Project overview

Parkster AB develops solutions for parking management for municipal and private parking companies. They also offer other services, such as payment of parking fees for company employees.

The goal of the project was to redesign the support page in the context of information architecture, which would make the support more user-friendly and efficient.

Tasks set by the company:

1. To lower the threshold for receiving help so that more people can get help.
2. To give the parking attendants the opportunity to resolve questions on their own without stuff assistance.
3. In case parking attendants are unable to resolve the issues on their own, let them use phone and chat rather than email to contact the stuff.

My role

In this project, I served as a UX designer and information architect. Initially, I studied the company's website and application, the target group, competitors, as well as support pages of other companies that, in my view, were most relevant in terms of theme and design. I worked a lot on metadata and taxonomy to suggest the most suitable and effective information organisation. 

Based on the research findings and set goals, I developed lo-fi / hi-fi wireframes. Later, my task involved stitching all hi-fi wireframes and creating a prototype that displayed the user flow.

Challenges and solutions

Parkster's target audience is quite broad, so our team decided to narrow it down to individuals who are not familiar with the company, such as new users, those who rarely use the company's services, and people who are not very tech-savvy, such as the elderly. This means that the support section should have a clear, intuitive structure.

Situations in which users resort to the company’s services are placing/removing a car into/from parking, paying for parking, which involves the use of a mobile phone. Thus, we focused on the support page in the mobile application, where the following problems were present:

• Support section is hard to find
• The “Question-Answer” / FAQ section is located only on the website; it is overloaded with a huge number of questions and sections that are placed illogically
• Language and word choice are inconsistent: Swedish is mixed with English, some elements, functions have different names on different pages and media, label names are unclear
• Unreliable chat, which is not on the application page, and which opens only when you go to the Question and Answer / FAQ page on the site. Chat only works when a support representative has time to respond

To eliminate these problems, we proposed the following solutions:

• Placing a support section in the navigation menu. This will provide quick access to the section.
• Changing the structure of the support page with conditional division of the page into:

1.  Block where users can solve their problems on their own by:

• Search field
• Categories
• FAQ

2. Block where users can find different contact channels to get help from support:

• Telephone
• Chat
• Email

This hierarchy meets the requirements of the case and makes the structure more understandable to the user.

• The “Question-answer” / FAQ section has been designed directly in the application and redesigned: duplicate questions have been removed, subsections have been created in sections for easier navigation and search, the sequence of sections has been changed considering their significance. Sections are designed using recognizable icons and horizontal scrolling, and FAQs are designed as a drop-down menu, which avoids cognitive overload.
• The main language is Swedish, all labels, the names of some sections, the tone of voice in questions is ordered.
• The chat button is in the list of support channels. If employees cannot respond via chat, we suggest using a chatbot.

We have also added a section with video guides, which will allow new users to quickly familiarize themselves with the main functions in the application, and a review page in the form of short survey that will gather some data about their user experience and allow us to make improvements to the section based on this feedback.

During the work, I also created a map of the current application and the application after the redesign with a focus on the support service. This gave a clear picture of the changes made and the user journey before and after.

Elements of the brand identity provided by Parkster (colors, typography, icons, buttons) were used in the redesign.