Rethinking parking as experience, not transaction
Solo Designer · Brand, app, web, and print
Summary
Wisepark was my capstone project at ORT University: a complete redesign of a Montevideo parking marketplace. Solo, end-to-end: brand identity, mobile app UX, Webflow website, and physical communication materials. Research revealed the real barrier wasn't price. It was trust. The whole design system was rebuilt around making confidence visible before drivers commit.
Solution
One brand system, from app screen to street billboard
A brand built to feel on your side
The identity uses a light, approachable palette and plain language, deliberately unlike parking infrastructure, because the product's job was to earn trust.
Confidence before commitment
The app leads with the information drivers doubt most: is the spot really there, what will it cost, and what happens if plans change. The same system extends to out-of-home communication.
Overview
No real users, no production pressure, but treated rigorously.
Wisepark was an academic capstone project at ORT University, a complete redesign of a Montevideo-based parking marketplace. There were no real users, no client deadlines, and no production constraints. I treated it like a real project anyway.
This was the first time I owned the full design spectrum from scratch: brand identity, mobile app UX, Webflow website, and physical communication materials. It showed me what end-to-end design discipline actually means.
Problem
The real barrier wasn't price. It was trust.
Initial assumptions pointed to price and availability as the core friction. Research told a different story. Drivers in Montevideo didn't avoid parking apps because spots were expensive or scarce. They avoided them because they didn't trust that the spot would actually be there when they arrived. The experience felt transactional and opaque.
Users wanted confidence before they committed to driving somewhere. The design problem was making that confidence visible in the app before they left, not just at the lot.
Goals
Trust on the driver side, liquidity on the marketplace side.
User goal
Know the spot will be there before leaving home
Business goal
Convert app-skeptical drivers into repeat bookings
User goal
Understand pricing and cancellation without fine print
Business goal
Reduce disputes and no-shows that erode the marketplace
Design process
Research first, then brand, then product.
Research & discovery
Research reframed the whole brief: the barrier was trust, not price.
I interviewed drivers and kept a diary of real parking attempts across Montevideo, then scanned existing apps to see where confidence broke down before committing to a direction.
Drivers didn't avoid parking apps over cost. They avoided them because they didn't believe the spot would still be there on arrival. The design problem was making confidence visible before they left home.
Who I designed for
Demand side
Lock in a spot near work before leaving, and trust it's there.
Been burned by 'available' spots that were taken on arrival.
Supply side
Earn from an empty spot without hassle or no-shows.
No easy way to list, price, or manage a driveway.
User flow
The reservation path built around removing doubt at each step, from search to a confirmed arrival.
area
availability
spot
Experience journey
Key screens
Key screens: map search, spot detail with upfront pricing, and a reserved-spot confirmation.
I started with driver interviews and a competitive review of parking apps operating in Montevideo, which is where the trust finding surfaced and reframed the whole brief. From there I built the brand system, then designed the app flows around the moments where doubt creeps in: search, booking confirmation, and arrival. The Webflow site and print materials came last, extending the same system to every touchpoint a driver might meet first.
The call
The first brand direction was a confident navy and teal palette: strong and authoritative. Research feedback called it cold. The trust problem the product needed to solve required the opposite: approachable, clear, a little warm. I scrapped the navy direction entirely and rebuilt around a lighter palette that felt less like infrastructure and more like a service on your side.
Reflection
My key takeaways and learnings
Academic freedom is real rigour training
No one tells you to skip the research phase or compress the explorations. Wisepark let me practice the full discipline of end-to-end design without shortcuts.
Rigour isn't resilience
What academia doesn't prepare you for is production negotiation: timeline pressure, stakeholder feedback that contradicts user data, organizational constraints. Wisepark shows rigour; client work taught me resilience. Both matter.
How I'd use AI on this today
Explore more brand directions
I explored two brand directions manually. With AI tooling I'd generate and pressure-test five or six before committing, and kill the cold navy direction a week earlier.
Simulate the marketplace
I'd prototype the booking flow with generated spot data, availability gaps and all, to test whether the trust signals hold up when the marketplace is thin.
Curious to know more?
There's a full brand book and process documentation behind this one. Get in touch if you'd like to see it.
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