Broomies

Chore Tracking & Management for Roommates

Nov 2024
3 min read
Role
User Research
Wireframing
Prototyping
Timeline
2 Days
Team
2 Designers
2 Product Managers
Dec 2024
3 min read
Three smartphone screens displaying a task management app with a playful animated pencil character. Tasks include taking out the trash, cleaning the microwave, and vacuuming. Tabs show task progress and XP points. The background is a gradient of orange and pink.
In a nutshell

Students in shared living use ineffective chore tracking systems and have difficulties maintaining equal effort and accountability. Broomies is an app that helps manage and divide of a variety of household tasks and uses photo verification and money to increase incentive and accountability.‍

This project is a submission for UX Open, a 2-day Design competition hosted by UBC Biztech with 70+ participants.

Four young adults stand side by side, smiling, each holding a purple Design Award certificate. The backdrop is a wooden-paneled wall, conveying a celebratory tone. Jump to Final Product
Generative Research

Shared living can get messy

Many university students live in a dorm or a rented space at one time or another. Drawing from our team's personal experiences, we know how challenging it can be to live and share a space with others.

"Who's doing the dishes this time? When do we need to take out the trash again? I think I did it last week... can you do it this time?"

This lack of coordination and accountability can lead to uncompleted chores, misunderstandings, and tension among roommates.

But it's not just us

We decided to validate our research by sending out a survey and interviewing 5 people with current or past experience living with roommates. Here are the main pain points that they collectively face:

Diagram with two blocks of text highlighting issues with chore systems, using sad faces for emphasis. An arrow points to a cartoon broom, labeled ad Broomie.

After some quick competitive analysis of other household task-splitting apps, we discovered that many of them lack accountability and an incentive to actually complete those tasks and check it off in the app.

With our research and analysis, we used the How Might We statement below to guide our solution.

How might we help new roommates fairly divide, track, and stay accountable for household chores?

Solution

Divide and track chores with Broomies

Broomies is a household task tracker for students in shared living to split tasks and hold each other accountable.

Three smartphone screens displaying a task management app with a playful animated pencil character. Tasks include taking out the trash, cleaning the microwave, and vacuuming. Tabs show task progress and XP points. The background is a gradient of orange and pink. Flowchart illustrating the automation of household task division leading to a smiling cartoon broom. Keywords: automation, household tasks, accountability.

Breathing Life into Broomies

To tie our visual identity together, we created a mini style guide that met the WCAG color contrast recommendations to ensure accessibility for all users. Our mascot, Broomie, was born to give encouragement and add delight to the user experience (thanks Rayna!).

Design system showing primary colors (orange, black, white), secondary colors (purple, gray), animated mascot illustrations, and text examples using Fahkwang font.
Final Product

Let's Get Broomin'!

In under 24 hours, we created an onboarding, task creation, and task completion flow. Try our prototype to see it in action (Press "R" to restart).

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