Digitising Parking Services for Nigeria’s premier Valet company
2023
Client
EZPark

Overview
EZPark is Nigeria’s premier parking service provider, with operations across cities in Nigeria but VI is its core operations center. The company set out to build a robust digital ecosystem for its business: including customer platforms, internal tools, and mobile apps.
Over a 6-month engagement, my role was to redesign all existing digital products as well as design a few more to create this robust parking services digital ecosystem. I loved the idea and the thought of working on something not related to financial services for a bit, so I took up the challenge.
The CEO who we worked directly with was intentional with his investing in going fully digital. He already had a few functional apps with a customer platform, internal admin tool and agents mobile app, but they were hastily built and business needs had also evolved..
After our initial engagement,
introduction to the developers,
and alignment on objectives,
we concluded on the business’ goals for the 6 months.
3 Websites
3 Mobile Apps
4 Web Applications
The Challenge
While EZPark had dabbled in the digital space before, the existing capabilities and user experience could not achieve the vision the CEO had shared about his ideal digital ecosystem. Upon aligning on what he wanted, I wrote down my high level requirements for the project
-
- Modernise and unify their digital experience.
- Support rapid rollout of multiple platforms.
- Establish a system for design reuse across web and mobile.
Approach & Process
Phased Execution
With developers waiting on design, I began with quick wins—the 3 websites—so engineering work could begin while I tackled complex apps.
Design System for Speed
I needed to design a number of applications for multiple platforms within a short period of time. My mini design system helped with this.
I built the design system more for speed than consistency. I couldn’t building it before the platforms due to time constraints, so I updated as I made progress.
Execution
We had 6 months to ship 3 websites, 4 webapps and 3 mobile apps. It made absolute sense for me to work with a design system. As I mentioned, it was less about the desire for consistency than the need to be able to work fast . The CEO and project manager had set up a good roadmap to get things done, and I only had to make a few modifications to the plan to suit my workflow.
User flows for the different platforms and content for the websites had been provided, so I went right into it. We were working in sprints that depended on my deliverables, so I commenced with the easy win first. I started with the websites so that the engineers would have something to begin with while I made sense of the functional platforms.
On the websites
The MD and I agreed to work on the main brand website according to his vision. I tried to bring his idea to life the way he wanted, but I had more creative freedom with the product websites and focused on clean, informative layouts to highlight the services being offered.
Webapps
Working on the web apps helped finetune flows that would be useful for the mobile apps as well. I also had to ensure the interconnectedness of the apps that makes the ecosystem function. The flows that challenged me most were the
- Book Parking
- Book Vehicle Maintenance
- Parking experience
Booking was particularly complex as we had to cater to user-side, agent-side, and lot-owner-side logic to execute the flow.
On the websites
I repurposed core flows from the customer web app and added features unique to mobile app – like scheduling a parking session. It was easier to create as the booking flow was already fleshed out but the logic behind the flow was tweaked to factor every necessary touchpoint (the attendant and manager apps, as well as parking providers) to ensure a smooth end to end experience.
Personal Achievements
This particular engagement pushed my beyond my limits, I was able to
✅ Design 7 digital products in under 6 months
✅ Established a repeatable design process and system
✅ Strengthened my product-dev collaboration muscles
✅ Improved ability to defend decisions and absorb constructive feedback
Project Achievements
All deliverables were timely met and the applications were tested and pushed live
✅ Initial feedback on the user experience of the customer facing apps were positive
✅ End-to-end parking management experience from user to valet agent to managers
✅ Admin application was made more robust and capable of handling business needs holistically
✅ The success of the project led to conversations around creating these solutions for other businesses
Challenges
- Brand color constraints: The brand identity was heavy on red. Designing user experiences with the color of danger is always an ask
- Tight timelines: With weekly sprints, my progress depended on quick, clear communication with engineers.
- Working with strong personalities: The MD was confident and demanding. I had to defend key decisions, but I also grew by accepting when his ideas were spot on.
Conclusion
The project in retrospect was an exciting one that showed me that I was capable of handling more than what I thought I could as a designer. I took on the project for the challenge and executing the amount of deliverables I did in a shorter time than planned was a big win for me.
I found better ways to collaborate with developers to ensure that my designs and flows were followed properly. I’ve been big on seeing my designs properly rendered in code and this project helped me socialise with developers better to achieve my goal.