Sunday, January 24th, 2010
usability problem - multi level car parking
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A company is building a huge multilevel car parking. It is 10 floors high and 200 cars per floor. While this new parking space will solve a lot of problems for the people, there is a new issue that is creeping up.
How to remember where exactly you parked your car. Frankly i have faced this issue with a 4 floor building, with just 50 cars/floor.
“hmmm was it on the ninth floor ? or seventh ? I think its an odd number..”
Some guys who are very meticulous will remember the floor and the parking bay number. But most of us, dont; given the fact that you are already late for the breakfast meeting.
Its a user experience problem. how can we help the memory load of the user?
How can we, as user experience designers, the user?
Ofcourse, we can have different colors for each floors, number them in big fonts, which will help for. at best, 2 weeks.
After that the question will be ” Was it on the red floor ? or the yellow one ? i think it was a bright color…”
“Defenitely its not blue, it was yesterday that i parked in the blue floor.”
Ofcourse, we can give bay numbers like 9-193 or 8-132. But thats what the administrative folks do- not the user experience designers.
In both the solutions above, the end result will be that after your tedious day, you will be lugging your laptop which is growing heavy by minute, walking through at least a couple of floors, pressing the remote control door unlock button, till your car beeps to life, where you never expected it to be found.
yea, we can use technology. put an RFID tag in your car, link it with your mobile and which will pin point the lat and long of the car, use your GPS to walk up there. Maybe even get the car to start before you reach there.
Great ! now get out of that 2050 scene and tell me some simple solution which can be implemented cheaply.
photo by arinas74
January 24th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
sashank said:
Well its an interesting problem . The first idea popped out of my mind is just ask the security staff or traffic controller staff in each floor of parking ( the way they are currently in my offiice ) to give the bay and floor number on small paper and stick it behind person’s ID tag which hangs round to his neck whole day
, no technology needed 
Well i can think of few more solutions , divide and conquer ,
like park the even cars in even floors , odd cars in odd floors , this divides the number of floors to be remembered by half or
any other classification also helps , like if all the employees are of same company then dividing the floors parking slots among their teams ,
if all the employees are of different companies in a tech park sharing parking space its further more easy , divide the slots based on company and then by teams ( less number set to remember )
If its public , pay for parking area , then the current slips being given to calculate the hours itself would be good enough to write down the numbers of bay and floor
January 24th, 2010 at 3:10 pm
sashank said:
in my second solution , i meant , even numbered cars in even floors , odd numbered cars in odd
February 21st, 2010 at 6:57 am
Harikrishnan said:
@sashank interesting solutions !
If you give out slips, the security guard/parking assitant should know where the person parks his car, which is going to be difficult, its a huge area. Secondly, after a week, the person’s ID tag is going to be messy with bits of stickers/gum marks etc.
I like the idea of even registration numbered cars on even floors, and odd numbered on odd, assuming they will be at 50:50 ratio.
Dividing and allocating the slots for teams is going to be difficult as well. The project that people work for change very frequently in service companies.
Moreover, what if I choose to park in my favorite spot, even if its not allotted for my team ? one can never tell the project from the ID tag, can we ?
March 18th, 2010 at 6:54 pm
akshay gawali said:
hang a huge sign at the exit point of the floor number that you have parked the car on stating the floor that you parked -
“Level 6 - DONT FORGET”. sounds silly but it might work…
Color coding is a good idea for each floor as well
April 9th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
srikanth said:
simple, car parking slips has to be given to the customer at the entrance according to the floor number and bay number and has to be said to park him at the same place so tht he can come back to the same place to get back the car
thats it
this is the procedure used in western countries too
April 9th, 2010 at 12:05 pm
srikanth said:
thats why automatic car park toll gates have to be arranged so tht they can get the reciept of parking with floor number, bay number and slot number
April 9th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
srikanth said:
this makes us save time and brains
April 11th, 2010 at 11:19 pm
Harikrishnan said:
@srikanth yep, but automatic parking toll gates can be only at the entrance of say for each floor, takes time to cross, and u still need to retain the slip.
anything easier ?