Posted on 28th June 2024

The UX of parking payments sucks

I've been travelling a bit around the country lately on a thoroughly restorative two weeks of annual leave. My experiences as a passenger and driver in pariticular with paid private parking got me thinking...

The marginal benefits of technology

Developments in technology tend to deliver benefits that are marginal and easily eroded to the point that users can quickly conclude they are better off without it. A moment's frustration trying to use a buggy app, or a failure to account for a particular scenario that leaves the user unable to proceed can seal the fate of a particular product or service from a user's perpective.

The challenge in implementing tech that is effective and will be received positively is in:

Of course products and services exist for the benefit the producer as well as the consumer, however if consumer experience is neglected the collapse in confidence results in those products or services ultimately being rejected. In the long term, this can precipitate a decline in usage that's hard to reverse and potentially end in the demise of the particular solution altogether.

Parking payment UX sucks

Parking payment methods are a great example. I don't know what it's like elsewhere in the world, but here in the UK we have a fragmented divergence of parking payment methods. You go to one place and there's a machine that takes cash, another might require an app, some of them read your number plate on entry and you can pay online later, some give you a physical ticket to present on exit, others require a physical ticket to be paid for and displayed after entering, and some do a combination of all of the above!

Parking apps are a solution that can be convenient sometimes. But only when they work (which is not always) and that you have an internet connection. They're also a bit like Pokemon, no matter how determined you are to collect them all the chances are you'll never quite succeed. Pretty soon you also get tired of the need to download yet another company's app and create a new account or have to reset your password.

Why does it suck?

I don't think the problem lies at the feet of the parking operators or the individual software companies that build the apps. This is a failure on a higher level of government (through lack of industrial strategy and regulation) and big tech (through an absence of care about how the infrastructure they provide affects developers and end-users).

Building an app is harder than a lot of people realise. Beyond the obvious challenges of design and engineering, there are a lot of hoops to jump through in publishing the app onto an app store. You have to essentially do twice the work, at least in publishing, if not developing the app. And you have to employ people to constantly maintain and support them. App stores and payment providers will also take a cut of your income too.

The main beneficiaries of parking apps are the parking operators and technical infrastructure providers such as app stores, rather than the app developers and end-users. We haven't 'got it wrong' by trying to apply technology to improve a user experience here, nor are more simple processes like cash based parking machines necessarily obsolete. What has happened is a nuanced example of the unplanned free-market nonsense that dominates our economy, particularly when it comes to tech.

A lack of involvement and consultation on a local level, where changes are being implemented is another part of the problem. People are treated as if they have no stake in the changes made to the parking services they use, which seems wrong especially if they are regular paying customers. New payment methods and processes seem to just spring from nowhere, and much like many technological 'upgrades' seem to be imposed on the user rather than created with their active participation.

Humans have incredible technological capabilities at their fingertips and where the will is exercised can acheive phenomenal things. Yet try to implement a smooth experience for a customer in relatively simple scenarios and we struggle. In this case, there are just too many competing interests.

The fragmented market for parking apps also means we are probably all paying a lot more for the 'convenience' of them due to the fact there are multiple teams of people maintaining these things, all subject to the rules and regulations set not by any government body, but by Google and Apple alone.

Additionally for a myriad of reasons technology now rarely survives for any significant length of time. We really struggle to build digital solutions that last longer than a decade. I'll stick my neck out and say most parking apps in existence today won't outlive the last physical parking ticket machines. And in some cases, such as one-off events in remote areas, a human parking attendant taking your payment in cash may always be a much better and more cost effective approach.

Changing UX means involving users - a starting point for solving such problems

I don't know all the answers to these problems, but any potential solution requires a huge uplift in the will to solve them in the first place. If we all keep accepting poor user experiences, nothing will get better. I don't think getting mad at the individual vendors of parking solutions or local authorities will work, just as people getting angry at individual parking ticket inspectors when they receive a fine which they feel is unjust will achieve anything either.

We need to direct our energy at a higher level, towards the large organisations and systems where the root causes of these problems originate from. We need civic participation in our technological economy and its regulation. We need people who actually care about these things and are educated about them to be involved in the decisions that affect our every day experience of technology.

The balance between technology that is built in the interests of those creating it, rather than those it is supposed to serve, needs to be redressed. We need a reset of user rights, company values and governing policies that give users more power over the technological landscape and level up the value of a quality user experience.

So taking this into account, what is the future of parking payments? That's a question I can't answer directly: as should be clear from my stance on the issue: any lasting solution needs proper user research. It's clearly not an easy problem to solve universally, but like many problems involving technology if we had better standards, regulations and infrastructure it would be a lot easier.

What I can do is take an educated guess at what an elevated user experience might look like: Imagine if you could simply drive into a private car park, leaving your car there and get on with your business. Then without any need to download, setup or install anything your phone could give you a running total of the parking cost. When you return to your car there would be nothing left to do but drive away and the money would automatically be debited from your account. And imagine that because we have a standardised system that doesn't rely on numerous levels of private companies taking a slice of the pie, the cost incurred was a fraction of that which it is now.

The suggested scenario isn't revolutionary - it doesn't involve smashing capitalism. Private companies that own car parks can still make money from them. There will still be a market to allow for competition between providers. Private tech can also potentially be involved in the development of the technology. But the public would own it and the associated infrastructure. If tech companies involved go bust or lay off a bunch of staff it doesn't mean things stop working.

Or we could just go back to feeding cash into a simple ticket machine or hand it to another human manning the car park. As I've stated in some cases low-tech solutions may always be preferable. But whatever happens, consumers need to be given more power to choose the user experience of the future. Otherwise parking payment UX will just continue to suck.