Smart locker system
Enabling sustainable renting sharing and storage
Company
Kolula
Role
Product Designer
Duration
6 Months
Team
3 Designers, PO,
5 Devs, Technical.L
Project overview
I designed a smart locker system for an international startup, enabling contactless equipment rentals, item handovers, and storage for residential, corporate, and coastal users across Europe. The web based app eliminates app downloads for access and durable metal lockers for scalability.
The project began with a focus on SUP rentals in coastal areas but expanded into residential and corporate environments after research revealed broader applications, such as tool rentals for students or storage for office visitors.
Timeline
Sep 2024
Mar 2025
Feb 2025
Problem insight
Modern urban lifestyles demand flexible, sustainable, and efficient solutions for accessing and sharing resources.
Key challenges identified include:
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Scheduling conflicts: In-person handovers is time-consuming, which is difficult due to busy schedules.
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Costly product ownership: Many individuals, like students building furniture or professionals needing occasional tools, prefer renting over purchasing expensive, rarely used items.
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Limited office space: Corporate environments lack sufficient storage for employees’ or visitors’ belongings, requiring secure, reservable lockers.
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App fatigue: Users resist downloading apps or creating accounts for every digital service, leading to friction in adoption.
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Maintenance costs: Physical locker is not ideal & smart lockers with screens/PIN pads break often, raising costs.
Our goal was to design a scalable, user-friendly, and sustainable smart locker system that eliminates these pain points by offering contactless access, no app installation, and low-maintenance hardware, while catering to diverse use cases in residential, corporate, and recreational settings.
Research and insights
Our research was comprehensive, combining surveys, competitor analysis, market research, field visits, and discussions at industry fairs and events.
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Initial Focus: SUP rentals in coastal areas showed demand for contactless access.
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Expanded Scope: Residents wanted to rent tools/games; offices needed storage for employee & visitor's belongings.
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Market Opportunities: Housing companies saw value in smart lockers to foster community sharing, while offices sought flexible storage solutions to optimize limited space. Items like tools, board games, and bike repair kits were in high demand for short-term use.
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Accessibility: Lower lockers for wheelchair users; size-based assignments and and durable materials (metal over wood) to withstand weather and ensure safety.
Ideation and process
The ideation phase involved collaborative brainstorming, sketching, and iterative design to translate research into actionable features. My responsibilities included:
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Customer Journeys: Mapped flows for renting tools, exchanging items, storing bags, one example is listed below
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Feature Definition: We prioritized an email-based/sms based system to avoid app downloads or account creation, QR code verification for location confirmation (replacing Google Maps due to web app constraints), and a standardized metal locker design for durability.
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Wireframe/sketch: Initial sketches outlined the web app’s interface &locker access process.
Open locker and return item process
Booking process
Major focus :
no app downloads or account creation
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Design System Creation: Team and I created design system with standardized fonts, colors, headings, and spacings to ensure consistency across the product line, balancing flexibility for new clients with maintainable constraints.
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Pricing and Services: I designed pricing tables based on market research, offering tiered rates for hourly, daily, or weekly rentals, tailored to item type and use case/service based on durations.
The process was iterative, with daily stand-ups, weekly syncs with the Product Owner and Technical Lead, and Jira for task tracking, ensuring alignment across the team.
Design execution & flows
As a lead product designer, I translated ideation into a functional, user-centric web app & admin app for a multilingual experience across 🇩🇪🇬🇧🇳🇴, while addressing technical and legal constraints.
The web app enabled users to book lockers and unlock them eliminating the need for native apps or physical screens and a admin portal to manage, monitor locker usage. Locker assignments were intelligently tailored to user needs, such as lower lockers for accessibility and sizing based on stored items. The locker service was tailored for different use cases (product rental, handovers, storgage, SUP rental, key handovers for hotels). Research into weather resistance informed the choice of durable metal lockers to ensure safety and longevity.
Booking flow
Usage flow
Major challenges and iterations
Business issue
Communication with SMS was user-friendly and effective but it was expensive so we switched to @email notifications since it was no account app. I designed a minimal, intuitive automated email flow for bookings and late returns(very important for business) as a cost-effective alternative to SMS.
Iteration 1
1
2
3
4
Iteration 2
Location Verification (Continued): Needed to ensure users were physically present at the locker to resolve this - Solution: 'QR verification at station' but later we figured some users faced problems with QR code scanning due to camera malfunctions.
Overcame challenges with the help of real user testing(interviews, collective feedback, on-site interviews) which lead in Identifying issues like security risks and camera malfunctions and collabration with backend devs to implement data caching and QR code verification within web app constraints.
Usability Testing and Validation
To validate the design, we conducted extensive usability testing across four iterations, refining based on user feedback and technical constraints:
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Prototype Testing: A physical locker prototype was used to test the end-to-end experience, from booking to locker access. I conducted first-person tests to evaluate the web app’s usability, measuring clicks needed to complete tasks and identifying friction points.
Testing confirmed that users found the system intuitive, with faster adoption of the web app compared to native apps, validating our email-based approach.
Final outcome and impact
The smart locker system is now live in multiple 🇩🇪German and 🇳🇴Norwegian cities, deployed in residential complexes, corporate offices, and coastal areas for SUP rentals. Key outcomes include:
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Revenue growth: The startup attracted new housing and corporate clients, increasing revenue as locker usage scaled. A custom dashboard provided insights into booking patterns and user demographics, informing future expansions.
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Sustainability, convenience & user adoption: The system enabled sustainable sharing of tools, recreational items, and storage, reducing the need for ownership. Users praised the contactless, email-based access for its simplicity.
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Business Processes: My work in creating customer service flows, pricing tables, and standardized designs streamlined onboarding for new clients, enhancing scalability.
Highlights & learnings
Hannover messe 2025
Amsterdam 2024
Live station
I gained expertise in end-to-end product design, from research to implementation, and honed skills in cross-functional collaboration, design system creation, and balancing user needs with technical constraints. Leading customer journey mapping and business process design deepened my understanding of scalable solutions.
This project showcases my ability to deliver user-centric, scalable solutions as a UI/UX and Product Designer, balancing innovation, usability, and business needs in a collaborative team environment. I’m excited to bring this expertise to future projects, creating impactful digital experiences that simplify and enhance users’ lives.