Role
Personal Project
Team
Solo Designer
Duration
3 Months
Overview
For many college students, living with roommates brings its own sets of challenges. One of these is figuring out how to manage one's household chores. Accountability issues, inaction, and arguments abound, because the solutions current students are using were never designed for chore management.
By and large, the biggest issue is that none of these solutions organize chores in the way roommates actually prefer—which is by location; kitchen, bathroom, living room. So, I ideated, designed, prototyped, and engineered an all-in-one chore management app for college students living together, called Housemates.
Problem
Our whiteboard wasn't cutting it as a chore chart.
And we weren’t the only ones with this issue.
Two weeks into my Sophomore year of college, it was clear that our fridge whiteboard was not going to cut it as a household chore chart. Responsibilities were forgotten, tasks weren’t updated, and the number of dishes in the sink was exponentially growing.
So, I asked my friends, what were they doing in their households to organize their chores?
User surveys revealed that current solutions had numerous pain points.
It turned out that college households use four main platforms to manage their living spaces. Respondents said familiar interfaces, a user-friendly mobile app, document storage, customizability, and ease of setup were their main motivations in choosing their platform. But were the platforms they were using even meeting their standards?
And 1-on-1 interviews revealed further issues.
It turned out that college households use four main platforms to manage their living spaces. Respondents said familiar interfaces, a user-friendly mobile app, document storage, customizability, and ease of setup were their main motivations in choosing their platform. But were the platforms they were using even meeting their standards?
Main Takeaway
A realization. A roommate app for chores didn’t exist. Current solutions were just workarounds.
So, what kind of chore management system did students need?
It was clear these solutions were just workarounds, as no solution existed on the market that actually addressed the way students organize chores.
Based on examples provided by friends, I noticed that regardless of platform, roommates organized chores by location in the house, rather than specific tasks. This location-based organization dictated who was assigned to what chore, how the locations were rotated, and what responsibilities were needed to maintain that part of the house.
A location-based chore app was the clear contender.
Any solution I built would need to encompass this location-based chore management students were already incorporating into their current workarounds. At this point, I narrowed down the scope of my solution, decided what to build, and moved on to ideation.
Ideation
An ideation in two parts, chore cards and app features.
Chore cards, for location-based chore management.
Location-based chore assignment would need customizable chore cards that represented each room. I began by collecting inspiration and sketching what a possible chore card might look like.
App features, to solve pain points.
Any solution I built would need to encompass this location-based chore management students were already incorporating into their current workarounds. At this point, I narrowed down the scope of my solution, decided what to build, and moved on to ideation.
Location & Privacy
Being in and out of the house makes it hard to coordinate cleaning. A common response to being asked to do a chore is “I’m not home”. Knowing when someone’s at home can also help coordinate group activities or events.
How might we help roommates be aware of each other’s location while respecting privacy?
Chore Accountability
Students typically avoid confrontation until it’s unavoidable, which makes enforcing early accountability impossible. Users state they don’t want to seem like “someone’s mom”, and come off as pushy or bossy.
How might we introduce accountability while diminishing its confrontational and overbearing aspects?
Adulting
College is often a student’s first time living with non-family. Tenant rights, hygiene, home maintenance, budgeting, and roommate disagreements are things all students have to learn to master through trial and error.
How might we include relevant educational materials within a mobile chore app?
Household Documents
Leases, subleases, videos of move-in walkthroughs, students often lacked a centralized place to store this info. Could we build a feature to avoid the dreaded, “can you send me the lease?” question?
How might we create centralized file storage for house-relevant videos and documents?
Iteration
Through many rounds of iteration, I progressed towards a hi-fi prototype.
Three rounds of distinct iterations.
From low-fi sketches, I moved directly into mid and hi-fi wireframes. As I note later in this case study, initial iterations would have benefited from a far more research backed approach. This could have avoided a lengthy iteration cycle.
Iteration one.
My initial mid-fi iteration. Inspired heavily by existing task apps, it contained many additional features that weren't entirely necessary, but characterized the initial look of the chore card.
“Alert” or “ping” feature takes form during this iteration stage.
Chore cards have core functionality, including assignees, title, description, deadline, and repeatability.
Extraneous functionality, like date switching and filters are unnecessary.
Some essential functionality, like being able to create a chore card, is missing as well.
Location-based chore management isn’t obvious, buried in filters.
Iteration two.
The second iteration allowed me to hone-in the styling. A move towards minimalism and emphasis on the chore cards themselves, this iteration represented a step forward for visual design, but two steps back for usability and experience.
Chore card details, like repeatability and deadlines were reduced to tags, which helped with scannability.
Rather than looking like a chore app, it looks more like an individual task app.
Location-based chore management still isn't obvious, buried in filters.
Widget functionality is unique, but not backed by any research insights, and is an unnecessary feature.
Iteration three — prototype.
My third iteration represented a reset of sorts, I revisited my research and narrowed the scope of my app to just chore management.
Location-based chore management was implemented as tags. Other chore card details were reduced to icons.
The widgetboard, which wasn't backed by user research, was replaced with lists and events.
The app header was streamlined to just dates and user profiles.
Addition of bottom navigation.
While tags were an improvement, prototype tests would show they weren't sufficient.
Still too similar to an individual task app rather than a household chore app
Grocery lists and events were unnecessary features, they were typically tracked individually by existing solutions (calendars).
Here's what I changed, and why.
Progressing through a mutitude of iterations not only improved my visual design skillset and design ability, but it also provided the opportunity to make a couple of key design decisions.
From household tasks with filters
Initial iterations simply listed out household chores and tasks, location-based organization were buried in filters.
After
To location-tagged chores
Later iterations represented an initial shift towards chore-management only, rather than general tasks, and used tags.
From a widgetboard
Initial iterations implemented a widgetboard concept. I thought this would add a social flair aspect to the app, where users could add widgets and other tasks.
After
To lists and events
But a widgetboard strayed too far from the initial chore-app scope. It was reduced to lists/events in the prototype, and removed entirely in the final design.
Prototype Tests
But prototype tests revealed I had missed my main insight.
Users loved the app’s design, but the chore cards lacked location-based management.
Based on my research, I knew that households typically concentrated chore management on common areas, like the kitchen, living room, and bathrooms. However, it was clear my first iterations failed to adequately capture this location-based chore management, and were more in line with individual task apps or checklists.
I redid my hi-fi prototypes, and ran user tests once more for validation.
As I iterated over the span of a couple weeks, I was able to make progress toward a user interface that mirrored existing chore systems.
Prototype
Final Design
Prototype
Final Design
Key changes, and why I made them.
Key design decisions I made.
From chores with location tags
The prototype used tags to sort chores by location. While it was a form of location-based chore management, it didn't completely capture current chore charts.
After
To location-grouped chores
I rebuilt the chore screen from the ground up, now users can create locations and add chores to them, offering a digital parallel to their current chore charts.
From lists and events
Users told me that the lists and events widgets in my prototype were cool, but they already used other apps to keep track of these, and that they distracted from the purpose of the app.
After
To a simplified chore screen
Taking prototype feedback in to account, I streamlined my chore screen, removing extraneous widgets and returning the focus to the chores themselves. This change was well-received by users.
From simple document storage
Document storage initially emerged as an additional feature to store important household documents, but users suggested other forms of content they might want to store.
After
To multimedia and help articles
I redid the document page to support multimedia content, like videos and photos, not just lease pdfs. This provided an opportunity to include a solution to the "Adulting" pain point, help articles!
App screens.
The final app screens.
Takeaways
What's next for Housemates?
Exploring key learnings and the app's viability as a product.
Housemates was my first major UI/UX project. In hindsight, tackling a problem space as large as this one, and setting out to design a whole app, was not the greatest idea in retrospect.
Truthfully though, I have little regret. In designing this app I was able to refine my visual design skills, push for constant iteration, and rethink what I knew about the UI/UX design process. Product design is not a straightforward path, and I often found myself getting to a point where I felt “done”, but then returning back to the research or ideation stage to see what I could improve upon.
Even though this was a personal passion project, it addresses a fairly common problem. For an app to be a viable product, however, it needs to generate revenue and satisfy business goals.
I constantly refine my case studies, check back for more.
Built from scratch with Framer and custom code.
Hasith Basnayake, 2024.