Forming an Opportunity Belief

1. My belief is that parking at the University of Florida, specifically car parking, could get a lot better.
2. The unmet need is an increase in parking services on and around campus. This need is realized by all students and faculty at UF who drive their car around campus. This need has existed for a while, but recently a parking lot on fraternity row was completely replaced with scooter parking, eliminating at least 40 spots. The scooter parking lot is barely even 20% full at night. Currently, people are parking off campus at restaurants and other private parking lots. This is a problem because most of these parking lots tow cars that are not authorized to be there. I am 90% sure that an opportunity for more parking exists.
3. Iteration 1: The first person that I interviewed was a second year student that lives off-campus. They said that they commute to and from class every single day and struggles to find parking when going to class. On some days, they are late to class because there are no parking spaces nearby and they spend too much time having to look for one further away. One of the ways that they have adjusted to this is by leaving for class earlier or driving their car to a UF bus location and then taking the bus to campus. Both of these solutions are inconvenient for them and they wish that UF would implement more parking locations especially for commuters coming from off-campus. They first became aware of this need after moving off-campus to an apartment in their second year. When they were on-campus their freshman year, it wasn't as much of a problem because they were walking distance from all their classes.
4. I learned that there is an opportunity to increase the parking at UF. The most surprising thing that I learned is that the lack of parking has made this student late to class numerous times. I also learned that maybe if the housing on-campus was better, students would be more inclined to stay on-campus because of the convenience of being close to classes.
5. Iteration 2: The second person that I interviewed was a first year student that lives on-campus at the Broward dorms. This student says that their parking situation is not bad because of the convenience of being near the Broward parking garage as well as being able to walk to all of their classes. The only time that this person runs into a problem parking is when they drive back to campus late at night and the parking is somewhat limited. However, they usually are still able to find a spot near where they live. This person has never experienced the need for more parking firsthand, but they did say that some of their friends complain about the lack of parking on-campus, particularly those who live in an apartment off-campus or those that don't like to take the bus. They are satisfied with their solution of walking to class and only using their car when traveling off-campus.
6. I learned that not everyone with a car believes that the parking situation at UF is a problem. It was also surprising to hear that this individual has never had trouble parking on campus.
7. Iteration 3: My final prototypical customer was a student who lives in a fraternity near the new, oversized scooter parking lot. This student has a scooter and uses it mostly to go to class and to get around campus, however when it gets cold outside, they prefer to take their car to get around campus whether it is going to the gym or going to the library. Since the new scooter parking lot eliminated at least 40 car spots, more people now have to park in the fraternity parking lot. Also, some of the spots in the fraternity lot have been changed to include reserved parking spots for specific people. This makes it harder for this individual to find parking close to where they live. Another problem for this individual is the lack of car parking near Library West, arguably the biggest and most popular library at the University of Florida. This person noticed the need for more parking after it started to get cold out and when the university changed one of the parking lots to a strictly scooter parking lot. They are not happy with their solutions of riding their scooter in the cold as well as parking farther away.
8. I learned from this student that not only is parking limited at UF, but also it is starting to disappear in favor of scooter parking. I think that the need for better parking infrastructure at UF is obvious.
9. Most of my opportunity is still available, it seems that other students agree that the parking at UF is underwhelming. I think that the opportunity is still here and is as accurate as before. I think that entrepreneurs should listen to what potential customers want, but shouldn't completely change their business idea based on that because customers may not be able to see the bigger picture.