When parking on campus I felt that finding a parking spot can sometimes take up a lot of time in the larger parking decks. I would have to park in an area far away from the location on campus that I needed to be. I also noticed people who weren’t able to purchase a parking pass or do not frequent the campus often enough to need a pass have a lot of trouble finding a spot.
To confirm if other users felt the same way as me I conducted research on users of the current parking system. I then researched other parking systems, and came up with the idea of Owl Park
I was able to interview 15 people that have parked on a KSU campus and discovered that most people are not satisfied with the current parking system.
2 out of 15 students were not students of KSU but have parked on the Kennesaw Campus
1 out of 15 people believe that it is easy to find a parking space on campus
3 out of 15 people believe that the parking pass system is effective
4 out of 15 people believe it is easy to pay for parking at the meter and still be on time for class
The app will receive information from the OPTEX sensors so that app users are able to see where parking is available and what the best parking option is at their time of arrival. When thinking about solutions I had the idea of giving users the ability to reserve parking spaces so that a spot is guaranteed when the arrive to the selected parking deck. This would allow users to plan ahead and save time. Users also can add their license plate Information so do not have to stop at a pay meter.
Through searching the web I discovered that some parking decks use a network of sensors to detect vehicles in parking spots. I found that the best sensors for our campus would be from a company called OPTEX. Their OPS-01 sensors uses wireless magnetometer technology and can be installed on ground. Each sensor on space talks wirelessly to a gateway, and it can change the state of relay to control a sign board for parking occupancy. Additionally, it has a serial communication protocol to talk with other system.
Sadly, I was not able to develop and test the app system with users, however I gained experience in user research, technical writing, design thinking, wire framing, and prototyping with Figma.
