Get smart in San Francisco with Hub Strategy

Advertising, design and production company Hub Strategy has launched a new iPhone app designed to make finding tiny parking for smart cars easier. The app also uses social media to share the ‘smart spots’ among the wider network of smart drivers, adding social value to the technology. Using GPS tracking and aggregating location tips from users, the app is an innovative introduction aimed at a niche market and was born from personal experiences.

Hub Strategy founder and co-creative director at Hub Strategy, DJ O’Neil, invented the app because "finding a place to park in any big city is a hassle, and San Francisco is no exception”.

In order to build the app’s database of locations, Hub Strategy put teams of college students in smart cars and unleashed them across San Francisco in search of 9’-13’ parking spaces as part of its research and development to get the idea and product off the ground. The information they brought back was subsequently aggregated and coupled with GPS coordinates in the app. Users also will be able to comment, review, rate and recommend specific spots and easily share this information on Facebook and Twitter.

O’Neil, a smart owner of six months, conceptualised and developed the new app and below talks about his hopes for the creation, the difference between being smart and normal and getting the boot twice in one year.

As a Smart driver, tell us about your own parking experiences which led to idea for and creation of the app…

At one point in my life, I had so many parking tickets that I’d use them as note pads to jot down ideas on as I drove. Do you know the “boot”? That heinous metal contraption they fasten to your front wheel once you have too many unpaid parking tickets? Well, I finally cleaned up my act after getting the boot twice in one year. So, whilst these days I get less tickets, finding a spot in San Francisco is still ridiculously hard. That was the motivation behind the smart spaces app.

You’d think smart drivers would be at an advantage for parking spaces, so why do you think there’s a demand for an app of this kind?

True, there are more spots available to smart drivers, but you still need to drive around looking for them. With the smart spaces app, it’s quicker and easier.

Once all the spots have been shared, won’t the problem still exist, because every smart driver will be in the loop with the locations?

There are so many spots only a smart car can fit that unless everyone in the city buys a smart, I’m sure it won’t be a problem.

How confident are you that people will start changing their attitudes towards parking their smarts in smaller spaces and avoiding normal ones?

I’m not sure that they’ll avoid normal spaces, per se. I just think that those normal ones are harder to find than a smart space. And those normal ones are going to be way, way harder to find compared to someone using the app.

What are you most looking forward to about potentially inspiring a social community of smart drivers with your app?

I think it’s amazing that there are all these free parking spaces all over the city that only smart can fit in. The idea of helping people find free parking easily? I don’t know, maybe this is just my own little way of getting back at the parking system that gave me two boots in one year.

A San Francisco-optimised version of the app is now available to download from the App Store.