Mobile App design
With share housing being a popular form of accommodation amongst people aged 18–35, we wanted to look into the dynamics and peoples views on share housing in order to develop a product that could fill a void in a market we felt was lacking attention. How could we provide a product that could be useful across all demographics, and add value to the overall experience of living in a share house.
Role:
UX Designer
Timeframe:
3 weeks
Client:
Personal Project
The Process
My Responsibilities:
User interviews, Surveying, Analysis, Insight collection, Wireframing, UI Design, Prototyping, User testing.
The Problem
We believe equal distribution of household responsibilities and creating accountability for housemates within share houses will achieve a harmonious community environment for all. By simplifying the delegation of tasks and organisation of expenses, we can reduce the possibility of interpersonal conflict amongst housemates. Therefore, allowing our users to co-exist in share-house accomodation by working together and creating stronger relationships amongst each other.
Research
Over the course of the two days we conducted six 1 on 1 interviews with people aged 21-35 and who are currently living in share-house accommodation or have done so in the past 12 months.
A smaller sample of questions was sent via a facebook survey to participants who met the criteria, these two methods allowed us to collect both quantitative and qualitative data to identify the common pain points/themes that users have experienced during their time living in a share house.
Research Methods
Research Goals
1. Understand how housemates are responsible for cleaning and household tasks
2. Learn how housemates and house holds organise splitting and payments of bills
3. Discover how all housemates stay updated with all social events and urgent house issues
Survey results
The social media survey was popular amongst our group’s network, it was live for 2 days and received a total of 78 responses.
Questions were focused on how households operated, such as frequency of house cleaning, bill paying and delegating of responsibilities.
The results gave us a greater idea of how share houses worked and the different types of systems in place that allowed house hold responsibilities to be met.
1 on 1 interview
User interviews were the opportunity to dig deeper into the dynamics within share houses and factors that effected them. The style was more conversational than interview, with the goal of with us asking more about personal experience and how they felt in certain situations that were common within share houses etc. How do you feel when housemates are not sharing tasks evenly? How would this affect the personal relationships between housemates?
The team synthesised the data from the research collected and were able to define 5 common themes that all participants found important to their living experience during the research.
The research allowed us to understand the motivation and benefits of why people choose to live in share houses which includes, cheaper costs/affordable living, more central locations and social environments. The other side to this was the emotional and behavioural factors and how the actions of themselves or other house mates effect the general feeling within a house .
Ultimately we discovered that people living in share houses like to live in a clean house with a healthy social environment but most don't like to take initiative or be responsible for delegating tasks. In other words no one wants to be the house minder, as it can lead to the break down of relationships and creates tension within the house.
Define
Common Themes
1. Responsibilities - Shared fairly between housemates, everyone doing their bit goes a long way.
2. Cost - Most people live in sharehouses because it’s cost affective and allows them to live closer to the cbd.
3. Cleaning - A clean space is important to people, everyone feels a responsibility to clean but also want it shared evenly.
4. Interpersonal - Good communication helps build solid relationships between people. When issues rise around house hold responsibility it causes tension between housemates.
5. Community - The social aspect of a share house allows people to make new friends and build relationships with strangers, that creates a community environment.
“No one wants to be the house nanny and be responsible for everyone and everything. It’s like you end up coming across as nagging and annoying ”
User Peronsa
Charlie is an 26 yea old university student with a part-time job, that as moved inner city to be closer to his university. Charlie like to be able to take advantage of the easy access to local bars, gyms, shops and public transport.
As he only works part time, share housing allows him to split the costs of living and enables him to also be able to save a small part of his income, this affordance wouldn't be available to him if he were renting a place on his own.
Charlie believes that when all house hold responsibilities are shared evenly and house mates are accountable, the general environment within the house is pleasant and friendly, which in turn reduces tension and conflict between house mates.
Ideate
The team gathered together for a brainstorming session to define the key features our users would require to achieve their goal of creating an harmonious community environment within the shared house. Focusing on the 5 common themes that were discovered through our research analysis, we decided we would need a feature for each point to address the pain points being experienced.
App Features
Cleaning - A cleaning roster that can be setup to automatically update weekly and reassign tasks too housemates.
Costs - Ability to split expenses for bills and rent, with the application notifying users when bills are due with their share.
Responsibilities - A shopping list with where users can advise what shared household items are required and who’s turn it is to purchase them.
Interpersonal - Messaging feature where you can have a group chat and 1 on 1 text exchanges between housemates.
Community - A bulletin board on the home screen to keep housemates up to date with upcoming tasks, bills and social events .
User Flow
Design
Wireframes
Our early wireframe designs focused on making sure all the key features were easily accessible to the user.
Given our user is tech savvy but time poor, our early drafts of the onboarding screens included the option to log in or sign up on 3 of the 4 coaching screens. We felt this would give the user the quick option to opt out of a coaching screen and be able to create an account.
A key feature idea for HouseMate was to be able to have a bulletin board style homepage that alerted users of upcoming household matters. With each users bulletin board personalised with their own tasks and notification on the home screen, they would be able to see if there's any tasks that require their attention or messages from housemates.
Users would also be able to view the progress of tasks for other housemates by navigating to any of the main pages to view the full cleaning roster or expenses list.
Testing
Usability Tests
After the completion of the low-fidelity proto-type, it was time to have the design tested to learn how users interact with HouseMate and gain some valuable feedback on the features that have been implemented.
The usability test would be based on scenarios where the user was asked to complete tasks that related to the key features of the app. We collected feedback based on ability to navigate, task difficulty and screen layout.
Key Objectives
1. Onboarding - See if users can successfully onboard and create a house profile.
2. Task completion - Are users are able to successfully add tasks and expenses to their house.
3. Navigation - Users understand the functions of each feature and can navigate to the correct screens to complete tasks.
Usability Test Results
We conducted 10 usability tests over two days, 6 of the participants used for testing were the same people we originally interviewed during the research phase.
We found that although each user was able to complete each tasks with ease, they had issues with the amount of screens to complete a task, the navigation/icons, onboarding login options and lay out of the home screen.
Key Feedback
Notice board felt like it was a duplicate of information on the feature pages.
We addressed this by personalising each users home screen to show only what was relevant to them at any given time. We also wanted to pin recurring tasks and reminders to alert users when rent was due and what day the bins needed to be taken out.
The Home & navigations icons used for the settings/profile edit wasn’t clear to users
Changing the home icon to a gear setting, allows users to clearly identify how to navigate to the main home screen and not the house profile. We also updated some of the main navigation icons to better reflect the screens they relate to.
The log in options in the coaching screens were confusing to users.
We decided to remove the log in options from the home screen and have a main log/sign up page at the end of the coaching screens.
High fidelity design
Conclusion
Overall though the team is very happy with the result of the project and feel we have designed an app that can be of real value to its users lives. HouseMate simplifies the delegation of house hold tasks, tracking of their progress and the sharing of expenses amongst housemates to ensure that all responsibilities are not only completed but shared evenly.
Currently with share housing being popular amongst our target audience, we believe there is a large market to capitalise on and will allow us to assist our users in achieving their end goal of creating a harmonious community environment within their share house.