Prototype Photos
Briefing
Laundry Quandary is a phone application for residents in living spaces with communal laundry machines. Often in such public laundry facilities, the number of machines is limited, and there are not enough dryers or washers for all those who want to use the laundry at a particular time. Users do not have a reliable way to check several aspects of the laundry facility without being present in the laundry room:
- Whether any machines are open
- How long the wait time is to start a new load of laundry
- Whether the user's laundry is finished
- What to do if a machine has finished running, but someone else's clothes are still in it
Our application will allow users to set up a laundry checking system. It will provide automatic notifications to users when their laundry finishes, allow users to leaves notes with laundry care instructions, and give users a way to view the current status of all laundry machines remotely.
Scenario Tasks
Task 1
You want to wash a load of clothing. Pick an open washer, and ask to be notified when your laundry is done washing.
Task 2
Leave a note with your laundry.
Task 3
Read a message that a previous user left with their laundry. Respond to the message, asking for clarifying instructions.
Task 4
You want to wash your clothes, but all washers are currently in use. Ask to be notified when the next washing machine becomes available.
Observations
In the third task, our first user had a few difficulties. While she was able to find the note from the previous user of her washing machine, the affordance for replying to the note was not very clear to her. The display of "Message User" was in a box that was not implying three dimensions, so she thought that it was just instructions and she "closed" our popover. Based on this interaction, we decided to change our popover to reflect a 3-D button marked "Reply" instead of "Message User," as seen in our second prototype iteration.
For more full notes on what happened during our first testing session, our full notes are here:
Prototype Iteration
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