Parking App
Improving the parking experience on campus for commuter students
Overview
Client
Northwest Missouri State University: University Police Department, Registrar's Office, and Orientation & Retention
Challenge
Work with a team of 4 to find an innovative way to improve the parking experience of commuter students, reducing frustration and time spent finding parking on campus. All this within a feasible budget and construction limits not only adding value to the experience, but also giving a return on investment to students' and the university's money.
Background
While about 41% of those students are living on campus with a required resident parking pass, the remaining 59% are commuter students living off campus with a namesake parking permit. The current parking lot distribution of this rural university is as follows:
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8 parking lots for residents only
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5 parking lots for commuters only
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14 parking lots for both
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10 parking lots for faculty/staff only
Residents have a total of 905 parking spots, while commuters have a total of 324 spots. Additionally, there are 1,724 "open" spots for commuters, residents, faculty, etc. All residents, who are usually incoming first-year students, are required to have a parking permit and park on campus by their residential buildings which are about a 10 min walk to all the academic buildings.
Solution
Design and develop a mobile app solution using the internet of things through QR and geolocation technology.
Scope
Focus on finding the nearest available parking lot according to the commuter user's location.
Goals:
Strengthen retention rates
Bring a high Return On Investment (ROI) to students
Reduce negative feelings and time looking for spots
Increase the overall campus experience
Methods
User research via online surveys, informal conversations with students and stakeholders, secondary research, empathy map, user journey map.
Here are some insights gathered from secondary research.
After carrying out a comprehensive online campus survey, here are the results we obtained.
Below is the empathy map we came up with.
Process
In the gallery below, you can see a series of sketches and drafts my team and I did in order to figure out the logic of the app, possible pain points, and opportunities as well as initial UI drafts and wireframes.
Figma Prototype
Awards & Accolades
This project earned a research grant from the School of Computer Science, sponsored by Dr. Ratan Lal, in order to implement the solution and present it as a research paper at the Consortium for Computing Sciences in Colleges in the Central Plains region of the U.S.
You can find the student paper here.
Furthermore, we also won first place at Northwest Missouri State's annual Celebration of Scholars sponsored by the Society of President’s Scholars, the Honors Program, the Office of the Provost, and Career Services. At this event, a panel of judges assessed more than 30 projects.
