Login Screen
Homescreen
My Machines Tab
My Machines Tab
Unlock Screen
Unlocked Success Screen
Notifs
Lock Closeup
Machines
Front View
Rear
Front
Diagonal View

Inspiration

We were inspired by the struggles of our roommate, Charlotte, whose underwear was stolen by people in our residential college while she was doing her laundry. That got us thinking... we need a lock that prevents people from accessing your clothes. Since we played around with the mechanics of the washing machine, we realized that the only way to actually open the door was to use the divot in the door, so we used that to our advantage. We also drew inspiration from an app UCLA currently uses and that Miffy mentioned during Office Hours, but we used UCLA Reddit and The Daily Bruin to make it even better.

What it does

We made a CAD prototype and an App Mockup on Figma for this project. The lock should be a physical attachment that blocks the divot mechanically when the user wants to lock up their laundry. Then it connects to an app, which will tell you the status of the machines you are currently using, including the time remaining in your cycle and whether your laundry is finished cycling. It also tells you the status of the other machines in your resco. If your laundry has finished cycling, you have a 1 hour buffer period before the machine unlocks on its own. We will keep spamming you with notifs every 15 minutes until you finish picking up your laundry.

How we built it

We built this by searching up the real specs of the machine by finding the actual model of the machines Yale uses online, then we played around with the machines to find out what mechanism we could use for our physical lock, since we didn't want to replace or recode the brand-new machines at Pauli and other rescos. Then, we made a mockup of the physical product, as well as an accompanying app for Yale students.

Challenges we ran into

We wanted to find a way to make something that would be very feasible for Yale while not hindering the user's laundry experience. We needed a physical component to make it so we didn't have to recalibrate the washing machines (which we didn't want to do since the machines (at least in our resco) are new). So, we had to come up with a very compact lock that had a mechanism that we could simply add onto the machine instead of playing around with the coding.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are mainly proud of how far we've come in skill-building with this project. This was no easy feat since Juleen and I are not the most proficient in AutoCAD or Figma (in fact, it was our first time using Figma). We learned so much and can't wait to take up more projects!

What we learned

We learned how laundry machines work (lol) and how to use Figma and CAD to convey our ideas to an audience.

What's next for Yail

We would love to actually code or vibecode Yail so it can be fully functional. We wish to learn how to integrate coding into Figma to actually make our app come to life! For this, we also want to explore Bluetooth technology with locks and electronics.