"Laundry Lords" is a mobile application designed to improve the current laundry experience of NTU students in our halls. This project clinched first place at Designathon 2018, organised by the Renaissance Engineering Programme (REP) in Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
Our team, which comprises of 3 REP students and 1 ADM student (ME!), was tasked with coming up with solutions to improve the laundry experience in NTU for this Designathon that was spread over two days. Teams were introduced to the design thinking model of "Empathise", "Define", "Ideate", "Prototype" and "Testing". We went around NTU interviewing 10 candidates to find out about their experience on doing laundry in NTU halls.
After which, we used the data collected to define our problem, where we realised that not everyone has similar hygiene and moral standards, and that may sabotage those who want a better laundry experience. We moved on to the ideation process, where we distilled down the core issues we hope to address with our final solution.
The core issues are:
+ Irresponsible usage: dirty, hogging
+ Crime: stolen items
+ Discomfort with moving others personal artefacts (underwear etc)
+ Uncertainty of availability
+ Peak and lull periods
+ Ease of payment: coin eating, having the right coins
+ Lack of feedback system
Thus, we came up with the mobile application, "Laundry Lords", and an effective laundry system aimed at improving the laundry experience of NTU students.
A mock-up of the mobile application is available at: https://marvelapp.com/2e12060/screen/39230205
NTU students will log into this mobile application with their NTU email and password.
They will be led to the Home page where they will be able to see an overview of the washing machines and dryers available in their halls. This is especially helpful to residents living in the older halls of Hall 1 to 16 where there is only two washing machines and one dryer per block, unlike the newer halls where there is a washing machine and dryer at every floor. With this overview, residents do not have to waste time to go all the way to the laundry room to check the availability of the machines. They will also be given the option to "book" the washing machine/dryer for a limited amount of time.
Payment of the use of washing machines and dryers will be done by tapping their matriculation card (with build-in Nets Flashpay function) on a card reader attached to the machines. This is done in a bid to support the school's initiative of going cashless. More importantly, students interviewed have also expressed their annoyance with having to find the right $1 coin in order to use the machines. There were also cases of the machine 'eating' their money. Thus, a cashless method of payment would be more ideal in solving the problems faced by students in the area of paying for their laundry.
We have also implemented a system which encourages residents to take more accountability for their laundry habits and etiquette when using shared facilities. This is done through a feature of the application where residents could rate the cleanliness of the washing machine. If the machine is not clean, residents could choose to clean up the machine themselves (cleaning tools provided in the laundry room), and redeem a free wash or dry. Otherwise, they will have to cancel the booking of that machine and use another machine that is available.
There is also the app feature of alerting the resident X minutes before their laundry is ready for collection. The timing can be adjusted in the Settings section. If the resident is late in collecting their laundry for more than 5 minutes, they will be charged a late fee. That would address the common problem of certain residents hogging the washing machines and dryers.
