Jeremiah Lindsay's DFA Solution

Inspiration

Through conversations with Yale students, I found that the consensus of the laundry experience is frustrating for two reasons: students are competing with one another for open machines, and unawareness of whether machines are free cause students to waste time and energy physically checking.

What it does

My solution's goal is for students to be relieved of their anxieties of 1: not having confidence that they will be able to do their laundry at a specific time, and 2: feeling as though they need to go against other students to do their laundry. My solution does this my collecting laundry use through an ID scanner function on all machines over an extended period of time, analyzing weekly, daily, and hourly patterns of availability, and presenting this information in an understandable way for students through an app. Furthermore, the ID scanning feature supports the use of a togglable "buddy system", where students can help move other students' laundry by scanning a complete machine with clothing still inside, moving it to dryer that is reserved for the ongoing buddy interaction, and informing the student that their laundry has been moved through the app. Stats on how many times you've helped other students are tracked and can be publicly displayed, showing who the true good Samaritans of a college are! This can also become competitive with the implementation of college and campus-wide leaderboards. TLDR; my solution uses ID scans to track current machine usage, create visuals that depict patterns of availability and facilitate collaborative laundry-doing.

How we built it

I used Figma to create a visual app mockup that represents the features of the laundry management system. The design includes a weekly activity heatmap to help students anticipate busy periods, a real-time view of machine availability, and a Laundry Buddy system that can be toggled, machine verification, and notification features. I thought about the project by thinking about laundry as more of a shared environment than just a collection of individual machines. The visual design was inspired by weather apps, using current conditions and forecasts to make an unpredictable experience more understandable and easier to navigate! I also just love the aesthetic of weather apps :)

Challenges we ran into

Features like ID verification and dryer reservations could make the laundry process more reliable, but they also raised questions about how permissions would work, what information students should be able to see, and how to prevent misuse.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm most proud that the app helps students to support one another through the Laundry Buddy system. I am particularly proud of the Buddy feature because it transforms the common inconvenience of being unable to return when a cycle ends into an opportunity for collaboration, and potentially a competition. Who knew laundry could be so fun?!

What we learned

Figma, prompt engineering, workflow and design presentation and explanation.

Built With

• figma