ParkMeNow: Simplifying Urban Parking with Technology

The Problem

Urban parking is a perennial challenge, with limited spaces leading to congestion and frustration. The goal of ParkMeNow was to create a solution that would make finding and reserving parking spots effortless, thereby reducing the stress and time associated with urban parking.

Our Approach

We developed ParkMeNow as an intuitive iOS app that connects users with available parking spots in real-time. We extended the designated parking spots with parking spots that landowners could lend for a limited time for commercial use. The backend, written in Golang and deployed on Heroku, ensured a robust and scalable platform. We focused on a user-friendly interface and seamless integration with parking providers to offer a hassle-free parking experience.

Key Features

ParkMeNow offered several key features to stand out in the market:

• Real-Time Availability: Users could see available parking spots in real-time, making it easier to find a spot quickly.
• Reservation System: The app allowed users to reserve parking spots in advance, ensuring a guaranteed space upon arrival.
• Payment Integration: Users could pay for parking directly through the app through stripe API integration, streamlining the process and reducing the need for physical transactions.

Challenges and Solutions

One of the major challenges we faced was finding a common repository of locations that can track the parking location status, that is , whether a particular spot is free or not. Also integrating with various parking providers was crucial to ensure a wide coverage of parking spots. We found that this would be possible by establishing partnerships and developing a standardized API for easy integration. Additionally, ensuring the accuracy of real-time data was crucial, which we figured would require us to provide a hardware solution. After some market research some hurdles we encountered were:

• Operations heavy: We would have to go out and talk to individual owners, whether they would be comfortable with strangers leaving their vehicles, similar to how AirBnB solved the supply issue in its initial days
• Hardware heavy: We would have to install sensors in each parking spot to track the availability of the spot
• Market heavy: We would have to compete with the existing parking apps and convince the users to switch to our app
• Regulatory heavy: We would have to comply with the local regulations and ensure that the parking spots are legal
• Monetization heavy: We would have to figure out a way to monetize the app, whether it would be through a subscription model or a commission model
• Trust heavy: We would have to build trust with the users that their vehicles would be safe and secure, which would be very difficult in dangerous neighbourhoods

Given all these challenges we decided not to go ahead with the project as it would require a lot of resources and time to build a successful product and compete successfully in a new market

Impact and Outcomes

ParkMeNow was a great project to understand the entire lifecycle of the project from managing stakeholders, to ios development to backend development with golang.

Conclusion

In conclusion, ParkMeNow could represent a significant step forward in solving the challenges of urban parking. Through innovative use of technology, we were able to create a solution that not only simplifies the parking process but also contributes to reducing urban congestion and improving the overall quality of life in cities with heavy traffic and limited parking spots.