HeyRoomi
Overview: HeyRoomi is a collaborative app focused on restoring feelings of productivity and optimism by bridging roommates to help them with their personal & shared finances and home living responsibilities. By encouraging roommates to utilize helpful resources and keep each other accountable, HeyRoomi seeks to transform college students’ lives into a streamlined, interactive, and empowering experience.
Role: Product Designer (2 weeks)
Tasks: User Research, Wire-framing, Prototyping, User Testing
Deliverables: MVP through mockups
Problem: Ok, did I forget to pay my roommate back for our shared Netflix subscription.... did my roommate get the $9 coffee on campus because she was just that thirsty..... we might have! This, of course, sets us up for no proper living and personal finance skills. College is when people start to manage finances and responsibilities on their own, but if theres no accountability and proper resources to do it, how are students set up for success? Let’s change that.
Starting prompt: How might we aid college students in their personal growth journey to ensure proper financial and responsibility habits between roommates?
User Research:
For sake of time, I interviewed 3 college students to compile into 2 user personas and insights that will drive my ideation. I kept the interviews very open-ended to ensure that I got out all of their thoughts out.
Brainstorming; SWOT and Feasability/Impact analysis
Display of transactions and shared expenses
View expenses and earnings alongside other breakdowns of your transactions.
Manage shared payments you have with your roommates such as shared subscriptions to keep track of payments. Set up automatic charges from roommates to streamline process of pooling together money.
Set budgets in order to regulate your spending habits and set Watch Alerts to get notified when you overspend within certain categories during certain timeframes.
Collaborative lists
Create and view shared grocery & chore lists to promote productivity between roommates.
Lists are organized by which roommate added what item/task. Therefore if one roommate buys an item for another, an automatic charge notification request is sent to prevent forgetfulness and streamline paying each other back.
Add new items to the lists, and for grocery lists, get informed about which of your bought items will expire soon so you can add them to a new grocery list OR know which foods to hurry up and finish ;)
Alternatives and Rewards
Utilize Voice Assistance or AI to take pictures of items/places to discover affordable substitute options for expensive items/places while on campus.
Earn rewards for staying under budget and completing tasks.
Notifications
Get notified when subscriptions change price, when roommates need payments from you, when tasks are not being completed, and when budgets are not being met.
Takeaways:
I learned how to scope down ideas into a solution that both empathetically targets our users, as well as one that considers the competitive and technical landscape.
I learned how to spend more time in the wire-framing and iterative user testing phase before prototyping to prevent designer frustration and roadblock.
Next Steps/Improvement:
Expand Role of Accessibility
Conduct more user testing on platforms like TryMyUI and Waze to identify strong areas of the app through heat maps to further build on those features, and ensure that weaker areas of the apps are reevaluated.