HomePeace

Helping roommates live together more happily and with fewer conflicts

Living with roommates is very common among young adults and it has advantages, like paying a lower rent, but also disadvantages. One disadvantage is that a lot of conflicts between roommates may arise and can negatively impact their lives. Hence, it is important to address the conflicts and try to avoid them.

HomePeace is an app that works as a one-stop shop to help not only address conflicts between roommates but also prevent conflicts from happening in the first place.

OVERVIEW

TYPE

Design Challenge

TIMELINE

3 days (Feb 2022)

UX/UI Designer

PLATFORM

Mobile

ROLE

— End-to-end design process

— Develop design concept based on prompt

— Create brand identity

RESPONSIBILITIES

How might we help people to avoid and address conflicts between roommates?

PROBLEM

When living with roommates it is not unusual to have conflicts related to who will do the house chores, how bills should be split, how grocery shopping will be done, among others. However, living in peace with roommates is essential to have healthy relationships and good academic or work performance.

Considering people are always carrying their phones, a mobile app could have functionalities to help solve this problem. From a business perspective, investing in such an app is valuable since most young adults live with roommates at some point in their lives.

High-level goals of the project

GOALS

01

Help roommates address and avoid conflicts by organizing chores, bills and house rules

02

Leverage gamification to motivate roommates to do the house chores assigned to them

03

Create a bond between roommates through activities

The HomePeace design challenge was successfully completed in 3 days.

OUTCOMES

Pages presentation created and submitted to company

22

Personas defined to represent different user groups

2

5

High-fidelity wireframes designed of the main screens of the app

8

Screen concepts created for the main user flow

Performing market research

MARKET RESEARCH

In order to better understand the problem space, I did some research to find out what are the existing apps that could help roommates live together.The existing apps help users split group bills, track chores and share lists and calendars. However, these apps focus on one specific feature instead of being one-stop shop to users. Moreover, the apps I found do not target roommates.

Having one app targeted at roommates that contains all the features in one place could improve the user experience and make conflicts less frequent and easier to resolve.

Diving deeper into the problem

USER RESEARCH

I created a mind map to organize my thoughts on which concepts I should explore. Based on the mind map, I was able to create a set of interview questions based on 5 main topics:

— conflicts

— communication

— agreements

— house chores

— bills

I then conducted interviews with 4 people in my network who live with roommates aiming to understand who the users are, their pain points, wants and needs.

Mind map

Conducting interviews with the participants allowed me to understand what their difficulties are when living with roommates and what they need and want.​ After the interviews, I was able to narrow down who the users are.

Who are the users?

Creating personas to represent each user group

USER PERSONAS

I created personas to represent the two user groups I uncovered during research:

  • Julia represents young working professionals

  • Nicholas represents university students

Transforming goals, needs and frustrations into requirements

REQUIREMENTS

Based on Julia’s and Nicholas’ goals, needs and pain points, I defined the following requirements:

  • Julia and Nicholas rely on their calendars to keep track of exams, deadlines, etc. Being able to easily sync their calendar to the shared calendar on the app, will not only allow roommates to see each other’s availability but also allow the app to assign chores to each roommate.

  • Gamification elements help to transform tiresome chores into something more fun. Julia and Nicholas get more motivated to complete their chores as they accumulate points. Consequently, gamification keeps Julia and Nicholas interested in the app.

  • Considering that Julia and Nicholas have very busy schedules, reminders will help them to remember chores and complete them by the due date.

  • Understanding Julia's and Nicholas' context and needs is essential to create a usable, easy to use, and non-distracting experience that will help them achieve their goals.

Making assumptions necessary to move the project forward

ASSUMPTIONS

The following assumptions were made for this project:

— Julia and Nicholas are looking specifically for an app to help them avoid and resolve conflicts with their roommates

— Julia, Nicolas and their roommates have access to Wi-Fi or cellular data, so they have no problems accessing the app

— All roommates are willing to use the app

— All roommates are willing to share their calendar

— Julia, Nicholas and their roommates use Google Calendar for their tasks and events

— The app will assign tasks equally based on roommates' availability

— Julia, Nicholas and their roommates are honest and will only mark chores as completed once they have actually finished them

APP FLOW

Designing the app flow

I designed the following app flow to articulate how Julia and Nicholas would go through the app to reach their goals. Since the main functionality of the app is the task scheduler, I focused on one specific flow, from signing up to completing chores and getting points.

It is worth noting that all roommates can propose a new house rule, but all roommates have to accept it in order for it to be created. Similarly, whenever a roommate suggests a new chore, it is necessary that all the other roommates agree to it before it is attributed to one roommate and appears on the shared calendar.

The shared calendar automatically considers each roommate's personal calendar after they sync it to the app.

Turning insights into design solutions

WIREFRAMING

The next step was to create medium-fidelity wireframes as the first iteration of what the app would look like and how it would function based on the insights gathered.

Medium-fidelity wireframes

Sign up screen

If their home has not been created in the app yet, users can build a home, give it a name and add info about it.

If their home has been created, users must type the home code they got from their roommates in order to join the home.

Choose home screen

Any roommate can create new rules. However, all roommates must accept the new rule before it is created.

Users can see how many points they have. the top 3 roommates in the podium and the leaderboard below it.

Home screen

Users sync their personal Google Calendar and the app uses this info when assigning chores and checking availability for an activity.

Users have to mark chores as completed after finishing them. Users earn points when completing chores by the deadline, and lose points otherwise.

Calendar screen

The app assigns each chore to one roommate based on their availability, the amount of chores each roommate has been given and the chore due date.

After a roommate proposes a new chore, all roommates must agree to it, otherwise, the chore will not be created.

New chore screen

Due to time constraints, not all screens were created as wireframes. However, this is how they would work:

Users can use their cameras to take a picture of receipts, which the app will scan and automatically extract important information. It is possible to organize bills, keep track of expenses and see how much each roommate owes.

Bills screen

Roommates can create shared lists for different purposes, such as grocery shopping, shared items in the house, among others.

Lists screen

Contains the group chat and individual chat with each roommate. Users can use the chat to have casual conversations or talk about awkward or delicate topics that would make them feel uncomfortable talking in person.

Chat screen

High-fidelity wireframes

I then elaborated a visual identity and created high-fidelity wireframes of the app.

Sign up screen

Choose home screen

Home screen

Calendar screen

New chore screen

Reasoning behind design decisions

FINAL THOUGHTS

I am very happy with the outcome of this project. I believe my proposed solution helps to solve the problem of not only addressing but also helping to avoid conflicts between roommates.

  • Gamification

    Users accumulate points after completing chores. The person with more points at the end of the month can, for example, choose the menu for the monthly roommate dinner and doesn't have to pay. This keeps users more motivated to complete their chores and keep using the app.

  • Calendar

    The app assigns chores equally, hence all roommates receive the same amount of chores to complete. This allows roommates to keep track of who contributed to what chore and helps to avoid discussions about who should do each chore.

  • Rules by everyone

    Rules are only effective if all roommates accept them. All rules are shown on the home screen. Roommates are more likely to follow rules as the rules are explicitly shown in the app and all roommates have agreed to them.

  • Communication

    Chats can be useful when not all roommates are in the house. Moreover, people that get uncomfortable talking in person can take advantage of chats. The app can improve communication between roommates with group and individual chats.

  • Activities

    Users can suggest fun activities to do together with roommates, such as "movie night" or "Taco Tuesday". Spending quality time with roommates helps to create a bond and makes communication and co-living easier.

LESSONS LEARNED

What would I do differently?

Considering the time constraint, some things had to be left out of this project. If I had more time to work on this project, I would:

— Continue the Design Thinking process

— Create an interactive prototype, continuing Prototype stage

— Test the prototype with users and iterate based on their feedback

— Work on other features and pages, going beyond the specific user flow shown in this case study

— Create an onboarding flow to collect information about users' interests and hobbies in order to automatically suggest activities they can do with their roommates

— Evaluate feasibility by researching the technology necessary to support the experience (Would the Gooogle Calendar integration be possible? How would the app automatically assign tasks?)

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