Sometimes companies don’t realise the positive impact their solutions have or could have, on people. We invited Magdalena “Malina” Malinowska on our show to tell us the incredible story of how the tech startup she works for, NaviParking, found out that their solutions were helping a particular group of people in a significant way and what they decided to do after this discovery.

Malina is passionate about psychology and has a huge curiosity about the world and people with a particular interest in what drives individuals to behave the way they do, which she developed during her social psychology studies. These interests led her to join NaviParking in the role of Account Manager, in which she interacts directly with partners and clients, which is how she discovered that NaviPay, the company’s mobile application which enables drivers to have a contactless and cashless parking experience is a huge help to people with disabilities. Malina’s curiosity pushed her to dig deeper.

“The more information I got, the more convinced I was that it’s a really huge problem that we discovered as a company and we couldn’t stay neutral.”

In this episode of Smart City Navigators, Malina describes the research she carried out to widen her knowledge on this topic, including how she ended up inviting Sławek Florkowski who is a member of the Polish Without Barriers Foundation, on a tour of NaviParking’s digital parking lots to test the NaviPay mobile application from the perspective of a person with a disability, a social experiment she conducted to see whether people want to help people with disabilities and even organised an art auction called Outside the Box, including a special opening night of the exhibition to raise awareness and money to help people with disabilities.

“Everyone knows that technology helps with living. As an Account Manager, I have a vision that our application is useful for everybody because it’s easy to use. To start from opening barriers by sliding a button in the app or by recognizing registration number of your car through mobile payments which is useful.”

To find out what Malina discovered and to hear her share tips on how other organisations and even individuals can help people with disabilities, check out the full episode.