Parking available! These are words every driver loves to hear, especially when going to an unfamiliar destination. Google Maps has followed Waze’s lead in adding a feature to show us the chances of finding parking near the chosen destination. More information leads to more convenience and a smoother experience.
Google Maps Parking Feature- The Details
At this point, the information is not very specific. Waze so far focuses mostly on finding the best parking lots while Google Maps is beginning to give the general difficulty level of finding parking in a given area using terms such as easy, medium, and limited.
Both are owned by Google and both can be expected to give us something more in the future. In a way, it seems as if Google is using Waze as a test drive to check which new features should be added to Google Maps. There seems to be a pretty clear direction for where this is heading and will be used regularly in the near future. Let’s take a closer look.
Painting the Future
Picture this: a world where you open up Waze or Google Maps, put in the destination, and find specific details on parking options and maybe even the option to reserve a spot for a certain time period. Imagine that.
Users would find an extreme amount of convenience in a system like this. Searching for a parking spot takes way too much time and is super frustrating. A system to help us find specific parking spots, and reserve them ahead of time would eliminate all that frustration in one fell swoop.
We already have parking apps (BestParking, Parker, ParkWhiz) to locate, reserve, and/or pay for parking through our phones and now we have majors GPS apps including general parking information, so it’s really not much of a stretch to think how much further Google can take things by simply putting it all together.
Slate and Mashable have both hinted at their own thoughts on a possible future with more specific data being used to find parking more easily, but it’s not a reality just yet.
Obviously some work would need to be done but the aim is clearly to create more convenience by focusing on some of the more daunting aspects of driving into unfamiliar territory (sometimes familiar territory as well). General parking information is a smart way to start.
While the current updates to our favorite GPS apps aren’t worth jumping up and down for, it’s important to look at where this might go. Clearly the users frustrations are being heard and slowly but surely the issues are being tackled.
This is how progress is made, plain and simple. Make the users happy and the company will flourish. One day, parking frustrations will be a thing of the past, but patience is a virtue. Happy parking!