Home
Ease
01
About the Project
HomeEase aims to enhance roommate relationships and create a more organized, enjoyable communal living experience. By providing a unified, user-friendly platform, it helps reduce disorganization, misunderstandings, and conflicts while coordinating chores and tracking bills.
The Problem
Roommates often struggle with disorganization, misunderstandings, and conflicts when managing shared spaces, chores, and bills.
My Responsibilities
Conducting interviews, creating persons, low fidelity prototypes, interactions, high fidelity prototypes, and conducting usability studies.
02
User Research
Contextual Inquiry
During the contextual inquiry phase, we interviewed nine RIT students (2 females, 7 males) unhappy with their roommates, both individually and as households, to understand various roommate situations. Each 30-40 minute semi-structured interview covered communication apps, experiences, expectations, frustrations, personality understanding, time management, and mannerisms. Most students hoped for future improvements despite current disputes.
Affinity Map
Our data analysis revealed that many people tend to accept conflicts with their roommates and try to communicate without causing disputes. Most issues stem from differences in personality, lifestyle, opinions, differing schedules, and moods.
Pain points
Communication Barriers
Differences in lifestyles and opinions cause miscommunication, with many avoiding talks to prevent conflict, worsening issues.
Information Overload
Using multiple apps for communication creates information overload, leading to missed messages, confusion, and difficulty tracking bills, chores,
and updates.
Lack of Accountability
The lack of clear tracking for responsibilities results in unfinished tasks, causing frustration and tension among disorganized roommates.
User Personas
I have a habit of cooking and I clean the kitchen after, my roommates don’t unless reminded many times. We should have set some ground rules, but we didn't.
‘ ‘
’ ’
Atharva Desai
👩🏽
Age/Identifying Gender
24/Male
📍
Location
Rochester, NY
📊
Occupation
Computer Science Graduate Student
🏠
No. of roommates
2
Bio
Atharva is a 24 year old male who lives with 2 other people he met via online community platform. He is a motivated student who works hard for his college and his end goal is to work in a big company as a developer. Atharva lives in a student housing on campus. He loves cooking so he spends a lot of time in the kitchen. He is quite shy which makes it challenging for him to make friends.
Goals
To have roommates that understand his personality and behavior.
To live in a house with fair distribution of responsibilities.
To be able to focus on academics without external obstacles.
To live in a clean, well organized household.
Motivations
Easier and genuine communication with roommates.
A desire to live in a positive environment.
Characteristics
Extrovert
Organizational Skill
Time spent at home
Frustration level
Pain Points/Frustrations
Difference in personalities leads to misunderstandings.
Difficulties in adjusting to new situations due to lack of understanding.
Interference in personal space negatively impacts academics and moods.
Unorganized shared finances leads to budgeting issues.
Forced responsibilities due to unfair contribution in household chores.
Lack of ground rules causes unwanted conflicts.
Apps Used
Common group for everyday conversations
Notes
Managing lists of groceries, things to buy/do
Splitwise
Managing Finances
We sat down to create a list of groceries needed to buy, but it was so boring that we chose to just wing it at Walmart. We ended up spending more and forgetting some stuff.
‘ ‘
’ ’
Divya Sharma
👩🏽
Age/Identifying Gender
22/Female
📍
Location
Rochester, NY
📊
Occupation
Design Graduate Student
🏠
No. of roommates
1
Bio
Divya, a 22-year-old design graduate student, balances her academics with her part-time job at a coffee shop. Despite her busy days, she finds comfort in books and caring for her indoor plants, earning her the cherished title of 'plant mom.' Divya enjoys having people around and often invites friends over to create a warm and welcoming atmosphere, helping her feel more at home and reducing her homesickness.
Goals
To be a part of decisions made in the house.
To see equal contribution in household chores.
To improve communication and develop bonds with roommates.
To be able to freely express concerns, if any.
Motivations
Amicable relationships enhance overall wellbeing.
Indulging in time spent together helps cope with feelings of loneliness.
Characteristics
Extrovert
Organizational Skill
Time spent at home
Frustration level
Pain Points/Frustrations
Is not always involved in & informed about common decisions.
Sometimes feels a lack of personal space and cases of eavesdropping.
Incomplete communication due to low participation on Whatsapp groups.
With time, roommates get lazy in fulfilling their duties.
Pretentious behavior when an external entity is at the house
Apps Used
Common group for everyday conversations
Notes
Managing lists of groceries, things to buy/do
Splitwise
Managing Finances
03
Ideation
Information Architechture
Sketches
04
Design
High Fedility Design
Onboarding
Introduce users to the app and its primary features. Allowing them to sign up using their Email address/Mobile number, Gmail, Facebook, or Apple ID.
Homepage
Let the roommates know the user's mood for the day and view their moods. A feature derived from the data collected during the interviews. "I was unwell and my roommate was not aware, she hosted a party at home that I was not comfortable with"
Task
Daily household chores are organized into tasks that can be updated as needed. Roommates can assign tasks by specifying names, tasks, schedules, and whether they are recurring.
A personal tab allows each person to view all their tasks in one place. Reminders are sent on the day of the task to ensure no one forgets their duties.
Announcements
One of the most data-driven design choices in this project is the announcements feature. This allows roommates to remind or address each other with questions, share updates, or raise concerns.
Users can also see which recipients have read their announcements, ensuring everyone stays informed and engaged.
Groceries
Data revealed that grocery shopping is a frequent activity among roommates, with some users highlighting both personal and shared grocery lists with specific roommates. This feature provides a fun way to manage lists and track updates, showing who made changes and when.
05
Usability Testing
We listed Homease's main features (Groceries, announcements, notifications, tasks, expenses, profile) and created a Usability Testing Script with a greeting, overview, instructions, and recording consent. Each feature of Homese app was a scenario in our Usability Test Script and each action that can performed for each feature, we created tasks.
Pilot Testing
We conducted a group pilot test to check task flow and scenario understanding. One member performed tasks, one interviewed, and two observed.
Issues that were fixed after Pilot testing:
Prototyping bugs
Screen consistency
Inconsistent title bar
Missing pop-ups
5. Unclickable 'See More…'
6. Non-functional grocery buttons
7. Disabled mood addition
Final Testing
After the UTs, we updated an Excel sheet with success rates and user feedback. Participants rated each task from 1 (hard) to 5 (easy).
Our graph shows "Groceries: Task 1" scored 3.5, "Log out" scored 4, and "Move out" scored 4.75. The rest of the tasks were very successful, receiving a 5/5 from all participants.
Findings and feedback
After the UTs, we updated an Excel sheet with success rates and user feedback. Participants rated each task from 1 (hard) to 5 (easy).
Key Positives
1. Recurring tasks are helpful.
2. Announcements are fun.
3. Mood updates convey feelings.
4. Expenses management is convenient.
5. Personal grocery lists are nice.
6. The app is intuitive and familiar.
7. Task images and subtext are clear.
Key Negatives
1. Grocery list icon was unclear.
2. "Recurring" icon should be bigger.
3. Homepage notifications should be scrollable.
4. Show number of new grocery items.
7. "Update" button for groceries was confusing.
8. Notifications didn't appear clickable.
06
Conclusion
Building Homease highlighted the importance of effective communication, offering us numerous lessons along the way.
One major challenge was incorporating all essential information while keeping the design visually appealing and free of clutter, especially given the range of features.
Additionally, interviewees were sometimes reluctant to talk about their roommates, likely due to concerns about potential conflicts. To enhance interview quality in the future, prioritizing confidentiality assurances would be essential.
ParkAway
AudioTour