Laundry Buddy

Solving college students' laundry problems with a new innovative system.

Appliance Design

Industry

Appliance Design

Industry

Designer

Role

Designer

Role

2 Months

Duration

2 Months

Duration

Miro, Procreate, Solidworks

Tools

Miro, Procreate, Solidworks

Tools

Background

In the course Experience Design 1, we were tasked with innovating on an experience related to washing. I decided to work on the college laundry experience, as I have seen many people frustrated over the current state of things, especially long wait times, mishandling of laundry, and uncleanliness. This project was a thorough end to end process, from interviewing users and creating problem statements, to prototyping and testing solutions.

It is a difficult task to create something entirely from scratch that does not already exist. Even more difficult is creating something that provides value and doesn't just promote more consumerism. My goal was to create something that felt tangible, useful, helpful, and realistic.

In just 2 months time, we were able to take just the prompt of 'washing,' and find a niche market, conduct interviews, discover the problem, ideate solutions, refine our idea, create looks-like and works-like prototypes, and finally present our product to a board of 4 design experts who were all very pleased with the solution.

User Interviews: What sucks about doing laundry in dorms?

We interviewed 5 college students for 30 minutes each to understand their needs and goals better. We wrote an interview script so that we would cover all necessary questions, but strayed from the protocol as needed to follow the natural flow of the conversation and gain better insights. To help the interviewees feel more comfortable and answer freely, we used help from objects that we created, including card sorts and conversation starter images.

Learning Goals:

What is students' mindset about laundry?
What is their process for doing laundry, how does it fit into their routines?
What are the burdens of doing laundry?

Card Sorts: The card sorts helped us learn where students' priorities were. I designed 15 cards to represent different aspects about laundry, such as scent, cleanliness, transportation, time, supplies, costs, etc. Users then sorted these cards in terms of their satisfaction in these categories. This helped identify common problem areas, and cross check them to find patterns in issues.

Conversation Starter Images: Another activity was the conversation starter images. I printed out 10 of these laundry related images to evoke reactions and start conversations on different topics, such as separating clothes by color, using liquid vs pod detergent, etc.

Processing User Statements and Pain Points

Next, we extracted statements from interview notes and sorted them to find patterns. The statements are grouped into green for enjoyment, red for pain points, and yellow for quirks. We also had a column for headlines, to summarize how a user felt about the process in general.

There were five common pain points that we could solve for:

Transporting laundry from dorms to the laundry room can be difficult.
Supplies used come from a force of habit, such as brand and types of product used.
Availability of machines is difficult to anticipate
Laundry machines are often dirty or out of order.
Campus laundry can be expensive

How Might We…

Help students anticipate availability of washers and dryers to save time?
Help the university maintain cleanliness in the laundry room by providing resources for students?
Make laundry as cheap as possible to provide freedom with scheduling?

We decided that an ideal design should follow the following criteria:

Not invading of privacy of students
Simple, easy to use, few steps involved
Accessible to all students
Adaptable to all laundry rooms
Reliable

Designing Solutions

Documenting Current Systems

To better understand the user perspective, we went to a Northeastern University laundry room and documented what the current systems in place are. This meant noting down all the steps one must take to complete a load of laundry, from swiping your Husky card, to paying, to choosing a machine, etc.

Envisioning Experiences

After doing research, we experimented with different ways that we could solve some of the main points. We ended up on the idea of a 'Laundry Buddy,' drawing inspiration from restaurant buzzers, Apple Airtags, and safety buttons. Our product would serves three main roles:

A key: Lock your machine while in use so other students don't move your clothing.
A timer: Countdown the exact time remaining for each cycle without having to leave your dorm.
A buzzer: Goes off when the cycle is complete. Stay accountable and get rewarded with future laundry credit.

User Journey Map Storyboarding

Then, I drew up this journey map to help demonstrate how our product would ideally work. The cartoon boy shows us encountering the system for the first time. In this graphic we can see how it allows him to relax while doing laundry, by taking off some of the mental load of worrying about clothes being taken, forgetting to go back in time, and financial burdens as well.

Testing Prototypes

The First Prototype: After sketching out our idea on paper, we quickly moved to drafting a physical 'feels-like' model. This was crafted out of cardboard and yarn, to represent the shape, size, and general look of the product. We knew we wanted a space for the countdown timer, a button for snoozing, a handle, a speaker, and laundry machine number.

Designing with CAD: Then, we began drafting our idea in Solidworks, a 3D modeling software. This helped move things along faster: we could visualize our ideas in minutes and even show them to others for feedback.

Making Modifications: After feedback from peers, we came to our final design. The edges were softened for a nicer feel and sleeker look. The timer slot was much larger as that was the object's biggest purpose and needed to be emphasized and clearly visible. The handle for the strap at the top was much smaller and thinner, allowing more hooks and lanyards to fit through it.

Running Into 3D Printing Issues: When we were printing, we ran into many issues. The machines were always busy with other projects, so there were long wait times. Sometimes our prints would fail completely, sometimes the support material was too thick to come out, and sometimes it just didn't look the way we wanted it to. Regardless, we knew that with every failed iteration, we were one step closer to our final product.

Setting the Stage: In the meantime, we also had to make props to demonstrate how our product would work in such a setting. This meant creating a place for the Laundry Buddy to live and charge in when not in use. We came up with the idea of a mounted board that would hold the same amount of buzzers as there are dryers. When the Buddys are gone while in use, the empty spot will have a matching timer so you can see how much time is left in the cycle of that washer or dryer.We also created a mock washer dryer to show how the product would interact with its' environment, and to sell our idea during the Shark Tank style pitch to our class.

The Final Design

Our design was finally complete, with new added features on the back!

The magnet at the top helps the buzzer latch onto the board. In a working prototype, this would lock in more securely, similar to how public bikes lock.
The back shows a flashlight, which is an added accessibility tool. For those who are hard of hearing, alarm sounds are not efficient for communication. Therefore, this light will also flash when the laundry is done.

This project was a huge success. Our panel of design judges were pleased with the novel idea, as well as the execution and many steps taken to get to the final product. I was so happy to see how far we had come from our initial brainstorming and interviewing, and how much I had learned.

I really loved working on this project and how it covered the whole process of experience design, from defining a problem and doing user research, to ideating solutions and user testing. By learning the foundations and practicing the process, I know I can apply these skills to any sort of problem: from designing physical objects and spaces, to designing systems and digital products.

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