A mobile app concept app designed to help ease tensions between roommates.
Living with roommates is never easy. Lifestyles clash and it can be hard to establish rules for everyone to follow. Additionally, there are certain topics, such as expenses, that are important to communicate. For my final course project, I was tasked with designing a product related to roommate management.
User Research
Prototyping
User Testing
September 2020 - October 2020
Balsamiq
Adobe XD
Many college students do not have an effective method to communicate housing-related needs. This is frustrating because it incites points of tension between roommates.
HouseMate, a mobile app concept app designed to help ease tensions between roommates by providing a systematic way to assign tasks and split costs.
The app opens up to the task page, which presents users with a list of pending tasks. Users can scroll through the cards, which each display an assignee, task description, and due date. New tasks can be easily created and customized by tapping the + at the top corner.
The expenses page helps roommates remain transparent about costs. Users can view expenses in three ways: recent transactions, group member balances, and total spendings. Expenses can be fully customized, allowing users to split costs directly within the app.
Each user has access to their profile page. Here they will find notifications, incomplete tasks, settings, and help. Users can also view, change, and create new groups.
In order to gather quantitative data, I created a survey that was completed by 11 college students. These results allowed me to identify general trends within roommate behavior and help me validate the problem.
90.9%
Of those surveyed experience problems with their roommates.
63.6%
Of those surveyed do not find their current communication system effective.
I conducted a competitive analysis to better understand my users' current solutions and identify potential gaps in the products.
Based on my research, I developed two user personas to help define my users.
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I reframed my insights into the following HMW statement to help generate possible solutions.
"How might we create a product that helps students communicate housing-related needs and information so they can create comfortable living environments."
I narrowed my findings into a set of goals to help guide me as I began brainstorming solutions. By doing so, I would be able to ensure that my later design decisions were backed by research and did not stray away from the problem I was trying to solve.
At this point, I decided that a mobile app would be the best medium because it would make this information more accessible. Additionally, the target audience already heavily relied on their mobile phones.
I quickly sketched these potential solutions through a handful of screens. At this point, I decided to focus on three main features: tasks, expenses, and lists. My goal was to maintain consistency across the interface in order to reduce user's need to learn and eliminate confusion.
I turned my sketches into a paper prototype to test my ideas early on. I performed usability tests with two users by giving them a set of tasks to complete.
Based on the results of my usability tests, I identified a few areas to modify in my next iteration.
Sidebar menu
The side bar menu was difficult for users to quickly find. As a result, tasks that required access to the menu took longer to complete.
Shared lists
Users revealed that the shared lists function was not something they would likely use.
For my next iteration, I created low-fidelity wireframes. I replaced the sidebar menu with a bottom navigation bar to improve discoverability. Additionally, I decided to simplify the app by focusing only on two main features: task management and money management.
I had a great time working on this project because it allowed me to further develop my UX design skills. I gained a better understanding of when to prioritize details and when to focus on low-fi sketches and wireframes.
This project also taught me the value of working with a team, as I often reached out to my peers when working on this project. The feedback and advice I received were incredibly helpful and helped me to further refine my app.
