Laundry Helper Design Write-up

Jiahui Li
Interactive Design, fall 2014

This app is designed specifically to help students in Songjiang University Town

(Shanghai) to do laundry efficiently. Situations about laundry in dorm building are
very similar in many universities across China, which means, with slight changes, it
also applies to other university students.
Problem Statement and Solution Overview
The pace and cost of life is fast and expensive in Shanghai. So the last thing we
want to do is to waste our time and money on things that are not worthy. Doing
laundry is one of the things that we cannot avoid but wont get much value and
something we want to get it done as quickly as possible. However, three major things
often stand in the way of doing laundry efficiently. The first problem is people waste
lots of time checking the availability of machines and waiting for another around. It
should be noted that laundry machines in dorm buildings in most of Chinese
universities are less than they are needed. Also, they almost never locate in the same
laundry room, but separately in different floors. We call ourselves very lucky if
someday the laundry machine is available at the moment we want to do laundry. More
often, we carry our dirty laundry walking back and forth from dorm to the laundry
machine because it is always occupied. You can try getting back to the machine
exactly a few minutes before this round is done. If lucky enough, that is the fastest
way to get laundry done. Going back there a few minutes later, it is very likely that
some else has taken it. You never know for sure when will be your turn. But that does
not always work, because people always forget to pick up their clothes after the
laundry is done, which is the second problem to be solved. Lots of people are
bothered by this. For people who have lots of time stay at dorm, much
time-consuming as it is, getting laundry done is possible in the end. But for people
who have really tight schedule and very limited time staying at dorm (except for other
peoples sleep time), doing laundry is so not an easy thing.
To tackle those problems, what is needed are i) to create an time order for people
who wants to laundry so that they know exactly when is their turns to go to the
machine; ii) to notify people for picking up clothes so that it wont cause trouble for
the next user; iii) to enable people with tight time-schedule reserve their limited yet
available time to do laundry. Meanwhile, given the newly-added reservation function
is as forgettable as picking up clothes, notification function also applies there.
Description of the Final Design
Before starting describing the design, it should be noted that whether to use this
app is not individual choice, but group choice. To make it work, all the individuals

that live in the community should all use it to create an order for laundry. It is rather
the modification to the whole laundry system. School IDs will be required to unlock
the machine (which means when the machine is specifically reserved for someone,
others cannot start it) and pay the laundry expenses.
1. Description the Functionalities
To list it up, what you can do with this app includes securing time for using
machines, getting notification for both laundry and picking-up, checking monthly
laundry record, comparing laundry budget with expense, be alerted for missed
reservation (it is designed that more than 3 missed reservation will lead to unable to
use any machine).
To be specific, it has three main functionalities.
i) Securing time to do laundry
Line up the use of certain machines - select the machine-to-be-used first
then line up to be the next available user
Make reservations to certain machines - select the machine-to-be-used
first then choose the desired date and time to reserve the machine at that
time (so that other people cannot use that machine at that time.)
Make reservations to certain dates - select the date (especially applicable
for planning for laundry time) from my calendar first then choose the
desired machine and desired time to make a reservation (so that other
people cannot use that machine at that time).
About The machine I always use for situation like this, students
usually have the machine they always use, for example the one in the
floor they live. So it is designed that the system can save them that
machine to save their time of looking that up. In this prototype, this
function is switched off because otherwise the prototype cannot show the
function of looking up the machine in system.
ii) Notification
For any reserved item, the users can set the notification time as they
wanted. It could be certain minutes before the laundry starts to prevent
users from forgetting about the laundry schedule, certain minutes before
the laundry is done to prevent users from forgetting to pick up their
clothes, or any other time they want. For example, in the cases the
reservation date is several days after reserving, the user can get
notification one day before the reservation date or in the morning of the
reservation date (or any other desired date and time).
If any user find his former user forget to pick up clothes (despite of the
system could have notified the former user already), he/she can contact
the former user by calling or texting, consulting whether the former user
is able to pick up in time or telling the former user what he/she did to the
clothes (like putting them into an empty basin).
Users have the right to decide whether he/she wants to get notification
from other users. If someone wouldnt like to be contact by others
through this app, he/she can switch either of or both of the notifications

messages from other users and notification phone calls from other
users off.
iii) Laundry record
My Calendar page will record the dates the user did laundry, missed the
laundry or the reserved future dates for laundry. The purposes of recording the
dates are as followed:
Purely record the dates
Count the monthly laundry expenses (to be compared with laundry
budget, which could be set and edit in the setting)
Alert the user about missed reservations to prevent the users from
missing reservation for more than 3 times a month
Check the frequency of doing laundry, if needed for anyone
Design Flow
From the very beginning, I knew exactly what problems I wanted to solve, so
shortly after I defined the target audience and the need, I sketched out the core part of
the design, which was the pages that enable users to make reservations editing
notifications. The following steps of improvement were mainly three parts, the first of
which was solving the problems that brought by the app. How to make sure all users
will obey the rules and orders that created by an app? How to avoid the troubles that
caused by its intention of providing people convenience? For example, making
reservation will be meaningless if other people could manage to use the machine in
someones reserved time, so locking the machine for anyone but the reserved user will
be necessary. But without the worries of reserved time being taken by others, whether
to use the machine or not in the reserved time will be a choice without consequences
for users, which means if someone forget about his/her reservations, he/she can just
make reservation again and again while other users cannot use it. Such problems are
brought by using this app, therefore, corresponding solutions are needed. (The
solution to the above problem is that ten minutes after a reserved time, the machine
will be unlock to anyone and will be available again on the system during that time,
unless the rest of time before the next reserved time is not long enough for one
washing session. Meanwhile, the person who reserved the machine but missed the
reservation will be recorded for potential punishment rule.) The second part of
improvement was synthesizing of functional categories. Unable to synthesizing high
level of functional categories will lead to redundant part in the design. It happened to
me in the paper prototyping stage, so I had to do it again before developing digital
prototype. The third part of improvement was developing prototypes. This part is the
essences of interactive design. It was in the process of prototyping did I get to think
about i) what does the interactive part looks like 2) how to make the app systematic
and complete 3) what the user experience would be like.
(The complete work flow is as shown in followed picture.)

Before focusing the app on laundry (in defining needs stage in the first week), I
hoped it could do many more favors to students in Songjiang University Town, for
example chipping in for cabs and food orders or exchanging secondhand books. Apart
from that, there was nothing left unimplemented.
Developing Tools
In the sketching solution phase, my developing tools were pencil, eraser and
paper. It was fast and easily changeable, which enabled me to generate ideas through
sketching and quickly reviewing whether therere problems in the ideas. The only con
is that people cannot draw well are not able to sketch out exactly what they want.
In the paper prototyping phase, my developing tools were also pencil, eraser and
paper. It seemed like Photoshop and printing will make prettier paper prototype, but
will be more time-consuming. If sketching is visualizing ideas, paper prototyping is
visualizing functionalities. It does not really matter whether the visualized effect in
this phase is pretty enough, though drawing seemed to be less formal, what matters is
the paper prototype is good enough for testing and exposing problems for further
improvement.
In the digital prototyping phase, I used FluidUI and MockingBot. Both of them
were easy to start with while limited in what theyre capable of. The pro is they are
both easy to use while basically good enough to express my design ideas and test the
usability of the design of app. Cons are such as neither of them have enough tools to
develop perfectly ideal interface and neither of them can make sure a desired level of
interaction (cannot present details as much as I want and cannot present how the app
works systematically). MockingBot is better than FluidUI in it is prettier, it is easier to
operate, it has a huge library of icon selection, it enables people to test it on tablet and

it is easy to communicate with developer and request for tools.

Design Evolution
My initial sketch might be slightly different from expected. When the idea first
generated, I draw the check availability page, line-up page, make a reservation
page and account information page, all the other parts are generated based on these.
For the 40 sketches assignment, I tried to even skip using an app to solve the problem,
hoping to design a set of laundry machine that enable people to drop dirty laundry in
the morning and get a clean pile of clothes in the evening without any human hand. I
got an idea in the end, but that is way out of my capacity to actually make it work so I
went back to the app.
The brainstorming helped me solved the problem of how to make the app-based
order actually work, which is combining the use of school ID to lock and unlock
machine as well as punishment rules (for both missing reservations and forgetting to
pick up clothes). The QOC approach didnt demonstrated too much of its helpfulness
in this design, because much as I wrote in that assignment, I felt like I had the answers
for most of the questions way before that. (But the QOC approach was very helpful in
the design of the menu.)
The experience of paper prototyping was really frustrating. For some unknown
reasons, I couldnt manage my ideas nicely on paper prototype (and to be honest, for
people who is not good at drawing, paper prototyping is as time-consuming as digital
prototyping while more painful), but still some really important problems were
exposed to the paper prototyping, which helped improving the design a lot. The
linkage between different pages, for example, is one of the problems. Besides, I
located another bug in paper prototyping. In that stage, checking availability (for the
purpose of line-up for certain machine) and making reservations (originally user
should select both the machine and the time each time he/she wants to make a
reservation) are two separate major options on the main page, but it turned out that
they have many overlaps in functions. So in the later improvement, I put them
together as parallel options under selected machine (machine first, what to do next).
Also, in the paper prototype stage, I put a record box in the app as a solution to
remind user about missed reservations, meanwhile it also record all the other laundry
dates and reservations. I dont really remember why I wanted it to have a calendar
page in the first place. I guess I just thought a calendar is a pretty and nice thing to
have. The laundry dates are marked in calendar, and the budget and expense idea
was actually the outcome of lets give this calendar something to do. Later on I
found the record file box and calendar also have overlaps in functions, so they were
combined together as calendar. Besides, there was an impulsive decision in the paper
prototype stage, which was personating the machine and explaining how to use it by
letting it speak to the user. It was proved to be an action that made the app harder to
use because obviously a good design of a simple thing does not need much too
explanation on how to use it. In all, these changes make the final design.
I found Carolls article particular helpful in my design process. The difficulties in
my design process lie in working out the whole system, which means not only do I

have to meet the original needs of the target audience (which I knew perfectly well so
it was not hard), but also do I have to tackle problems that brought by this app.
Creating scenarios is especially helpful in finding those new problems because
scenarios are concrete and flexible, so it best helps reflection of the whole design.