BookNWash
What’s the issue with the existing laundry system in my college?
PROBLEM STATEMENT
At my college, students faced significant challenges with laundry in the hostels due to the disorganized state of the current system. They were compelled to go to multiple floors to manually check the availability of washing machines. This arduous task often resulted in prolonged waiting times, was physically exhausting, and lacked transparency in monitoring the status of their laundry. Consequently, this led to considerable inconvenience, inefficiency, and dissatisfaction among the hostel residents.
Objective: This project aims to streamline the laundry process into an efficient, convenient, and transparent system that addresses all the previously mentioned pain points, enhancing customer satisfaction.
So why don't we take a quick look at the solution I came up with?!
BRIEF SOLUTION
Now, let's look at this problem and the proposed solution in detail!
How can we solve this?
HYPOTHESIS
Implementing a mobile laundry booking app that allows students
- To check the real-time availability of washing machines
- Reserve time slots
- Receive notifications about their laundry status
will significantly reduce waiting times, physical effort, and dissatisfaction among hostel residents.
Why BookNWash?
VALUE PROPOSITION
Our laundry booking app revolutionizes the hostel laundry experience by offering a seamless, efficient, and transparent solution. By enabling students to check real-time availability, reserve washing machines, and receive timely notifications, we eliminate the hassle of manual checks and long waits. This app not only saves time and physical effort but also enhances user satisfaction by providing a reliable and user-friendly platform. With our app, hostel residents can enjoy a more convenient and stress-free laundry process, ultimately improving their overall quality of life.
User Research
I have utilized a few user research methods to get an idea of the user's needs, behavior, patterns, preferences, and pain points of doing laundry in the hostel.
Firstly, What’s a typical trip to the washing machine's like?
USER JOURNEY
I have mapped out the steps involved in the current process of doing laundry in the hostel, noting down the mood and feelings of the user as well as suggesting some improvements based on them.
Next, What are the patterns I noticed in the students’ responses?
AFFINITY MAPPING
Here I have categorized the responses I received from interviewing users residing in the hostel, based on similarities to a particular topic of interest.
Upon searching for similar applications/ competitors, I found many of them only catered to foreign countries like the US, Canada, etc. The only viable retailer available in India is Haier however that entails purchasing entirely new washing machines as their application is machine specific. This is not feasible thus rendering all these competitors unviable, as this is a unique case study particular to this college and the solution has to be built around the current layout without incurring exorbitant monetary compensations.
However, from the user journey of the current system and from the responses of the interviews conducted, I have deduced the primary pain points that needs to be addressed and how we might come over this.
What are the pain points?
PAIN POINTS
How might this be solved?
HOW MIGHT WE?
How might we create a system that allows students to check the availability of washing machines without having to physically visit the laundry room?
How might we reduce the waiting times for students using the laundry facilities?
How might we design a solution that minimizes the physical effort required for students to do their laundry?
How might we provide real-time updates on the status of laundry machines to students?
How might we ensure that the laundry process is transparent and easy to monitor for all students?
How might we gather and incorporate student feedback to continuously improve the laundry system?
Designing the solution
So, How does the app work?
BASIC INFORMATION
Check availability of washing machines
Checking availability of washing machines based on date, time and specific floors
Book slots for use
Blocking out slots to use the washing machines at your own convenience
Make a profile
Create a profile with all your details to make bookings easier
Track wash cycle
Track the progress of the wash cycles, even getting alerts about each developments
Whats special about BookNWash?
HIGHLIGHTED FEATURES
Mark favorites of floors & timings
Adding your preferred timings and floors to favorites to quickly add them in while booking
Exchange bookings with others
Exchanging slots with others when its not needed anymore, or get slots from others when in a hurry.
Auto cancellation if slot not used
If the slot is not used by the user after a few minutes of it starting, it automatically gets cancelled.
And here’s the entire architecture of the application!
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
How do we know it is succeeding
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
Average Customer Rating
Tracking customer satisfaction and service quality through regularly obtained feedback from users
Churn rate
Monitoring the percentage of customers who stop using the service over a specific period
Service Utilization Rate
Tracking the frequency of service usage by customers over a period of time
Operational efficiency
Assessing the efficiency of operations, including time saved in finding the washing machines, etc
Possible things restricting it?
CONSTRAINTS
Now onto storyboarding,
STORYBOARDING
Where I sketched some preliminary designs of various screens involved in the app
and later, I constructed wireframes...
WIREFRAMING
These wireframes were later used in creating a low-fi prototype, utilized to conduct usability study, obtaining feedback from users on the app design.
I put together an empathy map…
EMPATHY MAPPING
…with the feedback from usability testing, which revealed some issues that needs to be rectified for smooth running of application
What major changes I made?
MAJOR DESIGN ITERATIONS
With keeping the findings of empathy map in mind, these are the major changes that I made to rectify the issues found from feedback during usability testing
Redesign Checking availability section
Redesigning availability section to be more user friendly as previous version was confusing
Option for Recurring slots
Adding an option to make the slots booked recurring
Separate wash and drying cycles
Divide slots for washing and drying cycle as the machines are separate for both and the leftover time can be used by another user.
Final Design and Mockups
AND IMPACT AND FINAL THOUGHTS
Onboarding process
FINAL DESIGNS AND MOCKUPS
So we're starting off with, the user flow for onboarding and log-in process of the app
Home page
FINAL DESIGNS AND MOCKUPS
Next up, home page where everything begins!
My Profile
FINAL DESIGNS AND MOCKUPS
With all relevant sections for profile including personal information needed can be found here
How to book a new slot?
FINAL DESIGNS AND MOCKUPS
On clicking “new booking” in navigation bar, the page to collect details pops up. Once date and timings are selected using the pickers user checks for availability. Upon checking the details and clicking YES, the booking is confirmed.
How to check availability of slots?
FINAL DESIGNS AND MOCKUPS
In 1st case, let’s say user picks date and time to check availability. Once details are filled and clicking “check availability”, a list of available floors are shown.
With the desired floor chosen, either they can edit wash and drying cycle times or directly book the slot.
Other choices to check availability include sorting them by desired “Date and Floor” and “Timings and Floor”. After selecting the desired slot the process is same as previous use case.
How to exchange slots?
FINAL DESIGNS AND MOCKUPS
Either by clicking on new request or selecting “exchange” in upcoming bookings, exchange page opens up. Filtering through and after selecting the desired slot click on yes on confirmation page to send request. Status of requests can be checked under exchange requests
What did I learn? and Future steps?
FINAL THOUGHTS
From this project I gained two major experiences, one being the opportunity to work closely with the users as I was a hosteller myself living amongst the user base as well as overcoming biases which could stem from the designer (me) working closely/ being a part of the user base. The other being the experience gained from working under such unique and rigid circumstances with strong constraints allowing me to produce a distinctly tailored solution.
The future steps for the project would include collaborating with electronic engineers about installing IR sensors in the washing machines to control basic functionalities of them. Also delving more into the secondary features of the app to elevate the experience of users
