Sponsored By Lime

A Reward Experience to Promote Proper Parking While Reducing Lime’s Operational Overhead

Project Impact

  • Proposed integration of Capture AI to , include a plan for training the model.

  • Improved rider experience by designing low-friction educational popups and safeguards to prevent misuse without interrupting the ride flow.

  • Research with over 30 participants, with 100% preferring the new flow.

  • Presented to the head of UX at Lime.

  • Lime is moving forward with a rewards system that closely aligns with our proposed solution.

My Role

  • Networked to turn our student project into a corporate sponsorship.

  • Uncovered how offering free ride time could lower Lime’s operational costs.

  • Anticipated and addressed potential misuse, designing safeguards to close loopholes in the rewards system.

  • Proposed the parking scenario workshop to simulate real-world rider behavior and inform design decisions.

  • Crafted the learning experience in Figma to help riders understand the new rewards model.

Team

  • 3 Graduate UX Designers

  • Lime Senior Product Manager

  • Lime Industrial Designer

  • Lime Experience Design Manager

Timeline

Healthcare

Tools

Figma, Otter Ai

Agile
B2C
B2G
Navigation

Research and Scoping

A Gap in Curbside Parking for Riders and Cities

Our research revealed, pedestrians and cities are frustrated by poorly parked vehicles, riders feel unrecognized for responsible behavior, and Lime faces mounting operational costs and fines.

“I've sort of realized that no one's looking at these images, and no one's ever gonna get me in trouble, ... most of the times now I'll walk into class first before taking the photo.”

*Note: This user has never received a fine.

Participant 5

“[Penalizing users for incorrect parking] isn’t how we want to make money”

Lime Software Engineer

~ Subject Matter Expert

Key Findings

27 Man-on-the Street and 5 Semi Structured Interviews

Users are Improvising

Users aren't Motivated

Users are in a Rush

Users improvise due to lack of parking infrastructure

Lime’s photo system isn’t motivating proper parking

Solutions must work within
real-world constraints

Ideation

Re-thinking the Parking Experience

Photos From Ideation Session

Experience Journey Map

Down Selection Criteria

  • Encourage tidy and compliant parking in free-floating markets.

  • Experience should be simple, low-effort, and fast.

  • Riders should feel confident about where and how to park.

  • Create a satisfying ‘peak-end’ moment.

  • Majority of users don’t use phones while actively riding.

Concept Testing

Exploring User Reactions to a Parking Rewards Prototype

Photos From Refined Review Session

Improvement Areas

  • Further refinement of the points to minutes reward ratio was needed. The system needing to feel achevible and motivate users to participate.

  • The location of onboarding/education needed to be changed.

Final Design

A photo review system that rewards users for
good parking

Feasibility

Lime will save on operational costs by implementing our system.

Costs

  • Bad parking isn't free, Lime pays fines every quarter for badly parked scooters.

  • The ratio of tidy parking to rewards is still being decided.

Moving Forward

We can have clutter free sidewalks once again!

Reflection

This project has been one of the most rewarding projects while in the MHCI+D program, and I’m incredibly grateful to both my fellow graduate team and Lime for supporting it. I’m proud that I took the initiative to turn a class project into a real-world collaboration, and even prouder of what we built together. Our photo-based reward system is meant to work alongside Lime’s existing operations, not as a replacement, but as a addition that puts riders at the center of the solution. It’s exciting to see how aligning small behavior changes with positive feedback can benefit both the community and the business. I hope this is just the beginning, and I look forward to seeing how this work might grow beyond the classroom.