A smart parking platform that lets users create and reserve parking spaces, check EV charging availability, and rent private parking spaces in real time.
User Research
Prototyping
Role
Ui/Ux designer
Timeline
3 Months
team
2 Designers
platform
Mobile App
The Real Problem
Urban drivers in Delhi were losing significant chunks of their day to a problem that should have been solved years ago: finding a place to park, and finding a place to charge. Traffic congestion linked to parking search was already consuming thousands of hours annually across Indian cities, and the rise of EV adoption was adding a second layer of friction on top of the first.
The core issue wasn't a lack of parking apps or a lack of charging networks. It was that these two systems had grown up separately. A driver looking for a spot had one app. A driver looking for a charger had another. Nobody had built something that treated "where do I park" and "where do I charge" as the same question, which it increasingly is for EV owners.
The feedback that shaped this project came through consistently:
Drivers felt anxious the moment they left home, unsure whether a slot would still be open by the time they arrived.
EV owners had no reliable way to check charger availability in real time before committing to a destination.
Homeowners with unused driveway space during working hours had no simple way to turn that into income.
Underneath all of it was the same root cause: parking, charging, and private space rental were being treated as three separate problems when drivers experienced them as one continuous headache.
Finding the Fix
I started with secondary research, reviewing government EV policy documents, industry reports, and competitor features to understand where the market was falling short. Then I moved into user interviews to build personas: the daily commuter, the EV driver, and the working professional booking parking at malls.
Three problems stood out clearly:
No unified real-time visibility. Drivers could see parking availability in one place and charger availability in another, but never both together, which made trip planning unnecessarily stressful for EV owners.
No path to monetize idle space. Homeowners had no simple way to list a driveway or private spot for the hours it sat empty, even though that idle capacity was exactly what congested cities needed.
Fragmented information architecture. Booking flows across competitor apps followed database logic rather than how drivers actually think through a trip: where can I go, is it available, what will it cost, how do I get there.
So the design centered on three core features, each grounded in specific interaction principles:
Reserve a parking slot through a map-based interface that follows Shneiderman's information-seeking mantra: overview first, filter, then details on demand. A simplified four-step booking process applied Hick's Law to reduce decision time and Fitts' Law to make buttons large and easy to hit accurately.
Reserve an EV charging slot using color-coded, icon-driven affordances so charging type and availability are visible at a glance, in line with Nielsen's heuristic on visibility of system status.
Rent a private parking slot through a peer-to-peer model with role-based dashboards for drivers and hosts, plus trust-building elements like verified host badges, ratings, transparent pricing, and clear security disclosures.
Color coding across the map view (green for available, red for full, blue for EV charging) let users parse a crowded map instantly rather than reading through a list. Typography and iconography were chosen specifically to reduce reliance on text, and an eco-conscious green and blue palette reinforced the sustainability angle without needing to say it out loud.
What Actually Happened
I tested the prototype with 10 to 15 users, tracking how they moved through booking, navigation, and payment. The map-based navigation held up well, but pricing elements needed a clearer visual hierarchy before users felt confident about what they were being charged.
One early assumption didn't survive contact with real feedback: separating EV and non-EV filtering initially caused confusion during task-based testing, since users expected charging status to be part of the same overview rather than a separate step. That shaped how the filter and map layers were refined.
Heuristic evaluation against Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics surfaced further improvements in booking confirmation feedback and error prevention during time selection, both of which fed back into the micro-interaction design: animated confirmations, clear button states, and visible availability indicators tied to Norman's feedback principle, so users always knew an action had registered.
What Changed
Survey and usability data gave a clear read on what actually mattered to users:
72% of respondents ranked real-time availability as their top requirement.
64% cited frustration with arriving to find a slot unavailable, reinforcing why visibility of system status mattered so much.
58% said they would adopt the app specifically because it combined parking and charging into one system.
85% of usability test participants completed a booking successfully within two minutes.
Qualitatively, the recurring theme was relief: users appreciated the color-coded availability and the simplicity of the payment flow, and several specifically called out how much less stressful trip planning felt when charging status was visible up front.
What I Had to Work With
A fragmented competitive landscape. Existing apps like Park+, Parkopedia, and PlugShare each solved a slice of the problem well, but none combined real-time parking, EV charging, and peer-to-peer rental into a single flow. That gap was the opportunity, but it also meant there was no existing pattern to simply borrow and improve.
A need for research grounded in real behavior, not assumptions. With parking and charging habits varying so much by driver type, I couldn't design from intuition alone. I ran surveys with 50 to 100 participants across Delhi NCR, conducted semi-structured interviews with urban drivers (both EV owners and conventional car users), and pulled in feedback from parking lot operators and charging providers to understand the supply side too.
A limited, focused scope. With Delhi NCR as the geographic boundary and a mid-fidelity prototype as the deliverable, I wasn't building a fully functional product. The constraint pushed me to prioritize the flows that mattered most rather than trying to design everything at once.
These constraints shaped the direction: build one coherent system for three related needs, validate it against real user priorities, and keep the interaction design simple enough to execute within a prototype timeline.
What I'd Do Differently
I'd push for a higher-fidelity, fully interactive prototype earlier in the process. Working at mid-fidelity was the right call given the timeline, but some of the pricing hierarchy issues that surfaced in testing likely would have shown up sooner with a more polished interactive build.
I'd also want a longer usability testing window with a larger and more geographically diverse pool of participants. Delhi NCR was a reasonable scope for a first pass, but parking behavior and EV adoption patterns vary enough between cities that I'd want to validate the design against a second market before treating any finding as universal.
What I Learned
Solving for the whole trip beats solving for one step. Drivers don't separate "finding parking" from "finding a charger" in their heads, so a product that treats those as one connected decision will always feel more useful than two apps solving each half.
Visual system status is not optional for anxiety-driven tasks. Parking search is inherently stressful, and the research made clear that clear, immediate visibility of availability and confirmation did more to build trust than any single feature.
Grounding design decisions in established interaction principles gives you a stronger case. Being able to point to Hick's Law, Fitts' Law, and Nielsen's heuristics when explaining a design choice made it easier to defend decisions during evaluation, rather than relying on personal preference alone.
Peer-to-peer trust has to be designed, not assumed. Letting someone rent out their driveway only works if the interface actively signals safety through verified badges, transparent pricing, and clear disclosure of what's being monitored. Trust doesn't happen by default; it has to be built into the interface itself.
