Chore Busters
Interactive domestic tech design for efficient chore completion for roommates.
Overview
Chore Busters provides a cross-channel experience in a domestic environment for managing household chores among roommates. The aim is to explore the needs and challenges around chore division in a shared living space.
The main goal is to create a seamless experience across physical and digital channels in order to increase transparency and maintain a systematic method of chore management.
Team
4 Designers
(Academic Project)
My Role
User Research
Co-Design Workshop
Wireframing & Prototyping
Visual Design
Usability Testing
Tools Used
Figma
Figjam
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Firefly
Miro
Timeline
5 weeks
(January 2024 - February 2024)
To set the context of this project, a storyboard was created to walk us through the problem space.
Here, we see 2 roommates arguing over an incomplete household chore. The issue at hand is primarily the lack of communication between the two and no systematic approach to such chores.
In order to better understand the project brief and existing solutions relevant to the problem statement, thorough secondary research was conducted. This led us to several research papers and articles that helped us understand previous case studies conducted on similar topics.
Consequently, our team went on to conduct preliminary interviews and a co-design workshop with a group of 4 participants. The aim was to help us identify common patterns in terms of the pain points and user needs. The workshop consisted of 3 activities that helped us explore the following areas:
From all the research conducted, four main themes that helped define our design goals were identified as follows:
We started thinking of different mediums to achieve our design goals and make use of the physical spaces and digital platforms that roommates currently interact with.
The key was to create system consisting of both physical and digital touchpoints that work well together and could be seamless integrated into their lives.
After brainstorming a couple of different concepts, we carefully analyzed the feasibility and benefits of each of them and narrowed down the design to a combination of a mobile application and a digital magnetic board affixed to the refrigerator door in the kitchen.
We further iterated upon this concept and drew some preliminary paper prototypes:
Digital Magnetic Board
Mobile Application
Final Solution
The final design consists of a combination of a physical and digital touch-point: A Digital Magnetic Boaard and a Mobile Application, that work hand in hand.
Onboarding
The storyboard below demonstrates the anticipated experience of a group of rommates collaborating together to overcome the existing household issues.
Using Chore Busters
Here the storyboard speaks from a single roommate's perspective and takes us through their day-to-day experience with using the final Chore Busters solution, both the mobile app and the magnetic board.
Predicted Impact
Takeaways
Design for the user's end goal.
Interactivity increases usage.
Throughout this project, the goal was design a seamless system of devices that could easily be incorporated into the user's existing lifestyle. It was important to design a solution that allowed the users to collaborate and communicate with each other openly in a safe environment, in order to achieve an unbiased conclusion.
From the co-design workshop conducted we concluded that creating interactive platforms with engaging elements that cater to our multiple human senses might prompt the users to take action even if they don't particularly want to. This lead us to look into design solutions that go beyond the basics and stimulate the users regularly.