Launderdry

 

Overview

Powered by GE Appliances, Launderday is a consumer-facing app that helps users living in multi-housing property to find their nearest GEA-cooperated laundry room in the building, easily check availability, pay, and track the laundry cycle. In short, Launderday app will make your laundry experience easier.

 
 

:/ UX Design

:/ 2021.01 - 2021.06 (beta launch)

:/ Teamwork with PMs, developers, market researchers, and another designer

My Contributions

I was primarily responsible for the UX&UI design of the MVP version of Launderday app. The process revolved around defining, designing, iterating, and prototyping the key functions of the Launderday services. I delivered task flow and info architecture, lo-fi and hi-fi wireframes, style guide of the first version, and interactive prototypes. I also designed the app icon and the webpage of Launderday.

 

Background

 
 
 

What's the business expectation?

In order to provide a better service for communal laundry users, GEA is building a commercial laundry platform that includes a mobile app for laundry room users and a desktop management system for the facility manager. Laundry room users can activate the laundry machine through the mobile app. The manager of the laundry rooms can use the property management system to manage all the machines and users, and the platform can also help them perform maintenance and error reporting.

GEA has the latest technology and features in smart laundry machines, including Wi-Fi connectivity that allows them to communicate with the smartphone app for monitor, controls, and notifications. Expanding the ability of the laundry appliances with IoT technology and delivering better experiences to both laundry room customers and managers could result in increased revenue for GEA.

 

 The Challenge

 
 

“How to deliver a delightful experience to laundry room users?”

 
 

Solution Highlight

 

Luanderday app helps users living in multi-housing property to check the availability of machines, easily pay, start and track their laundry cycles.

 
 
 

Who are we designing for?

 

Target users are people living in multi-housing properties like apartments, hotels, etc, who usually do their laundry in the communal laundry room of the property building.

As the UX designer in the team, I worked with market analysist and PM to synthesize the key insights about shared laundry rooms in multi-housing properties, which informed our design decisions later on.

  1. Usually smallish laundry rooms with a very limited number of machines;

  2. Self-service and only basic functions for washing and drying;

  3. Owned and run by the property managers;

  4. Shared laundry rooms might be located on only one floor or multiple floors;

 
 

Current laundry room experience

A user journey map was created in order to have a better understanding of the target users’ end-to-end experience using the communal laundry room. It provided a better vision of the opportunities we might have to solve users’ problems, and helped me better communicate with PMs and developers from users’ perspectives.

 

User Flows

 

To address the existing pain points of laundry room users, we worked with PMs to identify the key features and user stories our app would have. I created task flows for steps a user typically goes through in order to complete the common tasks in Launderday.

 

Info Architecture

 

After getting a clear idea of the essential tasks and the corresponding information, we tried to define the information architecture of Launderday app.

 
 
 
 

Wireframing & Iterations

 

With limited time and resources, I wireframed iteratively, did quick tests with colleagues, reviewed with PMs and engineers to validate concepts, and gathered feedback to continue improving the experience. During the process, I continued referring to the target users and key scenarios to ensure the design is aligned with the user's needs and the company’s mission.

To share some context before diving into the detailed design decisions, a snapshot of the final wireframes is shown below.

 

:/ Landing Page

 

HMW help users learn about the availability of the machines in the nearest laundry room?

The first few iterations of the landing page showed a map with pins where property commercial laundry rooms exist. However, research showed most users would only go to the one laundry room nearest to them, meaning users are familiar with the location of the laundry room. So I questioned the user scenario and value of the map and had discussions with the design team. We later proposed to PMs to reconsider the requirement of the map on the landing page. Based on the target user’s need, development effort, and priority of MVP, the map is removed from MVP versions.

 
 
 

Proposed version post MVP

Recognizing the need of our target users, I proposed an iterated version for the next phase of development after the delivery of MVP. For first-time users, after login, users will be guided to set the laundry room they usually go to based on their geolocation. After setting up the laundry room, the landing page will provide users with information about the availability of machines in the laundry room they usually go to. And it allows users to check the availability in other laundry rooms.

 

:/ Setup Payment Methods

 

HMW encourage and help new users to easily and quickly step up their payment method?

After a new user signs up and logs in, they need to add and store their method of payment by either allowing the numbers to be read by manual entry or via camera so they can get busy using a QR code-enabled appliance.

:/ Cycle Menu

 

HMW help the user understand how to complete the selection process?

After a user activates their machine of choice by snapping the QR code, they would be presented the cycle menu and instructions on what to do next to complete the selection process and start the cycle.

 

:/ Cycle History

 

HMW help the user check certain cycle status?

For the scope of the MVP version, due to the technical issues on database and the cost of cloud, the ongoing cycle status is shown in the history tab instead of landing page, so the cloud is only engaged at the time user goes to the history tab. After rounds of discussion with developers and internal testings, the following changes were made to the history page.

 

Final Pitch

 
 
 

:/ New users onboarding

For first-time users, after login, they will be prompted to select the nearby laundry room and enable push notifications which will be convenient for them to check the availability of the concerned laundry room and get notified of laundry cycles.

 
 
 
 
 
 

:/ Check availability & Scan to start

Once users open the app, they will be presented with the machine availability of their laundry room. If there is an available machine, users can go to the laundry room and scan the QR code on the machine to start a laundry cycle.

 
 
 

:/ Check cycle details & Get notifications

Users will be notified through push notifications when their laundry cycle is almost done and again when it's complete, so they can take their laundry more timely.

 
 
 
 
 
 

:/ Request a refund

If there is a problem with a laundry cycle, users can request a fund from the cycle history page. The laundry room manager will then receive the request through the SmartHQ Management portal and inspect the case.

 
 

:/ Other Features

 

Payment & Auto-reload

 

Learn how to use

 

Help & Report

 

UI Kits

 

The visual design is branded GE Appliances, I designed the visual style of the laundry app referring to the GE brand guideline, adopting GE blue as the primary theme color for the interface.

 
 
 

Branding

 

I also designed the app icon and webpage for the Launderday. The team expects the app icon to inform our service, be simple but highly recognizable in color and shape. Through rounds of iterations, the icon is finalized and highly acknowledged by the team.