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01. RESEARCH

I worked with my research team to find insights and produced a slide deck to present to our class. We wanted to discover how to effectively distribute household shores and how to ensure that they were being carried out in a timely manner.

From our research, we sought to understand:

• How housemates currently distribute tasks

• What might prevent housemates from finishing tasks on time

• Common issues in chore distribution that affects the housemates’ relationships

In order to address our questions, we followed a 3-step research plan that would facilitate the course of our understanding: secondary research, user interviews, and photo journals.

Secondary Research

In order to learn more about common pain points involving chores and communication, we looked at data collected from an online research study about roommate conflicts.

User Interviews (8)

After creating a discussion guide, we each conducted 2 interviews with people living in family houses and college dorms/apartments.

Photo Journals (2)

We asked a couple of the interviewees to document moments in real-time when they felt frustrated or happy about the state of their household cleanliness.

02. SYNTHESIS

Different households have different standards of cleanliness,

and there’s more tension among housemates that don’t match similar living styles. Most of these types of households are concerned about fair division of labor and fear of confrontation.

Based on these key insights, we created a target audience to facilitate the ideation process.

• Age 18-25

• Students/People who work that share a living space

• Having difficult times with confrontation

• Might have roommates that change periodically

After forming our synthesis as teams, we continued the rest of the design process on our own and reunited during the end class presentations.

REVISING MY PROBLEM SCOPE

Difficulty with distributing household tasks is most prevalent at the beginning of a housemate’s relationship and if chores continue to not get done fairly. Housemates that are not happy with their chore system tend to avoid confrontation in fear of it affecting personal relationships with their housemates, so…

How might I create a positive space for housemates to safely communicate about their household tasks?

03. IDEATION

A. Diverging

From my collected research, I went broad into various possible solutions, and for each, I listed the pros & cons:

B. Converging

I was able to narrow down my list to 2 potential solutions based on feasibility and uniqueness, and I then created basic sketches to lay out the ideas.

After discussing with classmates and receiving feedback, I decided to go with the mobile task managing app. Although I thought the tracking device would be interesting to design, it lacks features like promoting communication and would have limits to what kind of chores/tasks it can track compared to a mobile app.

From the Lo-Fi sketches, I took out the navigation bar and decided to make the app flow from screens instead of having separate nav pages. I also scrapped the messaging feature and pushed the designs to be more focused gentle confrontation.

My main goal:

→ Allocating tasks and keeping track of everyone’s progress.

Mid-Fi Prototyping — ITERATION #1

04. ITERATION

With my proposed ideas and mid-fi, I recruited 2 participants for user testing to get feedback about my first iteration.

Some key insights from user testing:

• Make distribution of tasks feel more voluntary

  → Rather than housemates assigning chores to other housemates, they should be able to add to the whole group.

• Allow users freedom > having strict due dates

  → There should be a way to change when chores should be finished by (postponing) rather than only being able to delete or create a new task.

Mid-Fi Prototyping — ITERATION #2

Key Changes Implemented in Iteration 2:

1. Changed how tasks are distributed - trying to encourage positive collaboration rather than an assignment-based checklist. When adding a new task, I changed it to be an anonymous option for who uploads a task. Adding a task will add it to the whole group along with notifying selected people, so everyone in the group will be aware of who has done which task.

2. Added a “nudge” feature in cases where a housemate does not do their share of the housework, another housemate can nudge them, which sends them a reminder.

3. Added a” push back” feature for cases when you cannot finish a task due to busy weeks or any other reason. If someone pushes back, it will either stay in their assigned tasks for a later time, or another housemate can take over.

Hi-Fi Prototype