Wilson Shuffle
Developed by the team that created the award-winning Wilson Parking App, Shuffle leverages Wilson Parking’s proven technology expertise and vendor teams–Adapptor, Kombu, and new partner, NuevoTek – to make parking smarter as commute habits evolve.
year
2023
industry
Automotive, Tech
Services
React Native App Development
In late 2021, Wilson Parking began working with Kombu (UX), NuevoTek (Platform/API), and Adapptor (APP) to workshop a new service to simplify how businesses optimise their parking.
Commuter habits have evolved post-lockdown. The mix of remote and office work has shifted, and landlords need to adapt to make best use of their parking assets. Wilson Parking Shuffle is designed to power that flexibility.
Managed via a company administration portal, and delivered to staff via a free app, the service lets parking managers shuffle access to parking, allowing more staff to access parking.
Adapptor hit the ground running in 2022, building the frontend in parallel with the API. OpenAPI tooling allowed us to collaborate efficiently with the NuevoTek team, as they evolved their existing API to the backend platform in parallel. We kept in close contact with all teams, so that interdependencies were understood, and blockers identified early to keep development velocity high. The approach helped us to reach Go-Live in under ten months.
The Shuffle app was implemented with the cross-platform framework React Native, which reduces the amount of development required to support both Android and iOS. The deep native integration required for Bluetooth communication was built in Swift and Java and bridged to React Native.
Shuffle comprises three key elements: Shuffle Admin Portal, Shuffle Parking App and Shuffle Access.
Shuffle Admin Portal
The Shuffle Admin Portal, developed by NuevoTek - is a web portal built on a fully managed, multi-tenanted cloud platform that allows owners to directly manage staff accounts and parking allocations. A regular bay can be assigned to a staff member for a particular date range or time of day. Shuffle also supports flexible booking allocations, allowing access to an inventory of self-serve reservations. When staff need a bay they can book ahead of time. Bookings can be cancelled, which makes the bay available for other staff members to book.
Shuffle Parking App
The Shuffle Parking App is how staff access the Shuffle service. The app displays pre-assigned bay allocations, allowing users to see and manage upcoming bookings. It also displays available overflow parking, public parking that might be discounted or fully subsidised. In addition to a host of features, including next booking alert, parking directions, tutorials, booking history, and account management, the app interacts with Shuffle Access to provide a windows-up entry to gated car parks.
Shuffle Access
Shuffle Access, developed by NuevoTek – is a multi-credential IoT access control system that can be installed at any public or private car park. To remain agnostic, it has been designed in a way that can operate independently of existing access control systems. Shuffle car parks are fitted with an enterprise-grade multi-credential access solution that allows windows-up access with Bluetooth. When the app detects it is near the car park, it enables the ‘Open Gate’ action. The app uses a secure, proprietary protocol which talks to NuevoTek’s NuevoGate providing access control via a Bluetooth reader or falling back to QR-code when necessary.
Dynamic Branding
Since Shuffle is designed for companies to manage their own parking needs, Wilson Parking wanted the app and admin portal to reflect the client company’s branding, providing a familiar, visual reference at each touchpoint. Kombu created a design that allows dynamic logos and colour tints to be applied to certain backgrounds, buttons, or thumbnails, while ensuring consistency and readability across the app’s diverse layouts. When a staff member logs in, the app and admin portal displays styles from their company brand, which is controlled by the settings established and stored in the NuevoTek platform.
Smart Entry & Exit
The Shuffle app interfaces with NuevoGate to a multi-credential device installed at the parking gate to provide access. With a simple button press within the app, staff can enter or exit the car park seamlessly without the need to lower windows, find access cards, or reach out to the parking gate.
The app uses a combination of location services and grace period rules that are configured and managed within the Nuevo platform to control the UI. The home screen header will indicate the Open Gate button is active when the user's session time and grace period starts and can be tapped to see controls for Entry and Exit. Even better, if the app is within one hundred metres of the car park, the header will automatically display Entry or Exit, depending on whether it thinks it is inside or outside the car park.
Gate Opening
A Shuffle car park’s gate is controlled by the NuevoGate access control application to a multi-credential device, which is the logic engine that sits between the Shuffle app, and the - car park’s access gates. The app talks to the gate technology over Bluetooth using a proprietary protocol, which Adapptor implemented with custom native modules for iOS and Android. The native modules manage Bluetooth services, scan for the gate devices, and pair with them.
Given that Bluetooth gives the best experience in Shuffle Parking, the app encourages the user to enable it during onboarding. But even if the user initially grants the app permission to use Bluetooth, that permission can later be revoked. As a fallback, a QR code can be held up to the multi-credential device, acting as a digital access card. The code is scanned, and if validated by the NuevoGate access control engine, the car park’s gate will open. The QR code can also be used for visitors, removing the need to download the app for a one-time visit.
Car parks can have poor mobile reception, which translated into the need for the Shuffle app to cater for an offline mode. To achieve this, we cache the data required to open a gate ahead of time. When operating in offline mode, the app disables all other functionality to reduce the risk of displaying inaccurate information.
Testing Shuffle
The development teams and stakeholders were geographically dispersed across Australia, and the system integration required having specialised hardware to hand. Each device has a master key that required configuration to associate it with a particular car park and gate before it could be couriered to the Adapptor team. The app is required to communicate with multiple devices–a likely cause of problems–which meant the test team needed access to a simulated car park environment with two devices to exercise the gate interactions.
For Shuffle, the rubber hits the road–literally–outside the office in physical car parks. The solution entails many moving parts to deliver the user a seamless experience, and the real world can present unforeseen situations. Field testing was essential.
A suitable live Wilson Parking car park was fitted with the required hardware in Adelaide, Australia where NuevoTek’s R&D team is located. Beta testers were given early access to the production app and went about their normal daily business, using the car park for a number of weeks. This allowed the Shuffle team to not only survey Beta testers about their experience but monitor real-world data and messaging at the integration points. We collected a host of analytics around the gate opening screens and functions from the app so we could note unforeseen edge cases. An interesting discovery from field testing was how an OS prioritises the Bluetooth service required to open the gate when it is in use by a hands-free call. Analytics were key in learning how to handle this situation and allowed us to optimise the Shuffle app prior to launch day.
