OVERVIEW

Designed a native iOS app that allows users to track and distribute both chores and bills.

METHODS

Agile Framework | Screener Survey | User Interviews | Competitive Matrix Affinity Mapping | Persona Development MoSCoW Prioritization | Design Studio Sketching | Wireframing | Rapid Prototyping | Usability Testing

TOOLS

Miro | G Suite Figma | Keynote

ROLE

Scrum Master | UX/UI Designer UX Researcher | Product Designer

TEAM

Yuki Mochizuki | Tara Jung Jeremy Coleman

TIMEFRAME

Full-time, 16 Days

The Opportunity

We will improve the experience of chore distribution and bill splitting for roommates/housemates who struggle to communicate chore delegation and shared bill responsibilities.

The Problem

Users struggle today because they are unable to implement a reliable chore and bill distribution system that maintains accountability and helps minimize conflict.

Discover

Screener Survey User Interviews
Competitive Matrix
Potential Partnership

Define

Affinity Mapping
“I” Statements & Insights
Persona Development
Problem Statement

Design

Design Studio
Mid-Fi Wireframes
Mid-Fi Prototype
Usability Testing

Deliver

High-Fi Wireframes
High-Fi Prototype
Usability Testing
Stakeholder Presentation

Choosing a Platform

We chose an iOS app as our platform because: they’re convenient, they allow spontaneous user interaction (matching our context), and they’re more likely to be profitable than Android apps.

The Competition

Looking at the competition, we identified several apps already addressing the problem of home organization and communication, as well as some that gamified tasks.

Potential Partners

Finally, we considered potential company partnerships, deciding on Venmo because of their robust mobile payment platform, and our app’s opportunity to expand their user base.

RESEARCH

Talking to Users

Through a screener survey, we learned that 81% of users had divided chores with others in the past, 85.7% had divided bills, and that 54.8% of all surveyed had experienced difficulty doing both.

Synthesizing Research

After interviewing six respondents, we identified several key insights, with one standing out among the rest: users found talking about chores and bills with others they lived with awkward.

Articulating Insights

In order to convey our research insights in an emotionally useful form, we crafted a housemate persona named Jordan, articulating her specific situation and pain points.

DESIGN

The Features

Entering the design phase, deciding on features became important. After careful consideration, we chose to include: a calendar, assignment reminders, and expedited bill-splitting.

The Priority

Because Jordan’s chief pain point was navigating awkwardness, we prioritized a gamified approach to chore and bill distribution, using playfulness as an antidote.

The Game

When creating the game feature for Jordan and her housemates to use, we knew it had to be both simple and engaging, so that the experience would be fun, and each of them would feel invested.

After ideating several solutions, we settled on “Rock, Paper, Scissors” as the best game option to test, since it was both easy to learn, and presented Jordan with a gameplay choice (unlike a chore wheel).

The Test

Because Jordan’s greatest need when distributing bills and chores amongst her housemates is to successfully avoid awkward confrontations, we wanted to test that functionality with users, in order to validate our assumptions.

When conducting usability tests with participants, we found that:

• 3/3 users were successfully able to add a new chore, and play a game to assign it

The Verdict

Overall, users rated the app’s ease of use as 4.6 out of 5, and how satisfied they were with it as 4.9 out of 5.

Throughout testing, users commented on how creative and useful the app’s premise was, and that when next living with housemates they would most certainly use it.

These results validated our assumptions that a gamified approach to chore and bill distribution was both appealing and useful, as well as encouraged us that the app’s overall design and functionality was working successfully.

CONCLUSION

So What?

By asking questions, and carefully listening to people’s responses during our research, my team and I successfully identified a core issue behind most chore and bill distribution conflicts, and calibrated our design approach to address it. By doing this, we successfully avoided simply producing yet another organization app, and instead created a tool that successfully addressed the underlying problem, offering a creative, efficient solution for an otherwise stressful and uncomfortable task.

What’s Next?

Though my team and I were very happy with the results of our sixteen-day design sprint, we identified a few areas we’d like to consider for future iteration and testing, namely:

• Broader color palette experimentation

• Lower navigation label refinement

• Additional game designs and options

• Hiring a developer to consult on the build