The app was only necessary as a one click bypass for the original bad UX. Im not the author but would likely develop an automation of sorts for such a pointless daily friction. And it doesn’t really matter what’s bundled as (app, script, etc) as long as it gets compressed/reduced to one click.

I think GP was responding to "navigate to a webpage (there is no mobile app)"

An app is more convenient for something you do every day.

why? you can save the website to your home screen and should be able to get the same user experience for launching the thing. everything that happens once inside the app or website is just normal UX design - no reason to do it 'worse' on a website.

> why? you can save the website to your home screen and should be able to get the same user experience for launching the thing.

Except saving that to the Home Screen isn’t the same user experience as downloading an app via an qr code, and you’ll be expecting some pretty technically incompetent people to be using the parking space.

But I do agree with your general point about the UX inside the (web|mobile) app.

the complaint wasn't about the 'discovery and install experience', it was about the UX of paying for parking every day. There are definitely things that the app store experience brings to the table for distribution of apps - trust being the main thing I think. I really don't like the barriers that iOS specifically puts in place for web apps - they're intentionally making it harder than it needs to be, in order to protect their walled garden and the $$ that brings them.

I was clearly replying to your comment about how “saving a webpage to the home screen is easy”.

Yes it’s easy…if you’re technical. But most people who drive are not good with technology.

“Most people who drive are not good with technology”?

Now there’s a correlation I wasn’t aware of! Regrettably you’re forcing me to use one of the most annoying phrases on HN: “citation needed”.

It's just a subset of "most people". Hardly a controversial claim.

It’s paying for parking.

It was a solved problem long before smart phones.

Technology is supposed to improve the experience not make it worse.

What’s your actual point?

There's absolutely no need for an "app" / "website", a phone, and everything that comes with using that choice, i.e. original posters 10 steps, to pay for parking.

The design choices added more friction than walking past a "pay and display" machine.

The design choices added more friction than displaying a monthly/anual pass that you purchase for regular parking at places like universities.

The design choices added more friction than driving through a boom gate with camera recording license plate, and auto charging you on the exit or taking payment at exit.

You now need your phone with you, fully charged, to complete a transaction for what used to be a quick, simple process for at least 50 years.

> There's absolutely no need for an "app" / "website", a phone, and everything that comes with using that choice, i.e. original posters 10 steps, to pay for parking.

Making a proper app for it makes it not take those 10 steps.

> The design choices added more friction than driving through a boom gate with camera recording license plate, and auto charging you on the exit or taking payment at exit.

The one instance of this I have seen used an app to connect your licence plate to your payment method.

> Making a proper app for it makes it not take those 10 steps.

No it means I’ve got to install a junk app for every individual carpark I use that uses their own app.

It doesn’t have to mean that. Over here in Switzerland, it seems relatively consistent.

Would you download an app to flush your toilet?

I might if the alternative was to insert coins into a parking meter.

The alternative to a toilet-flushing app is a flushing button.

If flushing the toilet without an app would suddenly require you to walk across campus to obtain a one-time-use Toilet Flushing Override Token (and no, you can't ask for multiple ones - no "hoarding" allowed!), there would be riots on introduction - and rightfully so! The fact that an app has to exist at all is a symptom of a systemic issue.

Same with parking. ANPR cameras are ancient technology, and many commercial lots already have tap-to-pay at the exit barrier. Or even the entry barrier, for fixed-price parking. Even the complicated cases have you enter your vehicle registration on the payment terminal these days, rather than messing around with paper passes. In this world it should not be complicated to handle employee parking with a one-off license plate registration on some intranet web page, or just allow tapping your employee badge at the parking barrier. Worst-case scenario they'd hand you an EZPass-like RFID tag during onboarding to put behind your car's windscreen.

The toilet-flushing app should not have to exist. It is the ultimate embodiment of institutional "we have tried nothing, and are all out of ideas". Accepting deeply-flawed workarounds for non-problems should not be a normal part of your day-to-day life.

> The alternative to a toilet-flushing app is a flushing button.

Well, yes, that’s exactly my point. It’s not the case with parking, so the analogy breaks down.

> Making a proper app for it makes it not take those 10 steps.

There are no incentives for them to make a proper app. When faced with a choice of being nice to you or extracting maximum value out of you, those companies will pick the second option every time. Having an internet-connected app is an open invitation for companies to force you to register an account, make you grant their app all sorts of permissions, have you view ads and waste your money. Another incentive is for them to save as much money on developing that app as they can. Combining these two, we get a situation where any company that's not squeezing you for those few extra cents is making an economically inferior choice, and anything digital and connected to the internet has no bounds for how many types of abusive practices can be facilitated through it.

On the other hand, paying at a parking meter is physical and grounded in reality, you can't inject too much bullshit into the process. It's very constrained and you know it will always remain so. They don't have wiggle room to try any of the above. It's boring 20th century 'exchanging money for services' instead of new 21st century 'abusing the user for money and potentially providing a service on the side'.

> You now need your phone with you, fully charged, to complete a transaction for what used to be a quick, simple process for at least 50 years.

I agree with you with parking garages or tolls. The license plate system is definitely preferable.

But, street parking was not a quick or simple process for 50 years. I used to have to keep a stack of quarters with me in order to street park, which was a huge PITA. Then the meters moved to working with CCs, but they were broken much of the time. Then they put in random kiosks every couple blocks that you had to find and figure out, often having to go back and drop a slip in your car.

Now I pull up, park, get out, and walk off while clicking 'park' in the app. It literally can't be any simpler.

My municipal parking consists of normal parking meters. They accept CCs or cash and are placed on every block. They are rugged and I have yet to see a broken one - if the majority of your parking meters are broken, that's the fault of your city, not an inherent flaw of the tech, as proven by the aforementioned 50 years of people using parking meters just fine. Worst case scenario, if one is broken, you walk a little more to the next meter. If we assume 1% of parking meters are broken, it's still far less of a waste of time than fiddling around with an app 100% of the time.

> Now I pull up, park, get out, and walk off while clicking 'park' in the app.

Oh, you went to a different city or entered a private parking lot? Gotta install their preferred parking app. Just scan the QR code to go to a broken website, or better yet, be forced to waste your data, time and your phone's storage space to download their special app if they don't allow online payments. Now all you have to do is make an account, set up 2FA, enable geolocation so they can tell where you are, type in your plate number, potentially retype your payment information and deal with any errors that may pop up along the way. It's easy!

The person we're talking about didn't make an app to "pay for parking". They made an app to automate a tedious process their employer makes them do every day.

>Technology is supposed to improve the experience not make it worse.

no. technology is meant to increase the profits of the shareholders.

can't track and sell your location data if you don't use your phone to park.

Screams "data surveillance" to me. https://www.wsmv.com/2024/12/19/4-class-action-lawsuits-file...

They all do this, unfortunately, it's not just Metropolis. Currently in a dispute with two other parking companies for similar forms of shenanigans.

Metropoles are the worst company I regularly have like option but to interact with. Absolute scum.

iOS has App Clips which theoretically are supposed to do this - just tap on NFC, app clip opens up and lets you pay, and sticks around to allow you to re-up while your meter is going.

Agree tho, parking is not a world where we get really good UX developers.

I've never once came across these famed App Clips

I've only seen them when paying for parking in the EU. They do work as the poster said.

I have used them once to pay in a restaurant in Prague.

There was an App Clip code on the table that you could scan to pay.

The UI/UX was pretty nice, but I bet you could make a website also look that nice and work as well.

I have also seen them around Japan, but of course, Japan being Japan, if you scan them you’ll normally get an error saying that it’s not supported on your non-Japanese-region set phone.

For instance, Starbucks Japan has them everywhere: https://atadistance.net/2024/05/22/starbucks-app-clips-an-ap...

Toast used it pretty effectively for QR code-initiated restaurant bill payments. Though in the US I've only seen a few restaurants trust customers to pay by QR code and not physically want to handle a card.

Though the other notable thing about it was that the App Clip version does a decent upsell to get you to install the full Toast Local app. Then once you have the Toast Local app you never see the App Clip version again. So there's probably other things that have App Clips but you would not notice because you already have the full app.

I used easypark to pay for parking in different cities and countries very happily.

It is vastly preferable to "find a parking meter, sort out rules, find a way to pay" which was the previous experience, I'm a bit concerned they look like a sort of monopoly but I'll take that over every city having their own system.

It is vastly non preferable for non riffraff individuals (eg me).

Can you explain why? As someone who parks in different cities and areas a lot EasyPark is...well, easy. Finding meters, going back to the car to drop in the slip, extending parking if you need to is much easier. And having a single app that works in most places is helpful.

“Finding meters, going back to the car to drop in the slip, extending parking” takes up very little of my life. I don’t like apps and generally hate the idea that I should be forced to 1) have a cell phone to park a car, 2) install closed source software on the cellphone, 3) be gaslighted by the vc and company behind that app that it’s for my benefit. In fact, it depresses me a little bit that the world is getting worse at an ever increasing pace.

2 days ago I was in the waiting room for a medical checkup. I had parked ~8 or 10 mins walk away, though day in the city. The doctor took more than I estimated, and renewing the parking was a total of 30 seconds from taking my device out of the pocket, hitting "Extend time", and "Confirm". Done, without risking that my turn might come during the ~15 or so mins I'd have been outside running through the street.

Some things are better in modern times. I'd rather have more time-efficient public transport to not need going by car, but that's a different topic.

If you're driving your own car, you're riffraff.

It is also another example of having a phone or SIM card with you is a requirement to function. I hate mobile phones. They are really useful but I really enjoy hours or days when I can leave them behind. But what you can do without a SIM card device in your pocket keeps getting more restrictive.