User Intelligence: International Parking Meters Study

How many roads to Rome?

They are everywhere and, admit it, nobody likes to use them:
parking meters. The focus of this article is to compare parking
meters around the globe and to find the basic commonalities or
remarkable differences in their interfaces, and whether
improvement is needed.

When thinking about the task of using a parking meter, you
might expect this to be a universal design challenge. Getting a
parking ticket in Brazil shouldn't differ much from getting one in
New Zealand, should it? Are parking meters all over the world
basically the same or are there a lot of variations of the concept?
Are there patterns in the design of parking meters all over the
world and is it possible to create a universal meter that could
potentially be used everywhere by anyone?

To get an overview of what variations there currently are in the
parking meters all over the world, we asked usability
professionals in various countries to describe a typical parking
meter in their country. These parking meters were then
compared to find common challenges and solutions to the
problem of making people pay for a parking space, or at least
allowing them to.

What we have found is that no two parking meters in our survey
are completely the same and that the complexity of operating the
parking meters varies considerably. There is a world of difference
between the auto-detecting parking meter in Tokyo and the
complex and error-prone parking ticket dispenser in Amsterdam.

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