Park It Mobile App

Park It hero screens

Role: Senior Product Designer

Team: 1 Lead Product Designer, 1 Senior Product Designer

Users impacted: 80,000+

  • Process

    With tight deadlines and limited engineering resources, I focused on creating a unified parking workflow that minimized friction, reduced cognitive load, and delivered clarity across both street and garage parking.

    Process
    • Early-stage product
    • Small developer allocation
    • High stakeholder involvement
    • 3 cross-functional alignment sessions per week

  • Overview

    Urban drivers waste 17+ minutes per trip circling blocks, deciphering contradictory signage, and fumbling with fragmented payment apps. Through persona research, competitive benchmarking of 5 platforms, and structured design thinking workshops, we uncovered a critical market gap: no single app unifies street meters and off-street garages in one seamless experience.

    • Challenge

    • 73% of users abandoned existing parking apps mid-journey because listed spots were already taken. No competitor offers real-time sensor-validated occupancy — drivers arrive to find phantom listings and resume circling.
    • Each city uses different zone-based apps with hidden fees. ParkMobile charges $0.35 convenience fees, PayByPhone varies by city contract, and municipal kiosks often reject valid cards.

      My Role

    • Led design strategy and UX architecture for unified parking workflow
    • Mapped end-to-end processes across all teams and systems
    • Defined requirements and designed scalable interaction patterns
    • User testing revealed apps guide drivers to a building but abandon them inside multi-deck structures — the #1 unaddressed pain point across all competitors.

  • Empathizing with users

    Ethnographic observation, structured interviews, quantitative surveys, competitive benchmarking, and cross-functional design thinking workshops — building a 360° view of urban parking pain.



    Park It persona
    This persona helped the team empathize with the user and guide design decisions.

      Design DecisionsDesign Strategy

    • 5 Competitors Benchmarked
    • Design Workshops
    • User Stories Prioritized

    Research findings

    • 73% of drivers abandoned parking apps mid-journey. No platform offers real-time sensor-validated availability — the critical trust gap Park It could own.
    • Primary persona Margaret Chen (68) showed that solving for low-tech confidence — large type, landmark-based directions, minimal steps — solves for everyone.
    • Rose/Thorn/Bud themes: real-time pricing transparency and one-tap booking (roses); onboarding complexity, map literacy barriers, and last-50-feet confusion (thorns).

  • Map the Flow

    Working with the Product Owner, I created a detailed journey map that aligned all teams on the current and future state of the unified parking experience.



      Design DecisionsDesign Strategy

    • Map the full user and operational journey
    • Identify workflow friction and dependencies
    • Identify stakeholders and build cross-team alignment
    Park It service blueprint and journey mapping
    Simple flow map based on the business requirements.

  • Storyboard

    I created multiple storyboard flows that distilled research into relatable scenarios. These highlighted the most common tasks and failure points across the parking journey.

  • Updated User Journey Map

    We mapped 8 core screens (Add Vehicle → Destination → Duration → Find Space → Space Details → Confirm Payment → Navigation → Active Session) to validate a strictly linear progression. Low-fidelity user tests proved this one-question-per-screen architecture reduced booking errors by 40%.

  • Wireframes

    Created several key screens to align stakeholders on the MVP experience.

  • Medium-Fidelity Designs

    Refined wireframes into mid-fi screens that eventually became a clickable prototype.

  • Happy Path Prototype






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