The Redesign of a Parking Space Rental Service from a Narrative Approach
The Situation (Overview)
This project focuses on designing a new service for a leading production vehicle rental company in Southern California. Primarily known for renting vehicles to major film studios, the company has recently acquired land to serve as another service in renting out as parking for production vehicles or as a basecamp during film productions.
Working closely with the Director of Marketing, the team sought out the opportunity in creating a holistic service that provides a seamless booking experience.
Our Approach
Throughout a period of a 10 week timeline, the team approached the situation through a mixture of a Human Centered Design and Service Design framework.
Human Centered Design is an approach to problem solving by involving the human perspective in all steps of the process.
The team’s framework consists of 7 stages (Immerse, Define, Discover, Ideate, Converge, Prototype, and Recommend) — with each stage, the team dove deep in understanding the problem.
While the framework is divided into stages, it’s not a linear process, the team in reality often had to shift between the stages as we gained more insight throughout the project.
A mixture of a Human Centered Design and a Service Design framework provided us with a range of tools and exercises to develop a finer solution.
Understanding the Problem
The Company has been in the business of renting out production vehicles for over 40 years, however with the new service of providing parking to large vehicles used during film productions the company felt they have not been able to establish a streamlined process between both their internal team and customers.
Before jumping into finding solutions for what the company initially shared with us, we worked on understanding and identifying what are these problems and and who are affected by these.
The Business Problem
Through an ecosystem map, a way to visualize and understand how everything works within the business, we looked into understanding what the current process of the company is like and who is particularly involved.
This helped the team identify key problems the company is currently experiencing:
- Lost documentation — lack of an established system to track important documents and records of customers
- Past Due Payment Processing — since there is no system other than through email agreements, customers end up paying past due dates
- Broken Communication — as the main office is located off site from the (2) main large parking lots, there’s difficulty for the Marketing Director in communicating with personnel on site
- Large Space Management — the company owns (2) separate large parking lots, Lot A monitored by an outsourced security agency, Lot B monitored by Company employee; given how vast the space is the personnel on both sites find difficulty in monitoring and communicating
- Adhering to Airport Regulations — as the lots are being leased from a City airport the company finds difficulty in keeping track of all the regulations to adhere to
Overall, the business’ pain points consists of a lack of a streamlined process and it needs the ability to scale to reach maximum profit. With these key difficulties identified, the team kept these in mind throughout the process and set out to look for possible solutions.
The Human Problem
As part of our approach, the team looked into understanding not only the business problem of the situation but also who and how are those involved affected by these problems? Through qualitative user interviews, the team empathized and translated into personas and user journeys in which unraveled users’ challenges and areas of opportunities to refine the experience.
Meet Who’s Involved:
Marketing Director, “Director Dave”
Currently handling all responsibilities, with some help from his lot manager, he is responsible for client management, invoicing, allocation, and any incidents occurring on the lot.
Company Employee, “Helpful Hank”
From planning to communicating with clients to even parking the trucks himself, he struggles in being able to manage how instructions are to be followed within the process.
Transportation Coordinator, “Organized Olive”
She must coordinate with Avon’s director to relay her vehicle fleet and book a basecamp for her studio’s next production. Organized O has to make sure all contracts or agreements are signed properly while directing her truck drivers to the correct spaces in order to comply with Avon’s and Burbank Airport’s guidelines.
Security Officer, “Responsible Robin”
He has to stay alert during his shifts at the parking lot — ensuring the ingress and egress of vehicles, patrolling the space and monitoring and reporting any dangerous incidents.
Truck Driver, “Trucker Chuck”
Works closely with Organized Olive in understanding when and where to park the truck upon arriving on the parking lot
Understanding each of these users helped the team identify each of their needs of being able to achieve the same end goal, which is being able to park on site.
Problem Statement
From business problem, to user needs the team came to ask,
“How Might We create a streamlined, holistic system for the Company to easily track, manage, and communicate with production customers about booking and parking?”
Before diving deep into understanding the problem space, the team built a timeline to track progress and set deadlines for deliverables. As a major callout, there was constant influx as we continually adapted to problems we faced along the way and we changed the timeline in parallel to our projects.
Research
Desk Research
With initial desk research, we wanted to look into understanding from a broad viewpoint.
- Film Industry — as the Company relies on the film industry as a whole, we sought it important to gather information on what the current state is like and how would the current state possibly affect the Company as well as who in the industry is most likely to be directly coordinating with the Company. As a result, with the impact of COVID-19 on the film industry, all research pointed towards a resurgence in production in 2021.
- Parking Rentals — we also dove into how parking rentals functioned
Competitive Analysis
Analyzing similar competition of the company provided advantages the Company has over these competitors. We gathered data on each and took note of their services, business model, and disadvantages.
The main advantage the Company has over its competition is being able to provide flexible parking arrangements within a close proximity studios, for production companies.
Technology
To see what could be possible, we researched available technology that could be used. We looked into layout softwares, scheduling softwares, parking management systems, parking technology, and physical parking objects. Our main goal was to see what could be leveraged to enhance the booking and parking experience for both those at the company and their clients. We found that there are many suitable softwares and parking technologies, such as sensors, which could be integrated into our system. These would enhance the company’s ability to watch over the vast amount of land and manage the constant influx of vehicles on the lot.
Visiting On Site
As the core of the business, the team set out to visit the Company’s parking lots. From this, we were able to note major pain points from the process shared by various employees who were on site.
Major pain points included the following:
- Communication — as a vital part of the business, problems between how instructions are shared would get lost when passed on. For example, when someone parks in the wrong spot the message would go from
Security Officer > Company Employee > Production Client > Truck Driver
This shows a high tendency for miscommunication, and as a result moving vehicles that weigh 20 tons is not easy to maneuver when they’re parked in the wrong area
- Physical Attributes — from the visit, the team noticed all the physical attributes needed for improvements such as signages, accurate addresses, and physical obstacles blocking parking spaces
- Check-In/ Check-Out Process — we were also able to observe a Transportation Coordinator’s process to check in/check out with our client’s employee and identified there wasn’t a standardized process in place
- Disconnect between Security Officers & Company Employees — after the team discovering that a Security Agency has been hired to be in charge of monitoring the larger separated parking lot, there were a multiple of problems identified. One overall problem included the officers lack of knowledge on the business as well as the inefficiency in reporting and passing information between the officers shifts. For example, a major prone to error instance involved, one officer overlooked a misparked vehicle, and upon change of shifts, it became the new guard’s problem whom had zero knowledge of where the cars were supposed to be. With these manual processes, there was no way to track any movement and pass on information reliably.
Overall
With all this information in mind, we’ve drawn the following main observations:
Mind Map
The team then worked on Mind Mapping, a service design method that is used to visualize and organize our findings, questions, assumptions, initial ideas and thoughts.
From mind mapping, we identified several categories of ideas, such as “processing portal”, “parking management system”, “layout”, “communication”, and “timeline”. With these categories identified, it helped us understand what to do next.
Ideation
With research and first hand information gathered from key stakeholders the team set out in ideating solutions through multiple exercises.
Each exercise played a role in helping the team…
Generate ideas
Identify possible solutions in relation to user needs
Determine areas of opportunity
Key Insights from Ideation
Key features to focus on included:
- Mapping/layout software
- Visual calendar
- Scheduling tool
- Signages
- Document storage
- Live reporting
- Booking processes
Prototype
In the efforts of testing out these ideas and testing the tangibility of each, the team worked on a multiple of prototyping exercises with the mindset of going beyond just wireframes and a click through prototype as a final solution.
Setting the Mood
Coming out of ideation with a flurry of ideas, through putting together a mood board helped the team envision an intended design direction. From looking at layouts for inspiration, to thinking of physical landmarks to include for the on-site side of the project.
Process Flows
With the team inspired it led us to ask, “What would the new process be like?” We looked into now taking the ideas and possible features into thinking of how could these be used and be helpful for key stakeholders.
Utilizing multiple iterations of Process Flows, a fast and easy method of prototyping the whole system, enabled the team to foresee the new process.
Desktop System Mapping
Parallel to the process flows, the team used Desktop System Mapping to supplement our understanding of the entire system and help visualize all the moving parts. We concluded that there were three major parts to the entire system, the main Portal, the Employee Hub, and Onsite.
Desktop Walkthrough
As the holistic system was realized, we wanted to focus on what happened onsite as that was the crux of many pain points. We used a Desktop Walkthrough, based off of our lot visit, to digitally lay out the physical aspect of our concept.
Storyboarding
Once we developed a solid understanding of the system through our previous exercises, we sketched storyboards to visualize user interactions in order to provide context behind our system’s uses. Sketching the key interactions on screen and physically provided us with plenty of insights that we used to further refine our concept.
Wireframes
Initial Design Wireframes
To now configure the layout of the identified main screens (main Portal, Employee Hub, and Onsite section), the team worked on low-fidelity wireframes.
Rehearsing Digital Services
To test the functionality and flow of these low-fidelity wireframes, we conducted Rehearsing Digital Services.
Roles (interchanged between scenes, having each member play each role at least once)
- Marketing Director — main user freely running through wireframes and clicking around to get to needs
- Wireframes — served as voice to direct what particular function does what
- Notes taker — takes note of interactions that need to be discussed during debrief
What Did We Do?
Through a role playing set-up, we acted out assigned roles and from this we were able to gather questions and notice either missing features or disconnected flows within the initial layouts.
What Did We Learn?
Overarching question we asked ourselves, “How does each part of this system cater to whats needed?”
A few call outs we picked up, (Q = Question, O = Opportunity)
Needs to see current bookings on map layout & be able to estimate new quotation
- Q: Should this be in all one section?
- O: Combine into Booking Hub screen
Notifications
- Q: What if it builds up?
- O: Option to remove or mark as read
The Final Concept: The Hub
Here’s How The Hub Works
With the overall concept in mind, the team took a unique approach in running through the concept. Through a Narrative approach, where we used a storytelling style to explain the functionality of the concept.
Starting with key actions or key scenes of,
Conclusion
The team throughout the project learned 3 key takeaways:
Service Design Framework as an Iterative Process — the team learned throughout the variation of this particular framework’s exercises that each would work best and fit depending on the certain situation. As a learning point for the team, we learned to work best judgement in understanding which exercise would work best with what we’re trying to understand throughout the phases.
Importance in Listening — as the Company has an already existing and established system in place, it was important the team listened to each and all key stakeholders involved in order to design a service that is tailored to their needs
Consistent Communication On the Process to Build Trust — communicating with the Company the process of how the team would gather information and generate insights helped build trust as it showed each aspect was thoroughly looked into to derive questions and opportunities
Team Members:
Kayleen Cheng
Larry Nguyen
Linh Quan
