Mobile app to improve lives by resolving conflicts
Shared living space is easy on your pockets but it comes with a few problems like, who cleans the bathroom this week? who does the dishes? and many such awkward conversations and heated arguments. NoMess app is built to address such issues with some fun!
Lately, climbing student-loan debts, delayed marriage ages, rising house prices and stagnant incomes, have led to increased numbers of doubled-up households. Due to these problems, sharing an apartment or house is almost inevitable.
Let's take a peek into Pat's life. He lives with his roommate Grace. They both enjoy living together. It's all fun and games until one of them have to clean the shared space!
"I'm a young professional finding it difficult to share the burden of household chores in a shared living space because, when I interact with my roommate about it, we end up having heated arguments. This makes me feel frustrated and exhausted."
I scoured the internet and found a lot of articles about adults living in shared spaces. In a survey, Zillow found out that, about 30% of adults between the age group of 23 to 35 lived with roommates.
And with roommates, we face similar problems like Pat does.
My target users are people who are between ages 18–35 and have lived with roommates for over a year.
As a designer, I always keep looking for feedback to improve my work. With time constraints, my initial version of NoMess app was focused on finding a digital solution to users problem and designing a functional app with basic UI. I decided to revisit NoMess app to work on the UI and improve the user's experience.
I decided to go through a usability test for v1.0 with 2 users. While observing the users, I noticed 4 major shortcomings in my app.
I started off with a goal of redesigning just the UI. After I learned about the v1.0 shortcomings, I felt the need to dive deeper into the app. So, I started with sketching out a taskflow diagram to understand how a user would use NoMess app for a better end-to-end experience.
Now it was time to test the new design with the same 2 users who tested v1.0 of the app. Users could clearly distinguish the improvement in UI from the first version. However, they gave me a feedback on a few functional aspects to be improvised on the new version.
Things that I considered for my redesign of v2.0 :
Through my final project output, I learned that, the design thinking approach helped me to understand exactly what users were expecting out of my app.
Presentation of NoMess app to my class was very well received. Everyone found the solution to be very engaging and a fun way to solve the problem of boring conversations about mundane activities.
My main user for whom I solved this problem, loved the idea of rewarding the winner at the end of each week.
His words were and I quote,
"I thoroughly enjoyed the idea that is presented and I will definitely use this App".
