Students launch app to ease parking struggles

What’s one way to bridge learning and the real world?

How about letting learners solve the challenge facing anyone who drives to eat, live, or work in a downtown area: where to park?

Kurbsi's user interface, as depicted on the Apple app store. During the design thinking process, the development team found that service workers, their main end user, spend a significant portion of their earnings just to park near their jobs.

After spending months iterating and working through the challenges of downtown parking using the design thinking process, a group of students at One Stone’s Lab51 launched their new app, Kurbsi. 

“Once you’ve easily found the parking spot that best fits your needs within the app, Kurbsi redirects you to the official links of parking garages, acting as a resource aggregator,” according to the team’s abstract.

The group interviewed downtown Boise service workers and visitors, and found that the lack of long-term, affordable parking spaces is a big problem. Service workers in particular reported having to spend a large portion of their earnings just to park and go to work.

The team also found that current parking apps are not user friendly, so they created Kurbsi as an alternative. The app currently supports drivers in the downtown Boise area, but the team is considering working with other developers on additional features, such as reserving parking spots within the app, or providing users with a live parking structure capacity count.

The development team, comprised of students Caden C., Ethan W., James Si., and Roman O., report that the app is still under construction. However, they say, “the core idea remains: (Kurbsi is) the first place you go for your long term downtown parking needs, providing a headache-free user experience.”

Kurbsi is available for download now on the Apple app store.