Chores tile

Process

We began our research process by conducting secondary research on the problem space. We read about research and articles to learn about what people are doing in solving the problem.

After we gained more knowledge of the context, we began our primary research in the form of interviews and observation. We learned about the main challenges that college students have with discussing chores, and by re-thinking our apartment space and roommate relationships ourselves, experienced them first-hand.

Key quotes

“Setting rules is important for our communication.”
“We set rules for throwing away garbage and keeping the kitchen clean.”
“Since everyone is cooking at home, the kitchen got over crowded sometimes. ”
“People are lazy.”
“Roommates usually have different ideas about cleaness. Reaching a consensus of cleaness is difficult.”

Painpoints

Awkwardness while talking about kitchen chores and responsibilities.
Lack of motivation, people waiting for someone else to clean up.
Lack of communication, not knowing what others have done and feel imbalanced.

How might we:
improve college roommate relationship by helping them managing Chores ?

After analyzing our research findings, and setting our HMW proposal, we had these desigh goals:

Reduce passive-aggressive communication, encourage active communication
Encourage colleage students to be more responsible.
Motivate roommates to keep the kitchen clean and neat.

reflection

1. this project was particularly interesting because we challenged ourselves to think about interfaces beyond screen and leverage existing environment.

2. I had a great team in this project, we each contributed significantly throughout the process and every progress or decision was made by the whole team.

3. next steps for this project would be more thorough user testing, which we wasn’t able to do during quarantine.

Chores Tile