, user research, including developing personas, user stories, an empathy map, and a user journey map.

User Insights

The results from workshops, Observational & Online and finding from user interviews gave me enough insights on how users park, the challenges they face and their expectations. I have plotted all these finding in the below map.

Understanding the User Groups & Defining Personas

Parking in the city is stressful because drivers often need to make decisions without full awareness of the safety, parking rules, and availability in the area. Based on these insights, I developed a primary persona for the typical user, Pauline.

Pauline is a busy and cautious car owner who drives downtown often. She aims to save time by finding safe parking close to her destination. However, finding street parking is time-consuming. The confusing parking signs add even more frustration to her parking experience.

Customer Journey Mapping

Based on all the findings, plotted a CJM to identify all the opportunities and provide these feature enhancements in the App I am proposing for KOKO team.

Tasks listing

Tasks are the individual units of activity — the clicks, drags, drops, and hovers. I used these tasks to complete activities that work towards our user goals. Tasks shouldn’t necessarily mention UI elements in detail, but reference the movements and motions abstractly.

User flow

I whiteboarded out the user flows and structure for the app, giving users multiple ways to accomplish goals, each tailored for the high-level journeys we discovered in our research.

IA

After listing down all the potential features to address the different pain points, I created a detailed IA outlining where each of KOKO's features would be developed. This allowed us to get a grasp of how the complete platform would operate and what each of us need to focus on.

#3 Design

Finally, we are ready to move onto design. Leveraging research data and project objectives, we build the most comforting, engaging and desirable experience for users, helping them achieve their goals as quickly as possible with minimum fuss.

Branding Guidelines & Accessibility Considerations

I made sure that all my solutions are compatible and reusable adhering to the KOKO style guides and also ensured a minimum AA accessibility across the application.

Exploration & Testing

In order to get my ideas flowing, I did a series of sketching of the paper prototypes. These low-fidelity (“lo-fi”) prototypes facilitated testing and iteration.

Low-Fi Wireframing

I started working on a few key screens in low-fidelity to find the best solution in terms of usability and scalability. After testing and refining, the overall layout started to shape into the unified structure that can be applied for different types of users and their use cases.

Parking Space booking

Offers and Points Redemptions

#4 Build

Once we received wireframe sign-off from stakeholders the design where handed over to the development team building the MVP. The development was divided into three releases based on user story prioritisation. After each release the MVP was tested and the feedback was used again to enhance the next release build.

Final UI

Once the low fi wireframe were tested with users and all necessary feedback changes were incorporated to finalise the flow, Hi-fi wireframes were created which was delivered for development.

Few of the Delivered Experiences

Find safe parking

Find an ideal parking spot based on the distance from the desired destination, availability, and safety.

Decode parking signs

Verify parking rules easily without having to feel stressed about confusing parking signs.

Help the community

By sharing users Parkning experience, each individual can increase the accuracy of future parking predictions.

Auto-saved parking

KOKO automatically saves the user’s parking spot and generates countdown timers based on the vehicle’s location.

View incidents nearby

See updated parking and road conditions to avoid inconvenience.

Inform others to avoid inconvenience

Contribute to the KOKO's community by reporting which parking areas are busy and/or unsafe.

View applicable offers nearby

View all offers which are useful to user based on parking spot proximity

#5 Launch & Learn

The design is a constantly evolving and improving process thus cannot be 'completely done'. Once the product is released and users start using it, we get a great opportunity to review its performance, aggregate feedback and improve based on user needs and business goals. We followed the same process to evolve the product even better.

Usability Testing

I put together a prototype to test and find out if the design has any usability issues. Although the prototype had limited functionality, test participants would be able to grasp the structure of each screen and identify any issues that might impact the user experience.

The insights from the testing were identified in an Affinity Map and accordingly, recommendations were incorporated based on priority and changes were made accordingly in navigation and other areas.

What next?

More testing, and more iterations to improve the design.
Collaborating with local businesses to cross-promote their services would be an interesting way to generate revenue.
Hands-free interaction: Two-way voice interaction between the app and the user using Natural Language Processing (NLP) can completely avoid any touch-interactions with the app.
Park with AI: Use AI to pre-book parking spots based on users’ calendar.
Smart Cars + Smart Park: Self-driving cars can “talk” to smart parking sensors and reserve an ideal parking spot without users’ intervention

Key Learnings

Listening to the customers and potential customers is vital. Learning about their thoughts and feelings helped me empathise with them and to find solutions to the problems they have. The majority of the user problems are not uncommon. In fact most parking apps have these features already, I am not reinventing the wheel here but listening to customers. the user experience is much greater and will make the features better and easier to use. Therefore, users won't have to think.

It doesn't stop there, getting the MVP of the product out there to real users will gain valuable feedback and validating the assumptions as well as answering the problems customers currently have. Further iterations and making the product delightful is the way forward from here.

I hired Abraham to lead our UX effort and couldn’t have been happier. I have found him to be personable, professional, hard working and dedicated to his craft. His work was invaluable to creating a better product. His studies on product usability showed us in concrete terms just how much we misunderstood our customers and how poor our UI design choices were. He showed us where we had gaps in our understanding and guided our team to create a far more user friendly and effective product.

Brian O'Connell, Lead App Developer, Team KOKO

I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with Tinton on a couple of projects. Tinton is a passionate, dedicated and talented UX designer with strengths in creative and strategic thinking. He impressed me with how well he connected with engineers and has always been keen to learn more about the technical architecture of the systems. Tinton’s work is intuitive and captures the client’s needs while being firm on designing the right solution without shortcuts. Keep up the good work.

Kevin Bourgault, Sr. Director, Team KOKO