Problem

Designing a touchscreen parking meter throughout a city

Parking meters are found everywhere throughout a city and it can be quite costly to replace/modify. There are more than 3 million parking spots in NYC. Respectively, there are a great number of parking meters.

_A touchscreen interface so that drivers can pay for their parking spot for a certain duration, and parking attendants can give tickets to cars who do not pay, or whose parking has expired. _

Constraints

• There is only touch with selecting

Design concerns

• Readability
• Since parking meters need to be sturdy and shouldn’t be too costly, responsiveness of screen to touch can be affected

Tasks It Should Perform

• Select parking spot
• Select duration
• Pay for spot
• See which spots are paid for

Solving Design Concerns

Readability

To preserve readability for all drivers, I decided to use a contrast checker to make sure my colours are comfortable for each driver.

Additionally, I opted to use big and bold texts wherever needed to make sure each component is readable

Cost vs Design

In order to make sure the design can be adapted to any hardware technology, I decided to make the clickable components as big as possible to prevent issues with touch precision.

Furthermore, in terms of size I adopted the design for a screen just shy of a mini iPad. This minimum threshold is needed for users to navigate easily and I implemented the design to easily scale for bigger screens.

Implementation

My solution focuses on easy usability while maintaining a simple design. Each The meter consist of at most 6 pages

• Iteration 1: parking spots, duration, payment
• Iteration 2: added failed and successful payment
• Iteration 3: starting page and help descriptions

End Product

• Drivers can easily pay for their parking with only a few taps.
• Parking attendants can see if there are any cars in the green (unpaid) spots and ticket them with only one tap.
• The meter is built to be user-friendly, minimal, easy on the eyes and functional

Reflection

What was challenging? Making sure any driver can easily use this parking meter and quickly pay their parking.

Feedback

I would love to receive feedback on how the steps were laid out and whether it should be less or more steps to pay for parking.

If I had more time

• I would add ability to select custom duration. However, this is not a common thing for parking meters
• As a bonus I want to add a reminder feature to input phone number and be reminded when your parking time is over