Parking.sg App - With a little twist on it

Before I begin, I would like to stress that the Parking.sg app is great. I think the team behind it had tackled lots of use cases right off the bat. This is in no way a jab at the team nor am I undermining their abilities. Love the app as it is, but if I had it my way, this is something I would throw in.

How did we get here?

Last week, I had begun my marketing efforts for my company, Twisted Genius Labs. Almost on a whim, I decided I will start writing some original content documenting my creative process on a fortnightly basis.

During a time when everybody was turning to ChatGPT to get their content written and formatted, I figured there could still be a small audience that would appreciate original, organic content, written by a human, with all its flaws in full glory.

Committed to an unrealistic goal, but needing content.

I did not want to shoot myself in the leg by putting out all my original ideas. But what if I improved on existing apps, by posting my take on how I would improvise it.

The motive was not for these companies to call me up and hire me, though that would be a dream gig. I just thought, by improving on other apps, it would already have a bunch of people who would be familiar with how that particular app works, and intrigue them enough to want to read about it.

That reduces the amount of work on my end, both on the ideation and design end of things. Of course, the article itself would also be easier to document.

A brief history.

Towards the end of 2014, the governing body for Singapore’s transport matters, (finally) announced they were going to implement a parking app, to replace the need for paper coupons that were in use. It was really the early days when I got into building mockups for mobile apps. I had worked on a concept for how I would imagine a parking app in my world would look like, and came up with a concept called PeterParker.

This is a screenshot of all the screens I had done. I know this is pretty unsightly and UI/UX designers would be squirming looking at these (trust me, even I am not proud of this). But you can see how far I have come now. 😄

Again, PeterParker was not my attempt to convince the Govt to trust an amateur like me, with building that app for them. But, it was my way of exercising this creativity muscle. To come up with solutions for real-world problems. Of course, that concept never saw the light of day, except to a few friends and peers. If memory serves me well, I recall actually emailing the governing body with my concept saying, “Please have a look. * *insert puppy dog eyes ** ”, but without a word of reply from their end.

My take on the Parking.sg app

Ever catch yourself using a particular app so frequently that you start having a mental wish-list of “if only it could…” This was one of the moments where it hit me, how else could I improve this already useful app?

Paying parking fines are tedious. As modern as Singapore is, you would think something as mundane as that would have less of a friction. It already sucks being fined. But having to go out of the way to find the payment options just makes people like me put it off till the time comes.

The undesirable effects of overdue fines

There are individuals who rake up enough fines that warrant an arrest. Elderly who count on someone to pay on their behalf, without knowing if they have. Government tax dollars being used up for something as trivial as going after parking ticket offenders.

Why not make those payments as easy as paying for parking via the same app? How about, to make it a little interesting, throw in an incentive for those that pay their fines early? And since this whole thing is about having fun per se, let’s throw in a pain factor to prompt users to pay up their overdue fines.

How I started work on it.

Again, I got to work on my trusty sketch pad. Taking a mental note, I reminded myself not to get too carried away and try developing too many screens. Remember, I am not getting paid for this, neither am I getting any form of monetary gain by posting these things. Time is money, and I cannot waste too much of it in concepts, instead of working on my indie projects.

Most at times, parking fines are known mistakes. Not accidents.

Nobody likes getting fined, but when it comes to parking, most of us know we have erred and have no qualms paying for the wrong. Needless to say, there are moments where we might appeal those things.

The idea was simple. Prevent people with ‘overdue’ parking fines from being able to park legally. Take it as a form of ‘punishment’ or ‘inconvenience’ that prompts you to settle it then and there. Have a call-to-action that takes you to the Parking Fines page. In there, have a list of your overdue, outstanding and latest parking fines. Just for a ‘reward’, we give a 10% discount for settling fines within an ‘early bird’ period.

Building the mockup.

As lazy as it may sound, the first screen, was just a simple screen grab off the official Parking.sg app’s home screen. A simple indicator on the car selected, followed by an entry-point into the Fines section that also had a notification bubble to show how many were needing attention.

The use of the warning icon was also intentional, to stand out with a yellow fill and red border. I could have gone further to illustrate the colour of the pyramid changing based on the status of the fines inside that section. But of course, in the interest of time, I decided to do just that one.

For the second screen, where the Fines are listed, I tried to keep it as minimalistic as possible and only displayed the vital information. There was a deliberation of using a ‘View Details’ button, but I left that out knowingly. If everything could fit, why bother with a detail page.

Also, by doing so, it reduces the number of key presses to the final outcome (i.e to pay the fine). This is exactly what I mean by working with constraints that somehow plays out to your advantage.

Pros and cons with this implementation

Let us start with the cons for this idea. Right off the bat, by preventing users with outstanding fines from parking legally, we might inevitably create a scenario where more people would just park without a coupon and leave it to fate if they get caught again or not.

The pros, seem to outweigh the con by multiple folds. For starters, it would probably be the easiest way to make payments for parking fines. Secondly, by preventing people from parking legally until fines are paid, it forces the hands of the average person to actually proceed to pay, and not incur more charges. Thirdly, the incentive to make payments to the fines as soon as they come in, or at least within the first 2 weeks of issuance (early bird), it gives users a reason to do so (discount) and it also reduces the efforts of the Government to actually go chase these people down.

Thinking is great, doing is better.

Having been the guy who constantly talks about tech ideas, I felt the time was right to show how and why I think the way I do. Ideas are plenty, but execution matters.

If you found this interesting, please feel free to read my other articles. I post about some of my past projects and designing every day apps, with features I would have incorporated.

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