Laundromate
Enhancing community warmth through laundry
Overview
Laundromate is an interactive laundry basket designed for communal laundry rooms in DUWO & Camelot student apartments. It aims to solve the conflict between tenants when laundry is not picked up on time. Tenants can put unattended laundry in the basket and leave "prank" messages to express their frustration in a humorous and friendly way.
The Problem
In a survey with over 50 tenants from Delft's student apartments, nearly all expressed a desire to improve the communal laundry experience. Due to limited laundry units, conflicts arise when laundry is not picked up on time. Tenants have to remove unattended laundry from the previous tenant, or find their own laundry displaced onto dirty surfaces without consent.
This has resulted in growing distrust among neighbors and occasional arguments in group chats, which is not ideal for student communities.
​
"I hope there's a solution to make the experience more positive and help tenants grow responsibility with their own, and others' laundry"
- Joshua, Student Apartment Manager
​
"We should connect with each other instead of arguing over laundry in the group chat, but I understand it's crowded and everyone is busy"
- Student Tenant
Understanding the Laundry Journey
To understand the situation, I invited tenants for in-depth interviews to map the context and user journey of their communal laundry experience.
During the interview, I asked them to show me how they handle laundry when the washer is occupied during their booked time slot
Initial Ideation
During the interview, I concluded that there are 3 major pain points:
​
​
1. Unable to make an effective communication
2. Confusion about how to handle unattended laundry.
3. Unable/unwilling to wait for the tenant to show up
I developed the idea of providing some tools that allow tenants safely place unattended laundry and leave a quick message behind.
Design Goals
01
To allow tenants to safely handle others' laundry when the other tenant is not present in a fast and convenient way.
02
To initiate friendly communication between tenants when laundry gets crowded
Co-creative sessions
During the interview, I tenants have diverse feelings depending on their personality, situation and past experience. Thus, we hosted co-creative session to understand how do tenants want to handle the situation.
During the session, we simulated a laundry experience and invited participants to create their own "message" to other tenants.
95% of the participants chose to leave a message when they took unattended laundry. By studying the messages they created, we found the following commonalities:
​
1. Using emojis / drawings to soften the tone
2. Diverse feelings: apologetic, frustration, warning, etc
3. Using bright colors to catch attention
4. Mixing & matching messages
​
User Testing
We developed 2 prototypes and placed them into laundry rooms. We asked participants to share their feelings and itirate on these feedback.
PROTOTYPE A
Pros
Plushies trigger positive feelings.
eye-catching and inviting
Cons
Plushies tend to be missing or misplaced over time
PROTOTYPE B
Pros
Easy to use
Texts help make messages clear
Cons
Not as inviting as the plushies
User Scenario
