Description: BlueAccess is a project that graduated out of our Labs team to become one of the core offerings of SpotHero with the goal of creating the simplest, cheapest parking access method for users and operators alike. The lean team invented and patented a pair of Bluetooth hardware sets, backend integrations, digital signage, and mobile flows for parking garages and parkers. Simply turn Bluetooth on, open the app, and the gate will automatically open for the parker.
Process: We started by listening to users explain their pain points of having inconsistent access types (over 175 ways to enter a garage in the USA!) and not understanding how to use them. I conducted user interviews, contextual inquiries, and surveys to reach our existing and potential customers. Additionally, we identified a strong market need to have better control over their data collection and a digital access platform via interviews with operators. These research findings were referenced often and ultimately drove our next steps over the course of a year.
In previous research, we uncovered how much the environmental context affects users’ perceptions of the experience. With this in mind, we partnered with operators to install alpha, beta, and production-level hardware and user flows to test out a real product in a real scenario. There were many challenges throughout our project, but through learning often and evolving quickly, we brought the 2 different integrations (zero-touch and one-tap) access methods to market and are actively scaling to hundreds of locations.
Involvement: Lead designer on the project. I collected and created business requirements, ran squad OKRs and planning sessions, designed the end-to-end experience (from physical to digital), reviewed work with Legal, ran analytics, and created testing platforms. This project was collaborative with many, many teams in SpotHero (from accounting to garage operators, to software and hardware engineers). Huge shoutout to the engineers and my fellow design team for all of their awesome attitudes and brilliant work throughout the process.
This was on iOS, Android mobile apps, SpotHero’s web Admin, physical and digital signage, and operator service flows.