In my COM 597 course at UW, aka ‘Theories and Practice of Interactive Media’, our Instructor, Carolina, challenged us students to contrast the interactive designs of two separate interactive spaces that essentially provide the same service. For example, one pair of students compared the websites (interactive spaces) of two different airlines, examining the sites’ interactive designs for differences that inculcate strengths or weaknesses in one or the other. Was one sleeker and more intuitive than the other? Was one easier to navigate? Was the information a user might need easily accessed? And so forth. After this, Carolina asked us to come up with an even more efficient design for the same kind of service within the same kind of interactive space.

My partner, Wei, and I took it upon ourselves to contrast the interactive designs of Seattle’s electronic street parking meters against traditional parking meters. How are these public service devices interactive spaces? Well, they both have screens or displays and controls that invite interaction in order to acquire their service (which service is not so much providing parking, in my opinion, but rather the service of NOT getting a parking ticket, but we all know that, wink wink). Then, Wei and I tried to come up with a way of creating a better design to acquire the parking privilege, but this time we were granted permission to ponder utilizing a new design space, the cell-phone.

Now granted, word-of-mouth has it that people can and have been paying for private parking space in certain areas of the world via their cell phones, be it by text message or some other means. So, it seemed feasible to come up with a way to adapt this to street parking in Seattle, hypothetically. But first, let’s contrast the current and former meter methods to see how they stack up. It is this author’s conclusion that the new electronic parking meters are a step backwards from a design perspective, which inevitably makes them a step backwards in many respects from a function-based viewpoint. Form and function are absolutely married, but they don’t always get along.

Before proceeding, I should note that the way these new meters work is thus: one covers a certain area or section of street, eliminating the need for many conventional meters. When you pay to park, you are issued a sticker with your parking information, including the time you paid and when your parking privilege expires. This info is printed on the sticker at time of purchase. You are then to place these stickers on the inside passenger-side window of your vehicle. Now, instead of checking meters for expired time, parking officers check the times printed on the stickers in the windows of the car and determine the information they need to enforce parking restrictions thusly. Unlike conventional meters, that you just pop your coins into and go, you are faced with additional steps to use these new electronic ones. I would imagine, while, yes, they are cutting down on sidewalk eye-sore, these meters are increasing parkers’ headaches.

The electronic parking meters in Seattle are, in my opinion, dreadfully confusingly designed. When I approach one, for the first time, I immediately think of the most common form of self-service electronic payment or card-based exchange apparatuses that I am already familiar with, the payment device at the grocery store, or just a generic ATM. These meters’ designs look like neither of them. There is a small LCD screen with a large sticker surrounding it with very unclear instructions, then a hodge-podge of instructions at other locations. There is nothing that tells me, with utter clarity, do “1-2-3″ in terms of steps one undertakes. Then, there is an area for inserting a payment method, be it card or coin, which rests above larger buttons, including a big green button. Green means ‘go’, or start, on the planet I come from, so I would think this is where I am to begin. But, in fact, the green button is for printing receipts. Also, one would think that there would be a space for inserting cash, but instead we only get a coin slot. Granted, older meters only accept coinage in most circumstances, yet today’s “ATM age” just makes, in my and Wei’s opinion, these meters look like they missed an evolutionary step from metal coinage to plastic credit and debit cards. Where do I put my dollar bill(s)? Nowhere, you can’t use it. This probably has a great deal to do with the city not wanting to issue change for large bills.

What are some more flaws the electronic meters possess? The small LCD display isn’t backlit, or, if it somehow is, I’m not discerning it. Think of the problems this can cause during dark periods of the day, or during inclement weather, which Seattle is ever prone to experiencing. This isn’t to say anything about the fact that the machines are dependent on solar power, with each one topped by an array. How much sunlight is required per day? And, again, in Seattle, what is the anticipation that sun will ever be readily available or floral debris won’t obstruct the array? Continuing, although this is inherently probable with a conventional parking meter, the instructions can become defaced by just about anyone willing to do so. These awkwardly placed instructions, defaced or not, need improving upon.

Then, there are more functional matters. While the replacing of many conventional, older parking meters with new, electronic ones reduces the amount of meters by only needing one in a given area, many fellow students in COM 579 even complained about how the machines are often readily hard to find. Extra signage on the street is required, as well, to direct people to these meters. I’ve seen this in my own travels about town, where their will be a sign indicating parking near or atop the meter, but other signs down the block pointing you towards them, again, if my memory serves me well. Then, you have the practical concerns, as raised by Wei: can persons with disabilities easily access these devices, especially if they are in a wheel chair; will people with larger fingers be able to grab the printed parking stickers and receipts, etc; what if the device runs out of ink for the stickers or they don’t print properly – what if it runs out of paper or stickers; and, lastly, what of the additional waste that they create in printing all these stickers? It seems that more problems are caused then solved, from a functional perspective.

Now, a conventional parking meter is incredibly simple, albeit most do no provide for electronic means of payment, paper-money payment, or the printing of any receipts. Still, if good design calls for the reduction of steps, the electronic meters, as noted above, increase the amount of steps one must perform in order to park. The old meters are one step: put coins in an easily spotted slot and the display at the top of the device indicates how much time you have to park. With the new meters, you have to read the instructions, or, if familiar with the instructions, proceed to insert payment, retrieve your sticker, print the optional receipt should you desire it, go back to your car, and apply the sticker inside your vehicle. Four or five steps versus one. (Although, what is neat, as Wei pointed out to me, you can have the instructions given aloud with audio in several other languages, which might make the instructions easier to follow).

How can we simplify the parking process with a new design in a new interactive space, then? Wei and I proposed the idea of paying with a cell phone. After initial set-up, perhaps upon the first time a person parks or in registering their device at a city website in advance, parking could be paid for with the “push of a button” on one’s cell phone. Here’s a wireframe of what the cell screen might look like after registration has been established:

This would be an application you download over-the-air or by USB to your smartphone. You input three fields upon loading the application on your cell/device:

1. where you are (which info you could put in by inputting the street, nearby intersection, address, or perhaps a code printed on a parking sign, or, it could be determined by built-in GPS depending on the model of phone),
2. how you want to pay (which would have a list of your pre-registered methods – the payment methods would have to be stored already, and it would be debit/ACH/credit, naturally),
3. and your license plate number (which could also be stored in memory, but changeable if the vehicle you are paying for is different than the usual one you drive, for instance, a friend’s car).

Then you select ‘Park’ and that data gets sent to the city’s parking database. Your account is charged automatically, and you don’t have to worry about stickers, coins, cards, or meters. If you are a regular user, these fields or selections could be saved in your application on your device and, if it has that built-in GPS, you’d only have to push one button to park! (theoretically!)  Parking cops can then access this database from portable devices when they input the license plate number for vehicles they want to check on. Perhaps some future day license plates will have RFID chips or barcodes that can be more easily scanned or read and verified with the city’s server. If the time you paid for is expired when he or she checks your car’s plates, as the database will know just when you initiated parking, you’d then get a parking ticket from your friendly parking officer.

So, to summarize, it was Wei and mine’s conclusion that the new electronic meters in Seattle exhibit poor interactive design on an otherwise simple interactive space (device), and that the older conventional meters are better, simpler interaction designs on even simpler devices.  Conventional meters, simply put, have less steps for the user to perform to recieve the parking service that the electronic meters also provide.  Nonetheless, as shown above, you could conceivably simplify everything in a different interactive space by implementing pay-to-park with your cell phone; it could have one easy step to receive the parking service, not to mention the resources preserved in doing so this way.  Yes, this ignores all kinds of other questions: what of people without cell phones, or banks accounts for that matter which can be electronically debitted, or, what of the extra work this requires of the city employees, and so on?  Well, as “they” (I?) say, “that’s not a design question!”  But, I digress.

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