Interview Question: Design a product for parking

1. Assumptions

US only

No constraints

2. Product landscape and motivation

Product landscape

  • Competitors
    • There are probably some to help you find your car (spot hero)
    • You can pay for parking at a kiosk or at machine near spot
    • Strengths: Best geo / map product on market with largest install base
  • Motivation
    • Company Mission: Help organize the worlds data and make it universally accessible and useful
    • Product Mission: Make parking seamless
    • Can be a source of daily frustration and time consuming
    • Lots of people employed to handle it

3. Customer segments

Parking car

  • Your own car
    • Work/daily commute
    • Events / trips (airport)
    • At home (urban)
  • Someone else's car

Space owner

  • Parking lot owner (commercial) - this will is target audience because they will be in best position to adopt any new tech that is required
      • Paid vs free
    • Urban vs rural
    • Parking spot - government - street parking (harder to enact change than commercial owners; and lots easier than street?)

4. Pain points

Handling parking payments:(need an attendee typically) - most severe because need to hire person and often full time

  • Dynamic pricing - daily commuters get discounted rates
  • Parking utilization
  • Attendant

Helping customers find parkingGoogle maps already helps with this and lots typically have lots of extra spots

  • Find near by lot
  • Find spot within a lot
  • Having enough space for lane

5. Solutions

Auto-Attendant: Install cameras into parking lot entrance and/or next to spot so that you can automatically bill any regular parkers by just using their license plate. Anyone else can seamlessly sign up by adding their credit card and pressing accept to save card on file.

Price&SpotFinder: Can link parking prices and availability to google maps so that customers know how many spots are left and how much a spot cost and can search for it easily.

Dynamic Pricing engine: ML powered

Reservation / prepay system: (all in app)

Valet Assist: Allow valets to rent entire spots in the front of a lot but with different cars so that they can valet easily.

AIDriver: Create a parking robot that can drive the car and find a spot for it. This could significantly increase parking utilization by reducing hallway space.

CarCarouselWheel: Use conveyor belts and lifts to reduce driving hallways.

6. Evaluate

Pre-mortem

  • Capital costs to install might be too high
  • Solutions already exist that do this but not well or automated (need parking ticket person)
  • Marketing could take a while

7. MVP

P0

  • Would install a camera onto a post that cements into the ground
  • Could also have gates for additional security or for big lots and then not need the individual spot cameras
    • Have 2 exist lanes (fast trak; and slow); 1 entrance lane that could double as a fast trak exit lane if no one is coming
  • Kiosks located at elevators or near spots
  • Save credit card on file for regular attendees

P1

  • Could make utilization of spots and pricing available on googlemaps (i.e. do PriceFinder as a follow on)

P2

  • Expand to street parking with post acting as divider

Success metrics

  • # of connected parking spots
  • Time to exit (regular, new person)
  • Parking lot owner
    • Cost savings to owner
    • Revenue increase to owner