Routeam

Let’s face it - living with roommates during college can be fun, but coordinating household responsibilities and managing finances? Not always a walk in the park. Here’s how we turned chaos into collaboration.

Overview

Living with roommates in college often comes with the everyday challenge of juggling shared responsibilities, from splitting bills to keeping up with chores. This common struggle became the focus of our project.

TIMELINE: 10 weeks
TOOLS: Figma & Figjam
PLATFORM: Responsive Mobile App

CLIENT: IN4MATX 148
TEAM: 4 students (Design)
MY ROLE: Lead Designer

Routeam

We embarked on an extensive design process to address the communication challenges among college students living together.

Our approach was multifaceted, incorporating:

  • Competitive analysis, user research, persona development, storyboarding, and the creation of prototypes at various levels of fidelity.

    • This recognition stemmed from observations and discussions with our target demographic.

    • Iterative testing and feedback sessions refined my solutions based on real user input.

"How might we improve communication about household responsibilities for students living together so that residents can better manage their finances and chores?"

Problem Statement:

Competitive Analysis

I organized a competitive analysis to understand the existing solutions in the market.

Market Solutions:

  • Analyzing several existing apps and platforms aimed at shared living arrangements (e.g., Splitwise, Roomie, and others).

  • Found that most apps focused on either financial management or basic task coordination.

  • We wanted to emphasize shared understanding.

User Research

We interviewed people who:

  • Established ground rules early on in their living arrangements found it easier to maintain their responsibilities.

  • Expressed reluctance to address upfront their expectations regarding chores, financial reimbursements, and noise levels with their roommates.

  • Shared that they were comfortable sharing their schedules with their roommates to notify them of their general whereabouts.

Affinity Diagram

The affinity diagram revealed key roommate pain points like unclear tasks and poor communication.

Scenario task flows helped us design smooth, realistic paths for splitting bills and managing chores.

Scenario Task Flows

Direct User Quotes

“I love my roommates, but since I feel like I’m a friend more than a roommate, I feel a little lame bringing up the chores and finances, especially since I’m a generally non-confrontational person. It would help.”

— Interview Participant

“This app would be especially useful during the beginnings of moving in, when everyone isn’t as familiar or comfortable with each other at the start… it’s a great jumping off point. I would use it during move in weeks.”

— Interview Participant

“I feel bad because I’m the only one who’s out of the house the most, so I feel bad that I might not be contributing to chores as much as the others. I would love to have a way to be notified about something like that.”

— Interview Participant

User Personas

Sketches & Storyboards

The research findings were synthesized using affinity diagrams to organize and categorize collected data, revealing patterns and themes. These insights guided my design direction and feature prioritization based on user needs. My design process involved creating wireframes and prototypes at different fidelity levels seen here!

Storyboard

Mid Fidelity

Low Fidelity

Page Flow of Routeam

Intuitive Flow:

My page flow visually represents the intuitive structure and navigation we designed to streamline household management.

Home Screen: Access Settings, Finances, Chores, and Notifications.

Settings: Customize roles, adjust preferences, and edit ground rules.

Finances: Manage payments, budgeting, and shopping lists.

Chores: Add, assign, and track tasks with flexible options.

What I Prioritized:

Clear Pathways: Guides users through decisions, ensuring efficient household management.

My Design Philosophy: Simplifying complex tasks while offering flexibility for diverse needs.

Being Data-Driven: Scenario task flows informed feature accessibility and real-life use cases.

Prototyping: Sketches, storyboards, and wireframes helped refine the user journey and design throughout the entire process.

Consolidated Screen Flow

Final Prototype →

Throughout the quarter, my team followed a user-centered design process, utilizing personas, storyboards, and user research to understand and address user needs.

While my teammates focused more on UX research, I led the prototyping and design efforts.

I created multiple prototypes with increasing fidelity, using continuous iteration and user feedback to refine features.

This process culminated in a final prototype that effectively aligns with the core needs and preferences of our target audience!

Reflection & Growth

  • Challenge #1

    During testing, it became evident that users often overlooked the 'Skip for Now' options within the app. This oversight led to frustration among users who preferred to defer certain tasks or decisions to a later time.

    Impact: The lack of visibility for these options could discourage users from engaging further with the app, especially if they feel compelled to make decisions or perform tasks they are not ready for.

  • Challenge #2

    Users reported feeling overwhelmed by the amount of information presented on the 'Finances' and 'Chores' screens. The high information density led to cognitive overload, making it difficult for users to quickly grasp the information or decide on the next steps.

    Impact: This overload could significantly reduce the efficiency of user interactions with the app, potentially leading to disuse if the users find it too cumbersome to navigate.

  • Challenge #3

    Feedback indicated confusion regarding how rules and agreements are shared and communicated among roommates within the app. Users were unsure of the mechanism through which these rules were established and disseminated.

    Impact: The lack of a clear rule-sharing mechanism could undermine the app's goal of facilitating collaboration and shared responsibility, as it may hinder effective communication and agreement on household norms.

  • Challenge #4

    Some users found certain icons within the app to be non-intuitive, leading to a learning curve where they had to deduce the icons' meanings through trial and error.

    Impact: While not a significant barrier to using the app, inconsistent iconography could slow down the initial user experience and lead to minor frustrations as users familiarize themselves with the interface.

  • Challenge #5

    The notifications page was critiqued for not clearly differentiating the urgency of various notifications. This ambiguity could make it challenging for users to immediately identify which notifications require prompt attention.

    Impact: Although this issue is unlikely to prevent users from reading and responding to notifications, it may lead to less efficient management of tasks and communications within the app.

Here’s what
I learned!

    • This project showcased not only my design process and problem-solving skills but also underscored the collaborative nature of UX design for me!

    • Through close collaboration with my team, we delved into user research, prototyping, and iterative design to create a solution tailored to the needs of our target demographic.

    • Our team had a lot of ideas of where to take this app, so we learned how to communicate our ideas, schedule meetings to work on deliverables, and manage our time efficiently.

    • Being mindful of what we needed to accomplish instead of what we wanted to accomplish helped us keep our goals in mind.

    • Throughout this process, I gained proficiency in conducting user interviews, a cornerstone of user-centered design, which provided invaluable firsthand insight into user needs, preferences, and pain points.

    • Our process naturally followed the Double Diamond framework: we began by diverging to explore a wide range of possibilities and user frustrations, then converged to define our key problem spaces.

    • We explored and tested potential solutions. Time constraints required us to carefully prioritize features. While we originally explored ideas like gamifying task completion, we ultimately focused on delivering a strong core experience.

    • I became adept at implementing design changes based on user feedback and iterative testing. Each round of refinement moved us closer to a more intuitive and user-aligned final product, a reflection of the iterative nature of the Double Diamond process.

    • I had a great experience working with my group and I found that I worked well under the deadlines that the professors gave me.

    • Out of my entire team, I had the most experience with Figma and was able to lead the team’s design process. It came in handy to have experience in design software, and I gained more by being able to teach it to others.

    • I do wish that we had a larger audience to conduct a survey to gain statistics to base our work off of, instead of having to conduct more personal interviews just to gain some experience in doing statistical analysis.

    • However, we were still able to gain valuable information from our research. My main takeaway from this entire project was solidifying my knowledge of a structured design process, communicating ideas and most importantly, working with a team.

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