Fortunately I had a friend that worked valet. After interviewing him and seeing him work one night I drafted my hypothesis; “If the valet company’s current manual system was digitized and notifying them when a customer is ready to leave, then waiting times would decrease, and customer experience would improve yielding more revenue (tips)”.

I needed two separate experiences; One for the Valet guys, and another for the customers. The Valet guys would have an iPad that would let them keep track of requests. The customers would have a mobile app where they could not only submit the request but also tip in advance. From the start, I didn't want to disrupt the way the valet parking companies were already working so I designed the process so that it would simply complement their existing practices making their process more efficient. I created an early lofi clickable/tappable wireframe using PDF’s and Fireworks (this was pre Sketch or Invision).

I took that wireframe everywhere I could and showed it to any valet guy I knew. I would sometimes sit and watch them work while talking about life and ordering food - I even parked some of cars myself. Getting close to them allowed me to tweak my wireframe and design several times. With their help, I was able to talk to the owners of one big Valet company in Atlanta and presented the idea with the wireframe. They loved it and asked me to pilot in 3 locations so I set out to build a lightweight prototype.

At the time I had no coding experience so I had to outsource some of the work. After several failed attempts to hire a freelancer, I had run out of money. That is when I took the initiative to learn to code my own ideas, but that is another story. At the end, I never finished the lightweight prototype and did not pursue the project further for personal reasons.