Roman, James Silveria, Caden, Ethan W.
During the beginning of their design thinking process, the ParKINGS were looking at how cluttered and difficult parking was in Boise. But after talking to folks downtown and interviewing service workers, they came to realize that there isn’t necessarily a lack of parking spaces, but the real issue for many is the lack of affordable spaces for long periods of time. This problem was very relevant to their main end user, service workers, because many of them have to spend a chunk of their earnings just to park at work. They then came up with the question: “How Might We create a simple way for people who park long term downtown to find affordable parking?” After empathizing with their end users, the team also noticed that the current parking apps for downtown are not user-friendly and received poor ratings on the App Store, so they decided to create an easy-to-use app to combat the issue. This was originally designed to be an almost “all-in-one” solution, allowing users to reserve parking garage spots inside the app. It would allow them to find a spot within their budget with ease. The app also would include many other features such as being able to pay for everything within the app, a live parking structure capacity count, and a carpooling system for other users. But eventually, the team had to pivot to a more rational solution. Introducing Kurbsi, an app that simplifies parking downtown by becoming that first place to go. Once you’ve easily found the parking spot that best fits your needs within the app, Kurbsi redirects you to the official links of parking garages, acting as a resource aggregator. The team of four with only one coder know the potential Kurbsi has, and are considering working with other developers in order to make the user experience as simple as they first intended. Kurbsi is set to launch on May 18th and is still under construction, but the core idea remains: the first place you go for your long term downtown parking needs, providing a headache-free user experience.
