homease

Prototype link (Please submit a link to a playable prototype, not a link to your design file) Link
Describe your project (max 150 words) Introducing homease, your ultimate companion for harmonious group living! Tired of the chaos that comes with shared spaces? Homease is here to transform your living experience into a seamless symphony of organization, communication, and shared joy. Picture this: effortlessly divvying up chores, splitting expenses without the headache, and a shared calendar that aligns everyone's schedules. Homease also has a reminder feature that allows you to customize your notification for anything: an upcoming event or a chore that needs to be completed.

Our app goes beyond the practicalities. It's your virtual hub for bonding, celebrating achievements, and keeping the group vibe positive. Each house member has a personal profile that displays their current status, important information such as birthdays and allergies, and customizable notes. Share a laugh, a thought, or even a virtual heart on Homease's bulletin board. Homease hopes to bring an ease of mind to your home <3

Describe your research process and findings. If you conducted any surveys or interviews, please include the survey form and/or interview questions here. If you conducted secondary research by pulling from online sources, please include a link to your sources. (Max 500 words) We conducted a survey through Google Forms in order to gain better insight into the kinds of issues that are of highest concern to the undergraduate population. We ask a few questions about their college, year, whether they live on or off campus, how many people they share a living space with, and if they have someone who shares a room with them. Afterwards, we asked them to rank which aspects of group living they face the most challenges with between chores, expenses, communication, scheduling, and sharing appliances/food. In order to expand, we asked what kinds of issues they face in those aspects through a free response question for each. Lastly we asked if they have any other good or bad experiences with their roommates, in order to collect any other information that we might have not considered yet.

We found that our participants lived with 4-6 people and there was a mix of on/off campus living as well as some having a direct roommate or not. Our findings showed that the highest ranking of concerns fell under chores and scheduling. There were complaints of there being no schedule at all for chores, or that people would forget to follow the schedule (or choose not to), and that there wouldn’t be a regular cleaning schedule for the common area, which would be left to get messy. For scheduling, there were issues of finding common times because there are a lot of roommates to find common times in between as well as issues of respecting quiet hours.

Link to survey: https://forms.gle/TexvyeWfP8JzYfc5A

Describe your most important design decisions. What research findings and/or user testing results led you to make these decisions? (Max 500 words) Our most important decisions were to choose what aspects of roommate life to prioritize. This was informed through both our survey and personal interviews. We found that scheduling, expense sharing, and communication were main issues that roommates experienced, and so we aimed to combat these with our shared calendar, expenses, and bulletin board tab. Through 1 on 1 interviews, we also found that people wanted ways to check who was at home, as well as make announcements to the group about grievances, which is why we added the status updates and community tab. There were many other features that we considered, such as shared resource management (ie. food, appliances), and an advice bot to help you tackle conflict with your roommates, but ultimately based on our research these became the key features to include.