Technology changes and so does paying for your parking space. The city of Amsterdam has introduced a system where parking attendants drive around the city in a car loaded with some top notch technology. Cameras quickly scan all license plates of parked cars. If you don't have a parking permit or have not paid at a parking meter, one of the scooters driving behind it will be signaled and you are ticketed on the spot.
Newer is better?
Using this new device is unfortunately not without problems. In general, a lot of existing parking meters have serious usability issues. We reported earlier on usability problems with parking meters, but this particular new parking meter design tops everything.
The first problem is you have to remember or write down your license plate number to buy a ticket. Granted, entering your license plate number is necessary information for this system. Because not many people expect this from a parking meter it would be logical to ask for this information upfront. This would limit unnecessary actions and frustration for people that do not know their license plate number by heart. For this machine entering this information is placed just before payment.
Secondly, and the worst of the problems is the hardware used for entering the letters and numbers of the license plate. An 'infinite' dial has to be turned to scroll through all possible numbers and letters for each character you have to enter. This is truly a dreadful and tedious ordeal. To make matters even worse the screen is not lit, and placed at a height which forces most adults to lean over (see picture above) considerably for the roughly 5 minutes it takes to obtain the ticket this way. Finally, the ticket you buy still has to be put in your car... This part of the process has not changed despite the new system.
Taking the right turn in the future
Nobody is helped with bad parking meters. This is clearly a case where User Centered Design could have made a world of difference!