In 2015, I presented my parking sign redesign project at Brooklyn JS. Around that time, I felt there was too much focus on the visuals. In this talk, I clarified that how it looked was more of a result of how it worked.
Although this is a story about redesigning parking signs, it’s not that different from coding — you inherit crap, have to fix it, then commit it to code.
In 2010, I was living in LA and this is what parking looked like. You have to circle around the block waiting for a space to open up, slowing down while a line of cars forms behind you. Then once you find a spot, you park, get down, and just to make sure you can really park there…
…you have to deal with this (left): Rules stated in no apparent order, leaving you with a nagging feeling that you read it wrong. How do you know for sure? Whether or not you get hit with a $75 parking ticket. I thought this was ridiculous. I didn’t understand why signs had to be so complicated when I only had 2 questions on my mind: Can I park here? For how long? There had to be a better way. The result was the sign on the right that clearly lays out when you can and can’t park.
I prototyped the sign outside my apartment to find out if it made sense to other people. I printed it out, laminated it with packaging tape, and left a feedback box on the bottom. Then I waited.
The comments came in after three days.
Once I knew the concept made sense, I wondered about edge cases. I opened it up to the public by creating a landing page and blog and invited people to follow along.
