handsome dan's room with in app rewards
machine status page
points with resco rankings
reservation confirmation
landing page
home page
handsome dan points page
coupon exchange page

Inspiration

We started by finding out what Yale students were frustrated about by distributing a Google form to survey student experiences with the laundry system. We received 45 responses, which fell mostly into two categories: add more machines, and get people to move their laundry out on time. However, we realized that the machines were not occupied, rather people were not taking out their loads on time. We brainstormed our ideas based on responses from our survey results, which served as our inspiration. In terms of UI/UX, we were inspired by Yale’s university colors and mascot Handsome Dan.

What it does

Yaundry has 4 main features.

A live status display of machines: Yaundry includes a visual display that allows you to check which machines are occupied and which ones are available before going down to the laundry room. This helps students plan their evenings and weekends more efficiently. In order to accomplish this, we plan on partnering with CSC, which is the laundry provider, to obtain data on machine status the live machine status makes the laundry status easily accessible from anywhere to eliminate guessing involved in a laundry machine’s occupancy
1. A reservation system: Our reservation system only allows for a reservation of the next cycle, not a block of time. For example, if a machine has 20 minutes left on its current cycle, the user’s reservation will only be valid for 10 minutes after the current cycle ends. This ensures that machines can still run if someone doesn’t show up to their reservation time. In terms of technical feasibility, Yale’s laundry machines are internet connected, so CSC, which is the laundry machine provider, API’s can be used to lock the laundry machine when it is reserved and unlock it when the user presses a button on their phone or when the reservation window ends. We decided on this method as it does not add extra hardware costs and would only require software changes.
Notification and timer: One complaint that repeatedly came up in our user survey was students being unaware when their laundry load finishes as laundry can seem trivial in comparison to the plethora of activities occurring on campus. With Yaundry, users receive customizable notifications a few minutes before their cycle ends and again once it completes, and can check the remaining time on any machine at a glance from the status display.
Point system: We decided to gamify the laundry experience via a point system. We grounded this idea in a recurring complaint from user research: people leaving laundry sitting in machines, which holds up the machine’s next cycle. We developed the point system as a low-cost method of increasing the incentive of removing loads more promptly. We designed a two-tier reward structure. Extrinsic rewards can come from a proposed partnership with the YCC to supply restaurant coupon codes redeemable with points; intrinsic rewards can come from unlockable in-app Handsome Dan toys at higher point thresholds, which cost nothing to issue and keep the experience playful.

How we built it

The app UI/UX and product mockup was done in Figma. A custom asset set was hand-illustrated in Procreate, including Handsome Dan, the laundry machines, and the toys in his room.

Challenges we ran into

The main problem we ran into was figuring out the logistics of the reservation system. We were unsure on the practicalities of the system, so we explored various options and used Claude to assist us in our research. After brainstorming with upperclassmen and peers interested in engineering, we eventually decided on theoretically partnering with CSC, and altering the already existing payment system to where it is locked when reserved and only unlockable by the reserver.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of embarking on this journey together and producing a cute little prototype. :)

What we learned

1) Collaboration can help with creativity. Whenever one of us ran into a problem on the side we focused on (Pim Pim with the product mockup, and Zimeng with the logistics), we asked the other person, and discussing the problem allowed us to solve the problem much faster because we bring different perspectives to the table.

2) Using our strengths and skills to complement each other. By focusing on what each one of us was good at, we were able to be very productive and our different strengths are actually what led to the creation of our app.

What's next for Yaundry

1) We want the app to have a feature that allows students to flag broken machines so that the app can directly Yale facilities if a machine is broken. 2) Live status for iPhone homescreen, so that students can see the time remaining on their laundry cycle with a simple tap on their phone screen without clicking into the Yaundry app.