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MSIM Practicum Sponsored Design Project.
MSIM Practicum Sponsored Design Project.
My Role: UX Team Lead, Lead Researcher, Lead Designer.
Group Project including: Trisha Asar and Bethel Zegeye.
How can we display parking availability information so that it can be effectively used by commuters?
How can we display parking availability information so that it can be effectively used by commuters?
Information Problem
Information Problem
Drivers that currently use Park & Ride facilities often encounter one key problem: lack of available parking spots. This problem often causes drivers to not use the buses and instead, drive to their final destination. Whenever a commuter drives to their final location, that means more vehicles on the road and in congested areas, more emissions, and less money going into public transportation. Therefore, it is not only a problem for riders but also for other drivers and for the public transportation sector as a whole. The capstone team before us, Team EveREST was able to identify how real-time information about the availability of parking spots in Park & Ride facilities would benefit commuters. This solved the issue of what could be done to help, but did not fully address how this data would be utilized.
Our goal within this project scope was to understand what information related to parking would be valuable to share with users and how that information should be displayed.
Sponsor Alignment
Sponsor Alignment
This project was sponsored by the Mobility Innovation Center with additional support from King County Metro, Sound Transit, and Seattle Department of Transportation. While it was an incredible opportunity to work with all of these organizations to form a solution to a common problem, working with multiple stakeholders also presented some challenges for our team. One challenge that we came across was aligning sponsors on a clear and manageable scope. To address this issue, our team came up with a proposal for what we could do within the timeline that would be beneficial for each of the sponsors. We discussed this proposal with our main project sponsors and were able to proceed.
Design Process
Design Process
User Research - We utilized a survey conducted by the previous team to construct user personas and a user flow.
Wireframing - After creating a user flow, we sketched a few screens.
Prototyping - We digitized the screens in Figma and created an initial high-fidelity prototype for testing.
Prototype Testing and Iteration
Prototype Testing and Iteration
We tested our prototype with four Park & Ride commuters through a remote interview. During these interviews, the commuters were asked to do the following tasks:
Create an account and identify the number of available parking spots at the Redmond Park & Ride.
Purchase a parking permit for an individual commuter.
Check to see when your previously purchased permit expires.
Once the data was collected from the four usability studies, the research team utilized the method of affinity mapping to cluster interview data and form insights.
User Testing Insights
User Testing Insights
Permit Usage - Some users had difficulty understanding how permits worked and when they could be used.
Permit Purchasing - Permit purchasing was difficult for inexperienced P&R users because there wasn't enough information about how to use the permits.
Value - All users found parking spot availability and the availability estimation graph to be helpful whereas some of the other information was deemed less valuable such as reviews
Design - Some users had difficulty reading the lighter and smaller text. (Remote testing could be a factor in causing this issue.)
Next Steps
Next Steps
Develop an application from the high fidelity prototype.
Make changes to the application regarding daily permits
Create a backend code that will connect the data collected in real time to the front-end user app
Lessons Learned
Lessons Learned
This project provided me my first experience leading a UX team in both research and design. As such, I had to understand the business requirements and then translate them into tangible work for our team.
While leading the UX team, I was also responsible for most of the research process and for creating the foundational designs for our other designers to build off of.
While collaborating with the other designers, I learned about the value of a design system and hope to gain more experience with them in the future.
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