Stackfusion
2025
Redesigning the POS experience for parking operators
Redesigning a high-pressure parking operator app to reduce cognitive load, prevent unnecessary manual intervention, and make gate operations faster and more reliable.
Overview
Designing for operators who can't afford to slow down
The SUNMI POS app is used by on-ground parking operators at entry and exit gates across malls, IT parks and commercial sites. Operators use the app to create and close tickets, process payments and print parking tickets. But as new features were added over time to accommodate urgent client requirements, the experience had become increasingly difficult to navigate.
During peak hours, operators had to manage long queues, impatient visitors and multiple exception scenarios while using a cluttered interface that often required them to rely on memory. As the sole UI/UX designer, I led the redesign from research through interaction design, prototyping, testing and developer handoff, collaborating closely with developers, QA, field operators and clients throughout the process. The goal was not simply to make the interface cleaner. It was to make the system easier to operate under pressure while reducing unnecessary manual intervention and keeping the parking system accountable.
Research
The real problem wasn't the interface. It was what operators had learned to do around it.
To understand what was actually happening at the gates, I stepped into the operators' environment rather than relying only on stakeholder requirements.
I:
• Interviewed operators at multiple commercial sites.
• Observed their tasks during peak hours.
• Documented pain points, workarounds and emotional responses.
• Operated the SUNMI device myself for approximately 30 minutes during an office-hour rush.
• Worked with field teams and other stakeholders to understand operational constraints and edge cases.
This helped uncover a pattern: operators had developed their own shortcuts to compensate for situations where the system was slow, unclear or failed to provide enough feedback.
The operator's reality
One representative operator worked 10–12 hour shifts at a busy mall and IT-park parking site, handling hundreds of vehicles during peak periods.
Her priorities were straightforward:
• Keep vehicles moving quickly.
• Avoid mistakes under pressure.
• Minimize confrontation with impatient visitors.
• Complete her shift without needing technical support.
But the existing experience made this difficult.
What I found
01
Manual override was the norm
Operators manually opened barriers for pass users in approximately 90% of observed cases.
02
ANPR failures created additional work
When automatic number-plate recognition failed, operators sometimes had to leave the normal flow, collect payment and manually re-enter vehicle information.
03
Operators relied on memory
The cluttered interface did not provide enough guidance, so new operators often learned the workflow by memorizing steps from experienced colleagues.
04
There was little accountability around overrides
The system did not require operators to provide a reason when manually opening a barrier, making it difficult to understand why an intervention had occurred.
05
Ticket information was incomplete
Some pass-based entry flows lacked the information operators needed during audits or visitor disputes.
Strategy
Designing the system to stay in control when things go wrong
The research shifted the design goal from simply improving navigation to reducing the amount of decision-making required from the operator. I focused the redesign around four principles:
01 — Minimize cognitive load
Streamline task flows, reduce unnecessary taps and use clear, bold visual cues so operators can act quickly without relying on memory.
02 — Prevent unnecessary manual overrides
Automate standard scenarios wherever possible and provide structured fallback actions when something fails, rather than forcing operators outside the system.
03 — Support real-life exceptions
The experience needed to account for scenarios such as temporary employee passes, ANPR failure, multiple Fastag detections, missing site passes and alternative payment methods.
04 — Design for use under pressure
Larger touch targets, generous spacing, smart defaults, alerts and immediate feedback help reduce misclicks and uncertainty during peak periods.
The core principle
The operator should intervene only when something genuinely requires human judgment—not because the product failed to handle a predictable scenario.
From operator-driven to system-driven
The redesigned experience divided the parking workflow into two primary scenarios: Entry and Exit. Both flows were designed to complete automatically wherever possible, with fallback paths available when detection, payment or pass validation failed. The operator became the exception handler rather than the person manually driving every transaction.
Design
Making every action clear at the gate
The redesign focused on making the most frequent operator actions fast and predictable while providing clear guidance whenever the system encountered an exception.
Touch-friendly interaction
The SUNMI device is used in a fast-moving environment, so I increased touch-target sizes and spacing to reduce accidental taps and make important actions easier to identify at a glance.
Context-aware alerts
Instead of leaving operators to determine what went wrong, the redesigned experience provided contextual alerts and suggested the appropriate next action. Alerts also used sound and vibration to provide feedback in a busy physical environment where operators could not always rely on visual cues alone.
Fallback flows for real-world scenarios
The system was designed to handle common exceptions without forcing operators to abandon the workflow. Examples included:
• Multiple Fastag records detected.
• Fastag not detected when a visitor expected to use it.
• A site pass not detected or not yet created.
• Employee identification requiring a temporary pass.
• ANPR failure requiring manual number-plate entry.
• Dynamic QR payment failure requiring an alternative payment path.
Synchronized gate experience
The redesigned experience also maintained synchronization between the SUNMI device and the gate display, allowing information shown to the operator and visitor to remain aligned in real time. This helped create a more coherent experience across the physical and digital parts of the parking system.
Outcome
Less intervention. Faster onboarding. More accountable operations.
The redesign produced measurable improvements across operator efficiency, system accountability and business operations.
70%+ reduction in manual interventions
Manual intervention dropped significantly as more standard scenarios were handled automatically within the system.
New operators onboarded in under 1 day
Clearer flows and stronger visual guidance reduced the learning curve for new operators.
80% of operators rated the redesigned app 4★ or above
Internal survey results indicated strong acceptance of the redesigned experience among operators.
The redesign also improved the quality of operational data:
• Ticket mismatches were reduced through more accurate auto-closing.
• Override reasons became mandatory, creating clearer audit trails.
• Reduced reliance on cash tickets helped address revenue leakage.
• More structured system data became available for analysing edge cases.
At pilot sites, the presentation estimates an 18% improvement in revenue accuracy.
From workaround to workflow
The most meaningful change was not simply visual. The redesign reduced the need for operators to compensate for the system using memory, shortcuts and manual overrides. Instead, predictable scenarios were handled by the product, while genuine exceptions were surfaced clearly and supported with appropriate fallback actions. The system became easier to operate—and easier to trust.
Reflection
The best operational UX makes the system do more of the thinking
This project reinforced how different product design becomes when an interface is used continuously, under pressure and in a physical environment.
01
Observe behaviour, not just requirements
The most important problems weren't all visible in stakeholder requirements. Operator workarounds revealed where the existing system was actually failing.
02
Design for pressure
A workflow that feels acceptable in a quiet usability session can behave very differently when an operator is processing a queue of vehicles and dealing with an impatient visitor.
03
Exceptions are part of the primary experience
ANPR failures, missing passes and payment problems were not edge cases to hide away. They were predictable operational scenarios that the product needed to handle gracefully.
04
Automation needs a human fallback
The goal was never to remove operators from the system completely. It was to make the automated path reliable enough that human intervention was reserved for situations where it was genuinely useful.
Future direction
The longer-term product vision is a fully automated smart parking system that can be managed centrally by a single operator from a control room, with live camera views across parking gates. The redesigned POS experience was one step toward that vision: reducing unnecessary intervention at the gate while preserving a clear human fallback when automation could not resolve an exception.
