Car Park Project

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University of Birmingham

MSc Computer Science

2013-2014

Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction

Supervisor: Bob Hendley

Multi - Storey Car Park Reservation System

Team 15

Awat Aldoski

Basak Oren

Maryam Hatami

Reshma Shawar

Yidan Wang

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Abstract

Aimed to design an efficient parking system, which guides drivers to find an empty parking place in multi-storey car parks, this can be viewed as next generation car parking system. we first reviewed some existing systems including online reservation parking system, external guidance parking system, and automatic parking system etc., Both advantages and disadvantages have been discussed for all the existing system. Secondly, in order to determine the requirements of such parking system, three types of different classes of user that the system is aimed at have been presented. We derived three scenarios for each persona that could clarify the user requirements. To meet most of the requirements, we developed three low fidelity prototypes, each with different approaches based on simple touch screens with different options which is aimed at most of the classes of users, the reservation system and a voice guidance system were designed. For each low fidelity prototype, we have undertaken an evaluation, set of conclusions and recommendations, which could help us to improve our final design. Based on low level designs and experiences we moved forward to our second, high fidelity prototype with combination of the features implemented in the first. To evaluate our high fidelity prototype we setup mock up system evaluation with real user for their experience with the system. We also provided those users with set of questionnaire to evaluate our final design based on Nielsen's heuristics. Finally, the analysis of evaluation and conclusion is presented with a set of recommendation for the project that might be taken in the future.

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Problem definition

The endless search for free spaces in a car park is a burden for a driver who wants to park his/her car. Finding a free space in a car park is very difficult in multi-storey car parks places such as shopping centers, airports, leisure centers and so forth. Searching for a free space to park wastes lot of time and has negative impacts on a person’s quality of life. In a busy city, almost every third driver is looking for a parking spot.

There is no system in place in that allows a driver to follow the direction, or rather guides him/her to a free space in multi-storey car parks. On busy days, drivers aimlessly wander almost the whole of the car park just to find a single place where he/she can park their car.

This is exactly where modern automation technologies and computer science can be successfully applied. There is a need for a system that guides a driver to a free space in multi-storey car parks. At all most, all the multi-storey car park there is a digital display of number of available spaces but there is no any system that displays or gives information of where those free spaces are or rather guides his to that free spot. The driver has to manually look all around to find one.

Therefore, there might be an urgent need to improve the efficiency of any car park and to enhance the customer experience, taking the pain out of parking.

In order to overcome the above mentioned problem we designed a system for multi-storey car parks which allows a user to look at the options and the availability of free spots and guides them to their preferred parking space. In order to create such a system, we took the following actions:

 Evaluation of Existing parking system

 Analysis of user requirements using different personas and scenarios

 Construction of first and second generation prototype

 Evaluation of our system using usability and accessibility tests

We are aiming to design a system that gives the driver information about the spaces that are available to park, including the floor and the navigation to the available place in order to reduce the frustration of the driver and decrease the time that they have to look for a space as well. We aim to provide the following:

 The system will present a number of available places

 The floor where these available places are located

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 This include the instruction or navigation to lead the driver to the available place

 Include an advanced reservation system in the car park entrance or online.

Review of Existing Systems

As a result of the aforementioned problems that driver faces in parking in car parks, We reviewed various types of existing systems that are applied in many courtiers to improve the parking facilities for crowded areas. These different kinds of parking systems not only include information about the multi-storey parks, they also provide information about all the parking places in the city and provide navigation to them. There are different types of car parking management system available in various countries. We looked at few of them below:

Lot-Specific Parking Information Systems

Lot-specific systems use signs to provide parking information that typically contain simple directions to parking facilities and advise for drivers to find the available space using signs that typically have both passive and active components. The passive component provides simple directions to parking facilities, such as with an arrow. The active component supplements the passive component to advise the traveller of the availability of

spaces at the facility. The Chicago Metra Park-and-Ride and the Seattle Centre advanced parking management systems both use signs to provide lot-specific information. Figure 1 shows one of the signs

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7 External Guidance System

 At the parking entrance, it presents the vacant slots in every level/location with variable message signs (VMS).

 Additional traffic instruction can be offered to further help parking guidance at your

perimeter.

Internal Guidance System

 Helps the customer by guiding them with directional signs that display green arrows for vacant slots and red cross for full one, as well it displaying the disable vacant places at each level.

 Vacant places are visible from a distance with single space detectors mounted at the top of

each slot. Thus, the customer will be informed which places are available and which are full.

Advantages

 Displays the number of available spaces in the entrance of car park, in the entrance of each level, and at the end of each aisle.

 Displays the directional signage for each aisle, showing the drivers which direction to follow

 Different coloured LED lights to differentiate between spaces (reserved, occupied, vacant or handicapped)

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 Payment fee facilitate by Touch’n’Go module.

 Assigns spaces beside each directional sign for advertising purposes.

 Avoids improper parking - a line will be detected by the system.

Floor-, Aisle-, and Space- Specific Parking Information Systems

These provide information about the number of places in the car park, including both full and empty places. They provide more detailed information and are placed in the entrance of car park, on each floor, at the beginning of every aisle and even in front of every individual place of parking

This system helps the parking management to manage the parking inventory, allows them to obtain accurate up-to-the-minute data and helps keep the car park open to its true capacity.

One would expect, as a disadvantage, such a system to be expensive.

Advantages

 Increased customer satisfaction/loyalty.

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 Shorter vacant slot search times resulting in less vehicle emissions.

 Avoid congestion and unwanted traffic with the help of effective signage within the car parks

 At shopping centers, customers can spend more time shopping rather than looking for parking spaces and they will value convenient parking experience.

 At airports, traffic congestion at entrances will be reduced and customers will reach boarding gates on time.

Disadvantages

From the customer perspective, there is no opportunity to reserve a place in advance, which may lead to the congestion in front of some available places.

APMS advance parking management system (APMS) :

The system will reduce frustration and enhance the visitor’s experience by helping them to find a parking space quickly. There will be specialized parking management applications as well. ‘The applied traveler information concepts cover a wide range of applications, from pre-trip Web-based information systems to navigation systems that provide turn-by-turn directions all the way to an individual parking space. There are several different types of advanced parking management systems currently in use in the U.S. today:

 Parking Navigation Systems

The most sophisticated type of advanced parking management system under development is one that guides the traveller to an open spot.The system relies on sensors within the car parks to transmit the availability information to the vehicle’s navigation system. It also uses the XM Radio satellite in order to control the real traffic time of a vehicle. In 2005, XM Satellite Radio, which already provides real-time traffic information to in-vehicle navigation devices, demonstrated a potential service called “Dynamic Parking Information.” The service provides XM Radio users with the number of available parking spaces at specific lots. The in-vehicle display uses color-coded icons to reflect the percentage of unoccupied spaces.

For example, Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport installed a smart parking system for its hourly and daily garages, which has 13 200 parking spaces. Sensors that are embedded into each parking space detect whether the space is occupied, and this information is fed into a central parking management system. The light over each space indicates whether it is available: green for open, red for occupied.

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

Online Reservation Systems

Is one of latest trends in parking management system, this facility enables the driver to reserve a parking place in any multi-story park through the website or mobile phone application, and pay online in order to reserve that place, thus they will receive a message containing information about the place of parking in that car park. This mechanism is very useful for reducing the time it takes to find a place.

This approach is implemented in many countries such as the U.S. In 2004, Mobile Parking LLC and Spot Scout TM are two companies that offer clients or drivers the chance to check for available spaces in about 400 parking area in 50 cities across the U.S., using their radio, cellular telephone, or computer, it was used to reserve a place in any type of parking area, not only multi- story park.

Benefits:

 Reduced time spent looking for parking spaces and reduced frustration of visitors and easier access to paring place.

 Reduced effort for venue operators in order to satisfy the customer, since they will be responsible for choosing the place not the venue operator.

 Parking operators: increased space occupancy and associated increase in revenue as customers will pay for advanced reservation besides the cost of parking.

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11 Drawbacks:

 Expensive to implement everywhere, the architecture of the system may require a lot of equipment, which in turn requires a huge budget.

 Requires huge amount of time, cost and effort to implement.

 Need sophisticated and modern technology.

Literature Review

From a literature studies we found that Kianpisheh et al., (2012) proposed a new parking system called smart parking system (SPS), which assists the driver in finding a vacant place in a short time. ‘The system is designed for a four-level car park with 100 parking spaces and five aisles on each floor. The system architecture defines the essential design features such as location of sensors, required number of sensors and LEDs for each level, and indoor and outdoor display boards’. The most essential features of the SPS system is to detect and present available parking spaces, direct towards available spaces, provide payment facilities and various kinds of parking spaces (vacant, reserved, full and disable). The drivers have to look at the LED board in order to know which type of space is available in which level and at what time. After finding the preferable space the drivers will follow the signs, which navigate them to that place, these signs are hanging on the ceiling of each aisle. Each internal sign contains both the number of

available places and the directions to those places. In addition, the driver should also notice the light colour, which determines the status of the place: green means the space is available, red means the space is full, blue means the space is assigned for disabled drivers and yellow means it has been reserved. The green light will automatically change to red when a driver enters the available space.

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The system detection technology relies on two based methods: vision based method, which depends on CCTV to control the place but it may not be an adequate method since the cameras and image processing may be affected by the environment. Therefore the sensor based method needs to detect the car occupancy and improper parking, consequently the vacant place is connected with every individual parking place ‘Ultrasonic sensors transmit sound waves between 25 kHz and 50 kHz. It can be concluded, that this system introduces the most appropriate solution for parking problems, such as finding a free space and directing the driver to that place. Ultrasonic sensors are also used to detect parking spaces and improper parking. This system will probably reduce time, cost and effort for finding a vacant place in a multi storey car park.

Further, in another study five categories of smart parking system, which are in common use, are introduced. They consist of parking guidance and information system (PGI) that use variable massage displays and other methods such as radios or phones to provide information for drivers. The transit is based on an information system that has similar functions of PGI and provides information about the traffic as well. Therefore it directs driver to the car space nearest to the public transport, smart basement system which uses various types of technologies such as mobile technology, E-parking is a system whereby information of car park occupancy can be retrieved and parking space reservation can be done through mobile phones and automated systems, which includes computer control mechanisms that places the vehicle into a parking space after saving them a space (Shaheen et al., 2005 ).

In parking guide systems when the driver approaches a car park barrier based on the selected destination, the system will calculate the nearest empty parking place nearest to the entrance chosen using the shortest path searching algorithm. They assume that drivers will want to park nearest to the nearest entrance to avoid long walking distance. In this system, the shortest path calculation is done using a search algorithm A*. Following the calculation, the empty park place is reserved with an unique ID that is embedded in a tag driver and is presented with the tag via a ticket dispenser and the reservation will be expire after 10 minutes. This tag can be used for timing audit to calculate the parking duration and fee that should be paid by the drivers. It also can guide drivers to their parked vehicle. This system also allows parking operators to customize the layout of the parking as they can add, move and remove a parking place at each level. In these articles, ultrasonic sensors were chosen to detect empty parking spaces. These sensors are non-intrusive sensors, which require simpler installations compared to intrusive sensors. They can be mounted on the ground or the ceiling. They believe both car park operators and drivers will benefit from the system as parking spaces are easily acquired and parking space wastage is reduced. Parking guidance system utilizes wireless sensor networks and ultrasonic sensor.

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For example, Traffic Tech Group in Middle East Gulf has designed many systems to control traffic and parking, including the parking guidance system, which involves advice and information for driver either inside the park or at the neighbour location.

Analysis of automatic parking system

Parking in urban areas has changed a lot in the past few decades. Parking is a scarce and valuable resource that impacts traffic flow, congestion, and economic vitality. Traditional parking is subject to various disadvantages, thus new technologies are being introduced to improve revenue, reduce costs, and make parking more convenient.

Automated car parking management allows for an error-free, fast read, non-duplicable alternative to the traditional means of site security. Specifically, automatic car parking systems are based around microcontroller and sensors, and automatic parking solutions are an efficient way to store a large number of vehicles within a limited space.

For traditional parking systems, more spaces are required for entry and exit. However, with an automated car parking management system, we can accommodate more cars in less space. This formula can be applied to almost any city in the world. This is probably the prime reason why automated car park systems are a very attractive alternative to conventional car parking systems.

The cost of an automated parking system depends on the size and the layout of the property, the total number of parking spaces required and the required response speed of this system. In addition, the time for a driver to retrieve their car will depend upon where the car is parked inside the system. The minimum time needed is 1 minute and the maximum time is 3 minutes. Also, the waiting time will depend on the peak traffic capacity. Namely, how many cars can be processed in a given time frame. More specifically, each entry/exit gate can handle 45 cars in one hour. Building an automatic parking system will take almost a year. More specifically, for a turnkey Robotic Parking System, it will take 10 to 14 months to build.

From a user perspective, automatic parking system is a very safe and convenient system. The system virtually eliminates the risk of any vehicle damage or theft and the risk of personal injury or robbery that can occur in regular car parking because the drivers remains safely outside the building at all times. Imagine arriving to your destination and rather than having to spend an exorbitant amount of time driving around looking for a space to park, you drive right up to the car park, drive

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in at ground level into a well lit, easy access entrance area, get out of your car, push a button and then you simply walk away.

To sum up, a number of benefits could be found by using an automated parking system. Firstly, because of its safety and security which means no property and vehicles are damages during parking a car. Secondly, time, money and fuel would be saved since people do not need to find an empty space or search for their car. In addition, automated parking system is environment-friendly as fuel is saved for all cars parking. Finally, it is systematic, which enables the system be customised to accommodate any building style and environment. However, there are definitely several flaws which limit the prevailing of automated parking system. As a system software, system clashes cannot be avoided easily and then the cost of monitoring and maintaining the whole system is enormous and is very hard to estimate. Power down is also needed to be considered, under the same situation with system clash. Moreover, there are higher construction costs at the initial phase when building an automatic system and it is not suitable for high peak hour volume.

Review of Apps

Parker

General Approach:

Parker is a free application for mobile devices, which finds a parking space with real - time parking availability.

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15 Strengths:

 Parker has voice guidance property that warns them when a car park is nearby.  The user can pay the parking fee for available car parks.

 The user can set a timer to remind them when the meter is about to expire.  The application helps user to find their car.

 The user can use different payment methods (cash, credit card, debit card) and parking spaces (street parking or car park)

Weakness:

× This application is not available for many cities.

× Pay for parking property is not available for each car park . × Parker application is not convenient for multi - storey parks.

Delmatic Parking Management System

Delmatic Parking Management System includes parking sensors, electronic display boards and a graphical software. Parking sensors detects if a parking space is full or not. If that parking space is full, LEDs illuminate red and for vacant parking spaces LEDs they show a green light. Electronic display boards show the vacant parking spaces and their location with arrows. Parking management system provides graphical software to count number of vehicles in and out, and monitors the status of all parking bay sensors.

Strengths:

 Parking bay sensors helps user to notice empty parking spaces easily.  Electronic display boards guide users to find vacant parking spaces.  Electronic display boards guide users to find exit easily.

 Graphical software provide to track status of sensors.

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 Parking management system can integrate with the card - entry.  This system is convenient for multi - storey parks.

Weakness:

× You can't see the whole map of parking area; you still need to search for empty parking spaces.

Workspace Manager

Workspace manager is a web-based software for booking and managing rooms, desks, visitors and car parking spaces. This software allows user to book an empty parking space within the required time and parking area. User can observe previous reservations and searches can be filtered.

Strengths:

 The user can see all of the available parking spaces and the map of the car park.  Design is clear for users.

 Filter property provides the chance to find an appropriate car park easily.  Filter results based on location, floor level or disabled parking.

 You can list your previous reservations.

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× Workspace manager asks user to fill start and end hours for car park booking so the user should exit from that parking slot before the end of the hour. Extension or renewal property does not exist if the user wants to use that parking slot a few hours more.

× Mobile application is not as good as web application.

× The user may have some problems with using application for Chrome cause it is not tested for Google Chrome.

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Personas

In order to determine the requirements and to figure out that to what extent the parking system that has been studied by the team will facilitate the drivers’ needs; we aim to present three different class of users of different personas aiming meet each user class needs and reduce their pain point with the existing system. These three users class we selected young people/students, elderly/disabled people and Business/family men. Their requirements will be analysed based on the scenarios.

The purpose behind choosing these classes of users can be illustrated as follows:

 Students/young generation: A student is most likely to arrange their time in order to be able to pan out in their studies. Because they always have to be responsible for attending lectures or meetings, have to schedule their timetable, having an adequate parking system certainly will reduce the unpredictable amount of time and effort wasted in looking for car parking by the young lot and consequently it will help them to manage their time.

 Elderly /Disabled people: These kind of people usually need special care since most of them probably have health problems which oblige them to go to the hospital from time to time, And because the elderly people tend to prefer quiet and less crowded places, away from stress, therefore they might have many problems with the existing car parking system, which require more time and effort to find available car park place. Disabled people may be the most benefitted individuals from the new suggested system since they will have at each slot their own places which will not allowed to be used by normal people, therefore their opportunity to find a free place will increase and based on that the time consumed for searching available place will be reduced.

 People with family: people who are responsible for a family, almost all the time they are working to provide the basic life insurance to their families. They will certainly suffer from wasting time and effort in car parking even in shopping centres, hospitals or children’s schools. Thus it will be quite useful for them if they save this amount of the time to spend it with their families or to have additional working hours.

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1 .

Student

Background

Name: Xiaoran Huang Age: 24

Occupation: Student

Main Points

 Ambitious and sets clear cut goals in his life

 Gives utmost priority to time

 Enjoys to the fullest in his leisure with friends and watching movies in theatre.

 Hate ambiguity and uncertainty in life.

 Passionate about his education

Goals

 Reserve in advance a place before arriving to the car park

 Easily find the reserved place which will not be occupied improperly

 Less time to spend parking the car

Description

Xiaoran is now a Master’s student of The Bartlett School of Architecture and lives in southeast of London. Most of time he drives to school but he also takes the bus on bad weather days. Xiaoran lives in Summerfield Rd which is over 13 miles away from UCL. Obviously, driving is much convenient for him, as it only takes thirty minutes for him to drive from home to school but if he takes the tube, he has to walk for almost half an hour on from home to the subway station and then the bus station to school. However, he cannot stop worrying about finding an empty slot when he travels on his own to school .

Also, Xiaoran just got his driving license one year ago, in the meantime; the multilevel car park is

always crowded, especially in peak periods. Thus driving in a crowded car park and finding a free space are become the biggest obstacle for him to drive to school.

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Pain Points

 Time wasted

 Improper parking

 Find the car

Most importantly, he prefers to have a fixed lot or a reservation system for him to parking directly on each weekday morning. Since he has nearly the same parking time requirements and what he want is the same car park without spend much time on looking for his car every day.

Scenarios

Hard to find a empty place

Xiaoran has lectures at 9am this morning and he left home at 8 o’clock. It took him 35 minutes from home to the car park, but then he took almost 15 minutes to find an empty space in the multilevel car park.

Improper parking make the parking more difficult

However when he was going to park his car, he found that the empty place is not big enough for his car since a car occupies part of this empty slot and then he has to find another one. After taking another 10 minutes, he finally found an empty slot. He was late for the lecture even an hour is supposed to enough.

Cannot find the car

At 6pm, Xiaoran left school and goes to the car park. Without any information provided, it takes almost 10 minutes for him to find his car in the car park as it is one of the busiest car park in the city . Due to peak hours, and the crowd he often has no idea about the location of his car on that day.

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2- Elderly Lady

Background

Name: Katherine Jones Age: 72

Occupation: Retired

Main Points

 Comes from a middle class family. Had seen many ups and down in life. Worked all her life to have a peaceful life after retirement

 Does not like travelling much. Prefers to stay at home in her two bed room flat with her pet.

 Suffers from Diabetes for the past 25 years and has complications in her kidneys and foot problems due to high blood sugar levels. Due to her medical condition, she needs to go to hospital every two weeks for a check up.

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Goals

 Wants to go to hospital quickly with less frustration over finding a parking space in a multi-storey hospital building.

 Wishes to have a dedicated parking place for elderly people.

 Easy accessible parking space.

 Smooth parking with wider access.

Description

Katherine is 72 year retired old lady with two children who lives in Birmingham. She lives in Harborne in her two bed apartment alone after her husband’s death. She has lots of friends in the area. She was diagnosed with diabetes at a very young age and she has been suffering from it from a very long time now.

She is a foodie and does not have proper control over her diet, as a result she developed complications over her health.

Her condition is getting more complicated which affects her kidneys and feet. She had a diabetic foot for 2 years now. For that reason she has to visit to the Queen Elizabeth Women‘s hospital every two weeks for regular check-up and treatment.

Every time Katherine wants to park her car in the hospital, she finds it is really difficult to find a free wide-access parking space. She takes a longer time to get out off her car so she prefers to get a place, which is close to the lift, and have enough space for her to get of her car.

Scenarios

 Want to park close to the lift/Entrance:

It’s Tuesday morning, and she has an appointment with her doctor at the QE hospital. She has to have an empty stomach for the check-up. She can only drink water. She wants to park her car in the hospital's car park, which is a multi-storey car park.

It’s getting late for her appointment and she cannot find a free space where she can park her car. The display gives information about the number of free spaces but she finds difficulty in finding one.

She gets frustrated and also feels hungry, as she hasn’t had her breakfast. Her sugar levels are also getting low. She just wants to park her car somewhere near to the entrance and rush to hospital.

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Pain Points

 Feels frustrated at not finding a free slot to park.

 No information guidance or help to direct to free space for elderly people.

 Confusing car parks.

 Had to waste time and energy in the process.

 Finds a free space but too narrow to park:

Katherine found a free space near the lift where she can park her car but she realises that its

too small for her to park and get off the car. She knows that it’s definitely not a place where she can park her car comfortably and get off the car smoothly. But as she not got lot of time to search again she has to use this place to park. And with lot of difficulty and hassle she somehow parks her car in a very narrow space and takes a long time to do it. It was definitely one of her bad experiences in a car park.

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3- Disabled Person

Background

Name: George Hanley Age: 29

Occupation: Newspaper Columnist

Main Points

 Highly educated and sensible columnist.

 Uses a disabled car.

 People's insensitive behaviours about disability makes him feel uncomfortable.

 As physically challenged he sometimes finds it very hard to do his routine activities

Goals

 Need clear information/pictures or sign displayed for searching car parks for disabled people.

 Despite his physical disability, he wants to continue his life the same as before.

 Need separate entry/exit for disabled.

Description

George is a 29 years old man from United Kingdom. He works as a columnist for a newspaper. When he was 21 years old, he had a car accident and the accident caused him to become physically disabled and he had to use wheelchair every day. After the car accident, he tried to live his life as same as before and he started to write about the problems of disabled people in his newspaper column.

This car accident has affected him very much, but George doesn't give up driving car and he bought a disabled car to make his life easier. Although his new car is handy, it causes other problems for him.

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25 Pain Points

 Misleading sign/symbols for disabled in car park

 Misuse of parking spaces for people with disabilities.

 No information to track the aisle number

He noticed that he spent lots of time to find an empty car park for handicapped car and non - disabled motorist park in a disabled car park.

George tends to use the car park instead of street parking, as the weather conditions in this country are unpredictable and car parks could prevent most of the inconvenient situations for disabled people. George also needs more time getting in or getting off his car and he also needs a wide space, so he prefers to find a quiet place near the lift.

Scenarios

Looking for disabled parking:

George went to a shopping centre to buy a gift for his friend for his birthday. The shopping centre is one of the busiest city centre. He wanted to find an empty parking space for disabled. But he didn't know where the parking was for it. After finding one seeing the sign, he then wanted a free disabled spot . As it is a busy shopping centre on Sundays, all the disabled parking spaces on level one were full. He now had to go and check for disabled parking on the other level. There was no way to find this information anywhere; had has to check every level until he found one.

Paying ticket:

On his return, he exited the mall from one of the many exits, paid his ticket but soon realised that he had parked his car to other side of the mall. Since he has only visited this shopping mall a couple of times, he was not very sure about the many exits. Moreover he had no information or aisle number where he actually parked. He had to travelled on his wheel chair for 10 minutes to get to his car.

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4- Men with a family

Background

Name: Akbar Madani Age: 45

Occupation: Business

Main Points

 Has a very active social life and goes to social events.

 Is responsible for his family and spends his time with family every weekend

 Because of having a big family, he needs to have control over his expenses.

 Because of his occupation, time is important for him.

Goals

 Seeks getting more time and reducing expenses

 Wants to shop every weekend in a convenient way

 Is interested in parking the car in multi-storey parking instead of street

 Looks for a convenient free park place in multi-storey parking

 Saves fuel and does not want to waste it just for looking for free car park place

Description

Akbar came to the United Kingdom in 2000 and he started his business from 2002. He is a hard working person and every minute is important to him. As he is a father of a big family, he needs to work all weekdays to provide a comfortable life to his family. He spends weekends shopping with his family. He enjoys to spend his weekends with his family but he has to manage his time and expenses. Because of his children and the condition of the weather in the UK, he always prefer to go shopping in big supermarkets which has car park instead of street parking on high street.

As he says a relaxing shopping experience begins with convenient car parking and explains how it is frustrating looking for a vacant spot in a huge car park. Furthermore, he believes that this causes waste of time and fuel. The horrible part of this every week journey from Akbar's point of view is that the children nag him to stay in the car because of lack of park place .

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Pain Points

 Waste the time for looking for vacant spot.

 Being under pressure and stress.

 Waste the fuel for finding a convenient park place.

 Causing congestion traffic in result of wandering drivers.

Scenarios

Finding a cheaper car park:

One weekend, Akbar goes shopping with his family but he had to manage his time as he has got a meeting to attend this afternoon. It was raining, therefore he preferred to park his car in the car park . Because of it being

a weekend , the shopping centre was crowded and obviously there were very few free parking place on the different levels of the parking.

In addition to the little time he had, he wanted to find a wide-access parking place because of his children and also for their security, he preferred to park his car close to entrance of the shopping centre. Furthermore, reasonable price for parking is very important option for him. Because of the lack of time and constant children nagging of being in the car for long time, he had to park the car at the first car park and walked towards the entrance of shopping centre which was great cumbersome job with children and also finds very expensive ticket for him.

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First generation prototypes

Mock up prototype 1:

Rationale:

In our first prototype we aimed to develop a parking system that will help the drivers find a parking space easily and quickly provided with a set of options. Based on the analysis performed in the user requirements we found that each class of user requires different preferences to park their car. Based on these we developed our first prototype, which will be a touch screen system where drivers can choose his options with different requirements. By providing the options, drivers could easily find the place that meets their requirements.

Presentation:

Figure 1-1 options screen

The first screen presents several options. Options provide some facilities for each driver, therefore the driver initially chooses option among 7 available options on base of their requirements. This screen allows drivers to choose more than one option (for example, a driver needs a cheaper place and near the exit so he can chooses both options). The cancel button also lets the driver change or delete some options.

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Figure 1-2 levels screen

Next, the second screen contains of all available parking spaces in each floor of parking appears. So the driver manually selects the prefer number of parking place. There is again a cancelation button for changing the choice.

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The next screen includes the direction of the chosen parking place which be shown on the map. It also offers the shortest route to the place.

Figure 1-4 Reserve confirmation

The last screen confirms the number of reservation park place, so the place is reserved for the driver.

Analysis

In the first mock-up which is the most simplistic one, it offers the driver a menu on the first screen, which allows them to choose what kind of facilities they want. When the driver has chosen the type of parking place, they get redirected to next screen, which contains available car parks in each floor of parking. Based on the provided information, the last screen generates the final result of reservation. In the first mock-up prototype, there are several windows, which include several options that needs to spend more time for reading and selecting. Also, the last output of print includes confirmed number of reservation and map of direction to the reserved place.

Pros

Technically, it is easy to implement and provides clear information for the user. The options include related signs, which offers more clear information for some users with difficulty in reading. It provides a direction map on the ticket, which also redirects the driver to the reserved place and provides a convenience situation for them.

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Cons

The interface includes several screens and options and the user required to spend time for reading all information and decide to select an option specially for those who have problem in reading or elder persons. Additionally, the map direction for elder persons may be complicate and make them confused for finding the reserved place.

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Nielsen Heuristic's for the first prototype Criteria Rating Comment

Visibility of system status ! Visibility is indicated by the screens,

which are clear, but some people, specially elderly people, have problems in reading

and understanding all of the information

Match between system and the real world

+ The screens are easy to understand and the information, which has to be provided, matches this information that has to be mentioned

User control and freedom ! The user has the ability to take control of the process in each screen, but has limited abilities after moving to next screen

Consistency and standards ! The screens do not include uncommon

signs or elements. Experienced drivers should be familiar with all signs.

Error prevention - There is no error prevention, as after selecting there is no way back.

Recognition rather than recall +

The usage is efficient, as the user must not to remember all information. They are all provided on one screen.

Flexibility and efficiency to use - The system gives limited assistance. Most of the work has to be done by the user.

Aesthetic and minimalistic design - The design is not minimalist. It includes extra screens.

Help error recovery - If the user makes an error, he cannot return to the previous page.

Help and documentation - There is not any help function.

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Conclusion:

Despite there being many characteristic and facilities that this parking management system has that are very beneficial for a great amount of customer to save time effort and cost to some extends but, it has several deficiency points, such as the direction or guide instruction are not quite obvious and the most important riddle is, screens does not have a "Back" button that can return back for checking again or mistake. Thus, the next step will focus on designing an interface to design appropriate window that will interact with the customer.

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Mock up prototype 2:

Tool used: Photoshop

Primary target group: Disabled and elderly customers

Rationale:

In this prototype, we aimed to provide a voice guiding service. From user analysis we found a class of drivers unable to touch the screen, or they just prefer speaking instead of touching, especially the elderly drivers. By using the voice guiding service they could interact with the parking system more easily. For each step, they would get voice guidance and could speak out their choices. A guidance device will also be provided to direct the driver go to the reserved place.

Presentation

The second mock up prototype includes a sensor, screen and speaker. When a car arrives at the entrance, the sensor will realise the car and the system welcomes new customer with voice message.

Figure 2-1 Entrance of the park

The system indicates parking options for the customer. These options are enumerated: 1 - Any place

2- Cheaper place 3- Near the entrance 4- Near the lift 5- Disabled

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Figure 2-2 Enumerated options

After selecting the option, the screen shows the available parking spaces for each level. For this step, customer should say the number of the level.

If you want to select "any place", say 1. If you want to select "cheaper place", say 2. If you want to select

"near the entrance", say 3. If you want to select

"near the lift", say 4. If you want to select

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Figure 2-3 Level options

Figure 2-4 Level map

The next screen will display the map and the number of the available places on each level, the levels also are numbered to facilitate the selection procedure, by stating the number of the level the

If you want to select "level 1", say 1 If you want to select

"level 2", say 2 If you want to select

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customer can reserve the place. A green light shows for available places and the red light is for non-empty places.

Figure 2-5 Path guide

After choosing the preferable place the second step is start: in this step, the customer has to hold audio guidance device, which contains power, volume, and play buttons. The device will give voice instruction to clarify the direction to the intended available place.

Go to level 1, Turn right, Go straight ahead,

Turn right,

Your reserved place is on the right hand side

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Analysis

The second prototype can simplify the way that the system interacts with the customer, since no physical interaction is required with interfaces to choose or reserve the place, it will just depend on voice communication, which might be more beneficial than touching the screens. More often the car might not get close to the system for the driver to reach the touch screen system.

This interface will have 3 options in order to ensure that the users are aware about the type of place. The audio guidance device will be taken at the entrance of the garage, which will give clear instruction to where the car should go, it is similar to those devices, which are used in the museums, and galleries in the UK, this direction controller device can be returned back at the exit gate.

Pros

 The facility of the existing screen option and level information in addition to the voice guidance, so that the user can read the instructions in case they lose the voice instructions.

 It is useful for disabled and elderly people cause it's hard for them to use touch screen

Cons

 There may be difficulties in identifying different accents

 If there exist a problem with the sensor, then the system can't restart for the next customer.

 The system is not convenient for deaf people

 Difficulty in cancelling a choice at each step

 Time consuming

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Nielsen Heuristic's for second prototype

Criteria Rating Comment

Visibility of system status + Audio guidance and screen will inform customers step by step

! The options are enumerated for the user to understand easily and the accent is clear. But it will cause a delay because the users have to wait till the guide information is finished.

User control and freedom - The user must start the reservation from the beginning, back or cancel option does not exist

Consistency and standards + The volume buttons on the path guide are standard and interface of the screen is easy to understand for customers

Error prevention ! The system wants the user to confirm the selection before the reservation. But the system should be improved in case of an error of the sensor.

The usage is quite efficient as the system will display all type of instructions on the screen and it will read them as well, which will increase the connection between the system and users since they will use both senses hearing and vision to understand the system clearly.

Flexibility and efficiency to use + The reservation system is suitable for every type of user. But this system is especially efficient for disabled and elderly customers.

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Aesthetic and minimalistic design + Path guide just includes power and volume button so it has a simple design, which is suitable for all kind of users. Screen interface is aesthetic and simple as well.

Help error recovery - It's hard to express error messages with this parking management system.

Help and documentation - Help function does not exist. User can get help from staff.

Conclusion:

This prototype will offer an efficient approach to interaction, especially for disabled and elderly people, as the system provides an option of voice guidance to the users.

However interface has its own limitation, as it requires noiseless environment in order the voice messages be received well by users. There are only few section of users who might actually be interested in using this facility as it is a bit time consuming.

Furthermore extra overhead of maintaining the voice guidance device or gadget is required. Having said that it might be extremely helpful for some sections of users.

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Mock up prototype 3:

Tool used: Balsamiq Mockups

Primary target group: Young and computer literates

Rationale:

Moving forward to our third prototype, we aimed to implement a reservation application, which could reserve a parking space in advance and also record the driver parking histories, if the user is registered .In our user requirement analysis we found considerable section of users interested in having a system which reserves a slot in advance. Users could reserve a place according to the available map or could also reserve referring to his parking history. After booking a place, they would get a confirmation email which includes the parking barcode which needs to be scanned and go to the reserved place directly. Time could be saved considerably.

Presentation

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The third mock-up prototype is based on providing the user the facility for reserving the parking space beforehand. The facility can be provided using a web browser or an app. The user can select the location where he/she wants to park from the homepage of Parking Reservations, which welcomes the user and presents its features at the centre of the page.

The homepage facilitates the selection of the dates and the timings required by the system to reserve the parking space.

Figure 3-2

The user also has the option of selecting parking from the history if he is a regular user of the system. The system provides with the option to login if he/she is an existing user. Once the user credentials has been provided, all the history of that user is shown in the drop down menu. The user can then select his choice of location.

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Figure 3-3

Based of the location provided the system searches for all of the available parking places. The user then selects the exact parking location based on his preferences for example cheaper parking, family parking, and quick access to the shopping centres etc.,

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Based on the user's input of timing and location details, the system generates the list of all available parking spaces as shown to the user in graphical display. The green colour specifies the available space for reservation, red is occupied and the grey specifying being reserved.

The user is provided with the option of clicking on the green button and submits his request.

Figure 3-5

When the user submits his request, all the details of the reservation is shown to the user and he/she get a confirmation details .The next page show the billing details. The user has to pay the parking cost via his credit/debit card to confirm his reservation. Once the user pays his amount and confirms, the green button changes to grey, specifying his reservation mentioning his slot.

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Analysis

The second Prototype introduces a new concept of reserving the a parking space in advance. Before setting off on a journey, the user can reserve a parking space through a website or an app on the smart phone. The user can book a slot mentioning his duration of stay.

If the user is a frequent visitor of the same location and often uses the same car park, he is provided with the functionality to register an account at the particular website. This allows the user to save the locations he uses very often as favourites. He can access the list of his favourite locations easily, which allows simple reuse of the searches he makes.

The second prototype also extends the basic features of the first one where user is allowed to choose his preferences.

Pros

 Allows the user to book the reservation in advance, thereby saving lot of time and hassle looking for a free space in the car park

 Gives organised car parking management to the user as well as the management team.

 User can book or cancel the booking.

 Also features a search history, through which user can choose location from history

 Provides with an option to choose according to the preferences.

Cons

 From a technical point of view, little hard to implement.

 The user might not be sure of the timings input , he/she might want to park.

 As the search history is integrated, the browser may have problems displaying histories.

 Since involves huge implementation, search engine might get slow and performance of the system might get affected, problems displaying the website appropriately.

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Nielsen Heuristic's for third prototype

Criteria Rating Comment

Visibility of system status + The website will show a step-wise loading bar when the user update the details step by step

! The website is made simple and clear with only the basic functionality. Hence the user should have no problem using the website for reservations but can be improved with more functions

User control and freedom + User has provided with basic functions, can go back and cancel anytime.

Consistency and standards - The website does not provide extra user functionalities and options to save or revert the changes.

Error prevention ! As the user fills one form at a time and in a step by step process. It is very easy for the user to detect errors if something goes wrong.

As the system facilitates with the search histories and search engines, The user only has to provide a little bit of information. Flexibility and efficiency to use + The reservation system is suitable for

every type of user. With only a few clicks, the user can see all of the available free space and book his space which saves lot of time

Aesthetic and minimalistic design + Reservation system just includes basic functionalities so it has a simple design, which is suitable for all kind of users. Screen interface is aesthetic and simple as well.

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Help error recovery - It is difficult to recover the working screen if the system crashes. The user has to make a new reservation. Data is lost in an unusual system crashes

Help and documentation - No help functions available.

Conclusion

:

Using reservation parking system makes life significantly easier, from the driver's perspective. It reduces the overheads involved in finding a lot in a multi-storey building as long as the web developer takes accessibility and usability in account. Additionally, the system allows users to create an account and suggest the locations based on history.

Conclusion of low level prototypes:

We have created three prototypes using Photoshop and Balsamic Mockups.

Initially, we considered to create the mockup using balsamic but since we were not getting required functionalities from balsamic. We decided to go for Photoshop. Adobe as it offered us a greater variety of functionalities and options and more freedom with the design and layout.

Secondly, we gathered all the features and functionalities to be implemented for our prototypes. We had a brainstorming session, with each team member coming up with different ideas. We wanted to address the most significant parking problems based on our scenarios and wanted to use different approaches in different prototypes.

We decided to have three low-fi prototypes each with different approach to address the problem with all the prototype having a common functionality to offer. The common functionality aimed to provide the user with the free space information with ease of access. These are done using different approaches.

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We have tried to make us of the advantages and the strengths and worked on the weaknesses. We analyzed the personas and scenarios and tried to model the user requirements elicited initially.

We categorized our three different approaches, as shown below:

 Provide basic functionality with simple touch screen projectors.

 Integrate with voice guidance system mainly focusing on elder or disabled or people unable to read/write.

 Provide a system where a user can reserve his parking space in advance through web browsers.

Based on these three distinct approaches, we built our low-fi prototypes. We focused our prototypes and paid attention to the below point when evaluated:

 Simplicity of usage  Step by step progress

 Usable by all kinds of users like young people, disabled, elderly, people unable to read/write etc.,

 Advanced features including voice guidance and providing device for guiding the path  Use of modern technology for user interface

We have concluded that each prototype offers a distinct feature and advantages, and it is worth implementing the second generation prototype based on distinct features of all the three mockup prototype. The implementation as second prototype will provide the possibility to further evaluate usability and to improve the user experience by performing extensive testing with real users.

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Second Generation Prototyping

Evaluation of tools

Design

Balsamiq Mockups To design the first generation prototype

Microsoft PowerPoint To design the second generation prototypes

Adobe Photoshop Used for the voice guidance low fidelity prototype and for the map images

Process

For the low fidelity prototypes, we used Balsamiq Mockups to design the interface of the reservation system. In order to improve the design for the second generation prototype, we preferred Microsoft PowerPoint and Adobe Photoshop.

Balsamiq Mockups

Evaluation

In building the first generation prototype, we first used Balsamiq Mockups for the design of the touch screen interface. Balsamiq Mockups is suitable to design an interface for a short period of time and saves time with drag & drop property. It is easy to create interface with using design pattern libraries and ready to use UI's. The software provide user to download different add-ons too. However, it is not colourful and attractive as we thought.

Possible Alternatives

There are a number of applications, which are similar to the Balsamiq Mockups. We considered some of them below.

1. MockingBird

Design patterns are similar with Balsamiq Mockups but the advantage of this application is that user can access mock-ups from anywhere since it is a web-based application. MockingBird also allow user to share the mock-up with the teammates and they can also edit it too.

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2. Lumzy

Lumzy is a similar mock-up tool with Balsamiq Mockups. It's ready to use UI's looks nice than the Balsamiq. A good property of this application is that the user can define a pop up message easily. This property could be useful for designing our project.

3. Serena Prototype Composer

This tool provide user to create a realistic interface than the other mock-up applications. It seems like this application is convenient to design a web page rather than touch screen interface. The free version allows user to work on one project.

Microsoft PowerPoint

Evaluation

We noticed that Balsamiq Mockups is not attractive and colourful so we decide to use PowerPoint. This is not a mock-up application but it is much more easy to create a realistic interface and components (buttons, texts...) with effects. We added glows and shadows to the buttons. We also used ready templates of Microsoft PowerPoint for the second generation prototype.

Possible Alternatives

1. Google Docs Presentation

It is a simple web-based application that can be used by anyone with a Google account. The diversity of the template is much more than the PowerPoint. It might be useful for designing the background of the interface.

2. Prezi

A user-friendly tool to create presentations. Also, we could use the ready templates of the Prezi. But we could not use this application for effects such as glows and shadows.

3. Keynote

A similar application for Mac users. It is obvious that Keynote is more comprehensive than PowerPoint but these differences were not favourable for our purposes.

Adobe Photoshop

Evaluation

Adobe Photoshop is used for the creation of the map and the image, which describes the second low fidelity prototype. This tool also helped us to change image background to the transparent. It is a very useful programme for designing and it had many advanced properties, which were useful for us.

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1. GIMP

It is a free alternative to the Adobe Photoshop. The interface of the GIMP looks simple but it is also complex like Photoshop. However, GIMP included all of the properties that we needed for our project.

2. Serif PhotoPlus X6

This is another software that has similar properties to Adobe Photoshop. The advantage of this tool is that it cost less to buy than Adobe Photoshop.

3. Pixlr

Pixlr is an online photo editor and it looks much more simple and user friendly than Adobe Photoshop. This application could be useful for us since we are not experienced with the features of Photoshop.

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Presentation of second generation prototype:

This is the welcome screen of the parking system. The driver is presented by a simple view: At the top of the screen, the welcome message, followed by the name of parking is shown. In the centre of the screen a simple message encourages the user to select one of the options, which are shown in highlights buttons.

The driver, who has reserved his/her ticket in advance on the Internet, is able to choose the “Already reserved” option. Otherwise they can reserve the preferred parking place by choosing the option “Want to reserved”. Each of the option buttons will redirect user to the next screen. The main purpose of this design is keeping simplicity and avoiding of useless information for the user.

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Options screen follow to selecting “ Want to reserve “ button

If the drive presses the “ Want to reserve” button, the options screen is presented to him/her by a list of several options. At the top of this screen a message that guides the user to find their preferred option, is shown. At top of the options, the message shown presents the voice facility in this system. Therefore this provides a more convenient situation for elderly people or people with skin problems.

Options buttons are shown in highlights by the related sign for each of them and the number, which mentions the specific option in voice facility. At the bottom of the screen there are two buttons: “back” and “next”, which guide the user to the previous screen, if they change mind, or to the next screen for completing their reservation. When the user presses the button or says the number of options, by telling or pressing the next button next screen will be presented for them.

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Available parking place screen

This screen appears when the user chooses the next button in previous screen (option screen). At the top of the page, the information about the screen and the message that reminds the user about voice method. At the centre of the screen, the available parking spaces on each level are shown in green, highlighting the number. The taken parking spaces are shown in red and it states zero.

The related number of each level is useful for the voice user. The next and back buttons have the same function of the last screen. If the user presses or says selection level number, the option will pop out and highlight then by pressing or saying the next button, they will redirect to the next screen.

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Map of selection level

This screen shows the available parking places on the map by a green light colour and occupied parking spaces by red light colour.

The map presents all of the details about the selection level of the parking, which includes entrance and exit ways, the numbers of the parking places and the information about availability of the parking places by red and green lights. In this screen, there is also a voice facility for users, showing the message at the top of the page, and voice facility notes to the user.

Car Park Project

University of Birmingham

MSc Computer Science

2013-2014

Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction

Supervisor: Bob Hendley

Multi - Storey Car Park Reservation System

Team 15

Awat Aldoski

Basak Oren

Maryam Hatami

Reshma Shawar

Yidan Wang

Table of Contents

Abstract

Problem definition

Review of Existing Systems



Online Reservation Systems

Literature Review

Analysis of automatic parking system

Delmatic Parking Management System

Workspace Manager

Personas

Student

2- Elderly Lady

3- Disabled Person

4- Men with a family

First generation prototypes

Mock up prototype 1:

Rationale:

Mock up prototype 2:

Analysis

Mock up prototype 3:

Analysis

Nielsen Heuristic's for third prototype

Conclusion

Conclusion of low level prototypes:

Second Generation Prototyping

Presentation of second generation prototype:

Options screen follow to selecting “ Want to reserve “ button

Available parking place screen

Map of selection level