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Shord

Your real-time shared list tracker and bill keeper

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Project Overview

Nowadays, to save on various expenses, many people choose to share a house or apartment with multiple people. They may be living with friends, family members, partners, or random roommates. We frequently hear complaints from friends about how they and their roommates repeatedly buy the same item by accident or how they frequently forget that the other roommates have already made a purchase. Even though people live in close quarters together, a good communication environment isn't always guaranteed. 

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It brought my teammate and me to the topic at hand: How might we provide people who live under the same roof a good communication environment to know each other's needs?

Process highlights

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Team Project

Zoie Zhou

Chloe Chen(me)

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Time

Three weeks. Nov - Dec 2021

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My responsibilities

Secondary and primary research, UX Design, UI Design, Video Editing

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Media

Figma, Google Survey, Premiere Pro

Project Quick Guide

Every UX case study consists of many steps, I organized these steps and integrated them into four categories. Any solution my team and I came up with always tie back to what we discovered about the needs, wants, pain points, and jobs to be done of our target customer/audience/user. (Tips: you can click on any of the steps and it will take you there :)

Case Summary

Discovered user problem

The communication between roommates is not always very effective, even though they share a roof. People don't convey information quickly, such as the need to buy groceries or have already bought groceries, and the inaccurate information delivery results in lost time and money.

Product vision

To establish a good communication environment for users to know flatmates' needs in real-time. Users can avoid purchasing repeating items by keeping track of the list created with their group. Ultimately save money and communication costs with the help of Shord. 

Outcomes

  • A mobile app called "Shord" provides users an environment to create up-to-date shared lists and reminders to help the group communicate more transparently and collaboratively. The second most important feature is the Scan and Send, which allows users to easily split bills after purchases. Help people who live with flatmates to share bills easily, and ultimately save money from daily spending.  

The following are some important touch points in the experience we designed:

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APP Features

Onboarding

We onboard you with 3 key features of Shord: up-to-date sharing lists, easy bill sharing, and Widget to easily check lists on their home screen. 

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APP Features

Bill History

You can check your previous bill history on Record, and tap to see the details of each payment.

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APP Features

Creating Lists

When you open Shord for the first time, we encourage you to create a list and start to explore the app.

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APP Features

View Lists

The order of lists on the home page will be based on the end day to auto-adjust. The closer the end day, the more front the order.

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APP Features

Scan and Send

Easy bill sharing by taking a single picture. Send the bill to your friend without doing any calculations yourself.

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APP Feature

Shord Widget

Widget is now available! You can easily check the list by adding Shord widget to the home page.

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Video Demonstration - Shord (3:35 min)

Your Shared Reminder

Take a quick glance to see what you can do at Shord 

Create Lists with your Group Members

Know what to buy and what's already bought by your group member
 

Scan and Send your Bill in a second

We provide the latest information you need to know about one attraction, as well as its local reviews

View all Bill History

Unlock unique collectibles by visiting various attractions. Each collectible has a specific connection with its corresponded attraction

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Smart Ordering Lists

Craft your personalized map as a memorable souvenir while you travel

Widget is Here!

Your achievement map can be printed out and mailed it to yourself! This slow-mail postcard will take years to arrive, be ready for the surprise from yourself

Research

Behavior Study - Forming Habits and the Hooked Model

Habits are defined as “behaviors done with little or no conscious thought.” A successful hook model functions as reaching a product's ultimate goal of unprompted user engagement, bringing users back repeatedly, without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging. The hook model generally contains four-part: Trigger, Action, Investment, and Variable Reward. The goal of our app is to establish a good communication condition and environment where users can know each other's needs in real-time. Around the behavior we tried to form and based on the hooked model, we built up Shord's hooked model.

  • Shord is an app that forms a behavior around encouraging communication about the daily needs of people who live together. One way it will form behavior is by sharing common purchasing needs(trigger) on a real-time updating shopping list(action). They can easily see the bill accounting and the shopping lists(investment) and save money by avoiding purchasing repeating items(reward).  

Primary Research - The Survey

The goal of this survey is to find out the current behavior of people who live with someone else regarding their daily purchases, including how do they do the buying, sharing, and splitting bills? what are the experiences?

 

The survey is constructed using the Google Survey. We total recruited 96 people online. Based on the data we had from the survey, we analyzed and found the insights from our participants:

  • 72% of people live together with other people

  • People choose to flat-share because they want to save money

  • Most people in a shared house buy things for everyone

  • Buying repeating items are common in a share house

  • Most people will split bills with flatmates for daily costs

  • People want to share and see what needs to be purchased

How Might We 

How might we provide people who live under the same roof a good communication environment to know each other's needs?

Design Concept

After understanding the Hooked model of Shord and the current journey from the audience, we moved on to brainstorming the design concept. Each of the following steps helped us better focus on our goal and our target audiences.  (Tips: click on each project phase to see more details)

Final Thought

The research on user habits, UX design, UI design, and user testing needed to be completed within three weeks. In such a tight time frame, the pace of each stage really needed to be controlled, otherwise, the project might face the failure of incomplete. I created a schedule to help my team keep the focus on efficiency and prevent us from spending too much time in one design phase. The timeline has proved to be a very useful tool.

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Looking back on the entire project, I am very proud of what our team has accomplished. Although there is one thing I seek to improve on in the future. The functions and user flow in this project are only considered in the general situation; a good UX designer should also consider the emergence of extreme circumstances. During testing, it should also aggressively look for the incidence of extreme scenarios. A most basic example is the invalidation of user input data. If I have more time, I will definitely dive deep into analyzing the extreme circumstances. 

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I am most proud of the process of transforming the sketches into a user interface in this project. I have received numerous comments on the design, the majority of which have been positive. Each version of the UX and UI iteration was improved and tested by a group of people, and I always loved to hear comments and feedback from them. 

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