jiayi tang - Chorestile

Chorestile

A system that helps college students manage kitchen chores among roommates.

DURATION TEAM MY ROLE

4 weeks Jiayi Tang Semi-structured Interviews

Fei Shao Concept Ideation Chris Hong System Map

Storyboarding

Video Shooting

Background

Under the influence of COVID-19, we are spending more time together with people we live with. Kitchen is the most common space where roommates have conflicts and is usually one of the major reasons for people to move out. These conflicts usually caused by roommates's lack of communication over chores distribution, roommates' lack of responsibilities of doing chores, and their feeling of unfairness when doing too much chores.

Target Audience: college students

+ live with several roommates

+ lack of sense of responsibility

+ busy with study and work

Response

Our design is an integrated system including physical sensors, lights display, speaker unit, and an app. Working together, the system helps roommates to fairly distribute chores, remind them of their responsibilities when necessary, and encourage their positive communications.

Process Overview

Research

Interviews

After we have conducted auto-ethnography, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 3 participants who are all college students living in the apartment or dorm with several other roommates and who offer diverse different lifestyle or type of relationships.

"Setting rules is important for our communication."

"We set rules for throwing away garbage and keeping the kitchen clean."

"Communication is the most important way to solve conflicts."

"Since everyone is cooking at home, the kitchen got over crowded and messy sometimes, but it's awkward to discuss the mess and nobody want to clean up."

"I leave notes on post-its in the kitchen to remind my roommate to clean up after themselves."

"I was sometimes lazy to do chore even if I know it is my responsibility."

"Roommates usually have different ideas about cleanness. Reaching a consensus of cleanness is difficult."

Findings

+ Roommates feel awkward while talking about kitchen chores and responsibilities.

+ Some people are lazy and waits for someone else to clean up.

+ People do not know what others have done and feel imbalanced.

Photo Study

Along with interviews, we asked participants to provide pictures of their apartment or dorm that can represent or show their relationship with roommates. We have also looked at some pictures from online discussion board about roommate relationships.