ParkBee is on a mission to optimize underutilized parking spaces and give them back to cities and their inhabitants. Several European cities, including Helsinki, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Barcelona, are already leading this transformation by closing streets to traffic and reallocating the space to local entrepreneurs and neighborhood initiatives.

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The Challenge

When I joined ParkBee, the user experience was disconnected and did not feel reassuring. Some of the issues were:

• A fragmented user journey that forced users to use multiple channels (email, SMS, offline signage)
• A scattered and siloed product landscape that made the experience inconsistent
• An un-maintainable architecture of multiple web applications
• Dependency on an outsourced WordPress website that was frozen in development due to technical problems
• Lack of cohesive brand story and experience

Our challenge was to create a unified, reassuring experience that would allow users to focus solely on their destination, not on parking hassle.

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The Approach

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To create a unified parking experience, we focused on three key areas:

Northstar Experience

First we defined a Northstar, a vision for the urban travel experience. Imaging how travel in cities would evolve in the coming 10 years.

We named it; Just go there.

This meant enabling users to never think about parking again - not about locations, prices, charging, or availability. The goal: focus on your destination with zero parking hassle.

We established three core principles for the ultimate user experience:

• Focus on your destination
• Zero hassle along the way
• Everything is connected

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Exploration and Testing

To bring our vision to life, we developed concept prototypes centered around two archetype users. These prototypes served as tangible demonstrations of our vision, which we then validated through testing sessions with ParkBee stakeholders. This approach not only helped us refine our direction but also served as a powerful tool to align and inspire our teams, providing a clear, shared vision of where we were heading.

A Framework to Build Journeys

We created a solid foundation for our design work by establishing clear design principles supported by tangible guidelines for our teams. This included developing a design system with reusable components that embodied our desired experience. We carefully mapped and analyzed the user journey to identify critical touch points where we could make the most impact. Then we transformed every interaction step by step to bring it in line with our vision and improve accessibility and overal usability.

Building the Unified Experience

To implement and ship this overhauled experience we created a framework to build and simplify the main user journeys. We did this by;

• Developing a design system with reusable components
• Identifying and optimizing critical touch points
• Designing and building a new website with a new headless CMS
• Rebuilding the entire journey (search, book, pay and park) using the new system
• And finally in 2024 launching the ParkBee mobile app, combining our learnings and design principles into a simplified and improved product.

Throughout the process, we continuously validated our decisions against our Northstar vision, and tested our designs with users, ensuring every feature contributed to a unified parking experience that enabled our vision to 'Just go there.'

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My Role

As Head of Product and Design, I led the transformation of ParkBee's digital experience from vision to reality. My work began with collaborating with the external agency to define our Northstar experience, then shifted to overseeing the development of our design system and re-imagined journeys. I ensured consistent implementation across all touchpoints while leading teams in executing the vision and rebuilding our product experience. A significant part of my role involved directing the website and mobile app development, ensuring it aligned with our broader vision for a seamless parking experience.