Promotions

Designing a flexible way for cities to create parking promotions while preventing discount misuse.

PayByPhone · 2022Product Design · Systems Thinking · UX Research

Problem

Discount parking was being used as a loophole.

Consumers could repeatedly use free or discounted parking instead of transitioning to paid sessions, creating revenue loss and dissatisfaction among key city clients.

1,000duplicate free sessions / month

€109Kannual lost revenue

7platinum cities affected

The solution had to work for cities and drivers.

The existing workaround created friction on both sides:

AdminsNeeded fast setup, but every city had different promotion rules.

ConsumersHad to wait for discounted parking to expire and remember a separate location code to continue with paid parking.

GUIDING PRINCIPLESSeamless · Flexible · Fast

Finding the right balance between speed and flexibility.

I initially explored templates to make promotion setup fast, but usability testing revealed a tradeoff: predefined promotion types couldn’t accommodate the different rules cities needed.

Hard to findAdmins expected promotions within Rate Management.

Templates were fast, but limitingNew requirements could require creating entirely new policy types.

Terminology mattered“Minimum transaction price” was difficult to understand.

Early promotion configuration concept — Early concept

Final promotion configuration design — Final design

Templates → Full config → Progressive disclosure

Instead of choosing between speed and flexibility, I reorganized the experience around the most common settings while moving less frequently used controls into Advanced Settings.

Flexible for cities.
Seamless for drivers.

ADMINSConfigure the rules without rebuilding the system.

Admins could define promotion value, reset behavior, paid-parking behavior, eligibility, location sharing, and other rules through a flexible configuration model.

Final promotions administration dashboard

CONSUMERSMove from promotion to paid parking without starting over.

The consumer experience made promotion redemption part of the normal parking flow, removing the need to wait for a promotion to expire or remember another location code.