PayByPhone

Making Parking Effortless

PayByPhone is on a mission to simplify people’s journeys across three continents.

They allow you pay for parking with a few quick taps. No coins, no hunting for the machine, just a clever little app that means you spend less time running back to your car and more time doing what matters most.

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PayByPhone
UX case study

PayByPhone is an app that allows driver to pay & manage their parking through their smartphone on street, parking lot or parking garage. Using the location code at the spot or plan in advance for your parking.

In Seattle I always manage my car parking and check for the parking garage information through PayByPhone app. As a user, I found some room to improve the user experience and some feature might help driver when they got into issues in the parking process. Below are my researches and studies.

INSPIRATION

Driver's parking experience

In my observation, some drivers will get stressed when parking their car under the limited parking situation, PayByPhone provides a more flexible parking solution for them, and allows drivers to manage the parking remotely.

From the driver parking studies, there are few touch points can be modified for a better user experience.

Interviews + Questionnaires

Gaining insights from user interviews

i have interviewed 5 car drivers that have used PayByPhone app before and others are the drivers who would park and pay with card/cash at the pay station. I got some new insight from the interviewers and that inspirited my UX design.

UX UI Comparison

Analyzing parking related app, including the user experience, app features, UI design and pros & cons.
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I comparing with three parking related service app, like street parking payment app in Oregon (Parking Kitty) and two popular parking apps (SpotHero and Best Parking).

Other insights

If there is a communicate platform to connect the drivers, there would be less angry notes or peaceful parking.

UX-Design Thinking

Suggestions

01

UI-MAP FEATURES
Users do not realized parking planing feature through the app, it is because of the landing page UI is more instant payment focus.
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Problem
The map button is too subtle and sit aside underneath on the landing page, the feature could not be utilized when user missed the button.

Solution
The CTA can be more prominent and have a icon under the navigation menu.

02

ADD A PARKING RESERVE FEATURES
Every driver concern about parking, it could be hard for most drivers to have all the garage parking details in the city.

Problems
User can pay for the garage parking fee through Pay by Phone app after they parked, however they cannot prepaid to reserve a spot in advance .

Solutions
Based on the existing garage network data, we add a parking reservation feature to allow our users to manage and plan the trip ahead.

03

BAD PARKING ISSUES
It is a common issue that the car being blocked in parking.

Suggestion
If most drivers are using PayByPhone, it can helps alerting the car owners for the users.

Redesign

UX UI Design

Prototype

User Flows

Explore the user flows with the new UI in different scenarios. We can gather feedback on the updated feature and gesture through the usability test, like the time picker, perceived performance, and garage search with the map feature.

Brand Identity - Motion Graphics

Perceived Performance Solution

While testing with the group, I found the app performance is different between high-end and low-end mobile devices. Users may think the app has crashed or wondering if it is loading, so I tried to add a branded animation for the loading process.

UXUI

New Features

New features would elevate the user's parking experience in different stages, from real-time parking to trip planning according to the driver's behavior from my research.

Design System

UI style guide

I have redesigned new iconography with outlined style and new components for the app. I also explored some motion graphics to elevate the in-app experience.