U N D E R S TA N D I N G A N D S O LV I N G
The Parking Problem
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Table of Contents 1
Problem
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Awareness
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Users
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Research Plan Results Usability Test
11-12
Solution 1
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Solution 2
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Site Architecture
21-24
Wireframes
25-26
Additions
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Sketches and Notes
Problem
Awareness
Basics A lot of time and effort is put into finding a parking a spot. Once a user enters on campus and begins to look, they are clueless about two things:
What I knew I personally park on the street this semester because I don’t want to spend the money on a garage pass. Days such as game days pack large amounts of people within the small campus area. On these days there are a lot of people attempting to find a parking spot which leads to backed up traffic which again, leads to wasted time sitting in a vehicle. The growth of the population in the “Off-Campus” is more than the streets were built to hold.
1. Which streets they can even park on. 2. Where there are available spots. Even for pass buyers, the first time searching for a spot is not easy since the sectioning of campus is confusing. Buying a pass allows you to park on certain streets, which requires you to remember all of those individual street names.
It is annoying to have to remember to move my car, on top of my busy college lifestyle.
People forget about street sweep days and have to retrieve their car from the impound lot.
People don’t always park logically. There are instances I could have parked somewhere if the person in front would have moved their car up a couple feet. All the spots are parallel parking spots.
Instances that finding a parking spot may be diffucult: 1. Returning from Holidays 2. Running an errand 3. Leaving for a trip 4. Returning after a street sweep or a football game. which requires you to move your vehicle 5. Leaving for a school reason
What I don’t know: I’m not sure why some of the streets are free and some aren’t. The unawareness for the user without a pass can leave them searching in the wrong area, causing lost time and effort.
We don’t like to waste time and effort.
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Users
Research Plan
The part of the population that would most likely be in this situation are: 1. The Students, Staff, and Faculty such as commuters, off-campus residents, and non-pass owners.
Things to Find Out I needed to figure out how big the actual area was. My observations told me there were more people than spots, but I needed hard facts.
2. The non-students such as vistors, tourist, etc.
I needed to know more about the people who depend on the spots and their thoughts/experiences. Also I would need to find out when parking is a hassle to people.
Intended Conclusion: To understand the exact problem, I needed to understand the quantity and quality of the time and effort wasted. Does it annoy people enough and often enough to change the current state of “Off-Campus”?
Types of Research: Out of evaluative and experiental Research, I chose evaluative for the sake of time. If I were to have a larger amount of time to perform research, I would have taken users out into the field. I took my own observations, as well as a survey to understand the problem more. My own observations could inform me approximately how many vehicles were available, and how often those spots were used. The survey could give me feedback outside of my own experiences which could reiterate my previous knowledge or supply me with new results. Also, a lot of results could be collected because participants would not feel the need to commit to anything serious. Constant feed back throughout my research allows me to constantly come back to the problem and tailor to all of the user’s.
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Results Findings A majority of users are Student’s at the Ohio State University and 3/4 do not own parking passes. A lot of the survey respondents park east of High Street more than once a week and are equally concerned with the time, effort, irregular parking, parallel parking, rules, and the amount of spots. Lesson Figure out how to inform student’s of where to park and re-organize the available parking.
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Usability Test Basics I needed to find out about what makes similar apps successful/unsuccessful.
Findings: 1. Required profiles on an app are frowned upon and logging in while driving is difficult. 2. Open search results are too broad 3. Be simple! Because this app is used while driving a car, or at least inside of a car, the navigation must be simple enough to use when only paying half attention. Also, to reduce TIME and effort, an app that requires a lot of time to use would be redundant. 4. Can an app solve parking? No, it’s only the interface to something greater.
Overview of the Test: I personally felt weird reading the “moderator script” word for word. I also felt strange remaining static during the whole test and remaining opinion-less. It was hard for me to not get frustrated when they wouldn’t understand the questions, even though it was an effect of the instructions given to them. The participants spent a lot more time than I wanted on the “Explore” section of the test but I didn’t want to cut them off and ruin their thought process or make them feel “controlled” during the test. For the participants, they wanted feedback that I could not give to them. The rules were possibly more open-ended than what they expected. They began to shy away when I wasn’t able to supply feedback.
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Usability Test Tasks
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Solution 1
But.....
Native Mobile App The app would have multiple apps within it like the OSU app. It would be able to reserve spots and give notifications on towing days. Also the app would allow users to create profiles for different cars.
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Why mobile? People always have their phones while traveling and have a personal connection with it. They would feel comfortable giving the app information about their vehicles for the profiles. The GPS connection on the phone would be helpful to find the area the users are looking for a spot in.
What’s Wrong? It’s too complicated and contains aspects that appear to be unsuccessful through the Park Me app.
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Solution 2
Basics “Off-Campus” is defined as 4th Street to High Street (East to West) and from Norwich Avenue to 10th Avenue (North to South). It’s also sectioned into 5 even sections. High Street and roads parallel to High Street are free. Any streets perpendicular to High Street require a pass.
Reasoning Currently, even with experience with living on campus, knowing which streets require passes aren’t clear. By sectioning off streets with common ideas (parallel, perpendicular), people can easily remember and explain to their visitors where to park. It’s easier to remember generally which streets are free, rather than attempting to remember which specific streets.
Growth With time, the “Off-Campus” area will most likely expand more south, especially with the introduction of the Gateway. For growth, more sections can easily be added on without changing the current ones. (e.g, 9th, 8th, and 7th will become orange). The area cannot expand more west because of The Ohio State University’s defined campus area. If the area expands more west, the streets will remain the same colors since the sections run perpendicular to High Street. (e.g. 12th dead ends into a rail road tracks)
High Street, Summit Street, Indianola Avenue, 4th Street Norwich Avenue, Lane Avenue, Frambes Avenue Woodruff Avenue, 20th Avenue, 19th Avenue, 18th Avenue, Iuka Avenue 17th Avenue, 16th Avenue, 15th Avenue, 13th Avenue, 14th Avenue 11th Avenue, Chittenden Avenue, 12th Avenue 13
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Basics Every street will have marked parking spots. Each spot will sensor if a car is parked in the spot which will then trigger a sensor to change the ticker.
Where do we go from here?
Reasoning With an actual line that tells the user where to park, no irregular parking spots can occur and more spots can be opened up.
“Off-Campus� is easily defined, the streets are marked, but how does that save the time and hassle put into parking?
Refresh Problem People do not want to spend the time, nor the hassle and wasted hope on turning onto the street if there are no spots.
Making it easier to visualize which streets are free and which streets the user is allowed to parking on, they can go straight to those areas.
With actual spots, an exact number can be listed on the ticker. Otherwise, cars could take up multiple spots and not set off the sensor, giving users a false answer via ticker.
Growth If the streets were to widen or change in the future, new spots can be created but still leave the ticker unaffected. (e.g. the street goes under construction and the result is a wider street with more parking area. Once the spots are marked, a sensor can be applied).
.....Let’s make it even easier.
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Easton Town Center Parking Garage Easton offers free parking to all of it’s customers via the garage. There are signs available before entering in the garage, throughout the area that tells the amount of open spots in the garage everytime someone enters and exits.
Ticker Locations Tickers will be placed at the beginning of every main street. They will only be placed at the beginning of each street because the distance between alley ways is not large enough to be significant. The parallel streets will have tickers at the beginning of every section. Again, the distance between every street isn’t significant enough.
Basics The number of spots available on the street is displayed on the sign. As spots are taken, a sensor sends a message to the ticker to change the number automatically.
Reasoning The sign is large enough to see from far away since the user that will need to use this ticker will be concentrating on driving. The ticker is placed right above the street sign since people are usually looking in this direction anyway to navigate themselves through the streets.
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.......Can it get any easier?
Site Architecture
Safety The navigation is simple enough to use while driving. The “find location” button makes it easier for users to search spaces around them without staring at the phone too long.The limited options for search results to pick from under the “pick a street” and “pick a pass area” narrows down the options for the users. With limited options, the user will not become distracted by attempting to remember a street or understanding what the app needs to supply search results.The red indications on the map show parking spots because red can easily catch the eye. The app not only supplies the same information that the ticker does (if there are spots) but where the spots are at exactly. This way, the user can concentrate on navigating to a certain location and not become distracted by looking everywhere but straight in front of them. 19
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Wireframes
Logo
Logo
High Street 10th Avenue
main screen
11th Avenue 12th Avenue
#
13th Avenue 14th Avenue 15th Avenue
main
Logo
you are here
16thsearch Avenue a street
search w/ pass
you are here
search a street
search w/ pass
Logo
#
Logo
Blue Red Green Purple
#
Orange
you are here
search a street
#
search w/ pass
you are here
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search a street
search w/ pass
you are here
search a street
search w/ pass
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Wireframes Logo
Logo
Logo
High Street
Logo
Blue
10th Avenue
Red
11th Avenue
Green
12th Avenue
#
Purple
13th Avenue
#
Orange
14th Avenue 15th Avenue you are here
16thsearch Avenue a street
search w/ pass
you are here
search a street
search w/ pass
you are here
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search a street
search w/ pass
you are here
search a street
search w/ pass
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Additions The Profile I decided earlier in my research that a profile would be hard to use while driving. However, with the advice from others and additional research, users would like a way for the app to remember their “pass areas� or where they usually search. Thus....... The profile aspect of the app is not required. However, once a profile is created, the user can set two things: 1. Their pass area 2. Where they would like the phone to automatically scroll to when turned on. For example, if the user wanted the app to show them the parking spots around 15th Avenue everytime they logged in, it would override their current location. The users can request to remain logged in if desired to avoid logging in everytime they are driving. This would increase the safety of the user while using the app.
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Sketches and Notes
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