Chore Busters
Chore Busters provides a cross-channel experience in a domestic environment for managing household chores among roommates.
The goal is to create a seamless experience across physical and digital channels in order to increase transparency and maintain a systematic method of chore management.
Sriram Hemanth Kumar
Monisha Mansukhani
Ramsiddarth Kalyansundaram
Akanshka
Figma
FigJam
Adobe Firefly
Problem Statement
Setting the Context
To set the context of this project, a storyboard was created to walk us through the problem space. Here, we see 2 roommates arguing over an incomplete household chore. The issue at hand is primarily the lack of communication between the two and no systematic approach to such chores.
User Research
In order to better understand the project brief and existing solutions relevant to the problem statement, thorough secondary research was conducted. This led us to several research papers and articles that helped us understand previous case studies conducted on similar topics.
Consequently, our team went on to conduct preliminary interviews and a co-design workshop with a group of 4 participants. The aim was to help us identify common patterns in terms of the pain points and user needs. The workshop consisted of 3 activities that helped us explore the following areas:
Understand current communication and accountability practices when roommates divide up household maintenance tasks.
Identify common points of friction, tension, and conflict sources related to chore division and responsibilities.
Gather insights into where the roommates themselves see gaps or opportunities for improvements in this area.
Explore perspectives on approaches, tools, or systems that could facilitate greater cooperation.
Research Insights and Design Goals
From all the research conducted, four main themes that helped define our design goals were identified as follows:
Accountability
Taking responsibility for their actions and commitments to the shared living space.
Scheduling
Organize and plan chores to accommodate the individual schedules of all roommates.
Completion
Ensure all shared tasks are fully accomplished.
Communication
Discussing expectations, responsibilities, boundaries and issues.
Design Iterations
We started thinking of different mediums to achieve our design goals and make use of the physical spaces and digital platforms that roommates currently interact with.
The key was to create system consisting of both physical and digital touchpoints that work well together and could be seamless integrated into their lives.
After brainstorming a couple of different concepts, we carefully analyzed the feasibility and benefits of each of them and narrowed down the design to a combination of a mobile application and a digital magnetic board affixed to the refrigerator door in the kitchen.
We further iterated upon this concept and drew some preliminary paper prototypes:
Digital Magnetic Board
Mobile Application
New User Journey Map
Solution
The final design consists of a combination of a physical and digital touch-point: A Digital Magnetic Boaard and a Mobile Application, that work hand in hand.
Digital Magentic Board
Visual Representation of Weekly Tasks
Serves as a daily reminder to roommates on the board for tasks due and helps hold each member accountable.
Tangible Sense of Achievement
The physical act of turning the thumb magnet up to indicate a completed task stimulates a rewarding experience.
Mobile Application
Easy Onboarding Process
A clear and simple onboarding process helps roommates customize their personal preferences, collective list of chores, and chore frequency.
Roommates can also decide together on chore assignment styles or automate it to ensure fairness.
Quick Access to Schedule
Roommates can easily view and adjust the status of tasks on the synced schedule on the go.
The visual representation of the board on their phone helps hold roommates accountable for their responsibilities.
Facilitates Open Communication
Roommates can easily request task switches amongst themselves in case of any personal conflicts.
The app allows roommates to gently address repeated task failures, ensuring accountability in a supportive way.
Timely Reminders
The home screen provides reminders throughout the day about pending tasks.
A daily summary helps track completed and missed tasks, making it easier to identify and resolve issues comfortably.
Final Solution
Onboarding
The storyboard below demonstrates the anticipated experience of a group of roomates collaborating together to overcome the existing household issues.
Using Chore Busters
Here the storyboard speaks from a single roommate's perspective and takes us through their day-to-day experience with using the final Chore Busters solution, both the mobile app and the magnetic board.
Predicated Impact
Increase in timely talks about household chores
Based on the usability testing conducted, we found that users were more likely to address their concerns about household chores and any existing conflicts using the proposed solution. However, they preferred tasks to be automatically updated upon completion.
Takeaways
Design for the user's end goal.
Throughout this project, the goal was design a seamless system of devices that could easily be incorporated into the user's existing lifestyle. It was important to design a solution that allowed the users to collaborate and communicate with each other openly in a safe environment, in order to achieve an unbiased conclusion.
Interactivity increases usage.
From the co-design workshop conducted we concluded that creating interactive platforms with engaging elements that cater to our multiple human senses might prompt the users to take action even if they don't particularly want to. This lead us to look into design solutions that go beyond the basics and stimulate the users regularly.