Overview
An apartment complex I lived in, recently installed an app-enabled payment system in the laundry room called MicroPayments GS. It is terrible. So terrible that most residents still use quarters for laundry. The app crashes frequently, can't connect to the bluetooth in the machines, only accepts "bank cards," and will sometimes turn on a different machine than the one selected, leaving one to frantically move their detergent covered clothing to the running washer. Reviews for this app are either neutral or negative, citing slowness, frequent crashes, and unauthorized charges.
I wanted to imagine what an ideal laundry app would look like. A bluetooth dependent mobile app isn't the best solution for laundry room payments as laundry rooms are frequently located in places where signal can be poor, like basements.
Flow Chart
The app needs to accomodate two major actions: starting a washer and starting a dryer.
Wireframes
From the two basic actions, there are sub-actions. A user needs to choose wash cycle type and dryer temperature. The machines in this use case a pre-programmed time setting for each cycle type and one time setting for all dryer temp settings.
Home
Wash 1
Wash 2
Wash 3
Account Pg
Style Tile
For the color scheme, I was inspired by the classic Tide detergent bottle. The rest of the app is clean and simple, like a fresh load of laundry!
Prototype
Splash screen
Home page
Account page
Start wash 1
Start wash 2
Start wash 3
Start wash 4
Start wash 5
Start dry 1
Start dry 2
Start dry 3
Start dry 4
Start dry 5
User Testing
I had two neighbors test the prototype. One tester wanted the ability to change the washer he selected, just in case he selected the wrong one, and suggested the ability to select multiple machines in the case of doing multiple loads of laundry at the same time. He also completely missed the "Next" button that lead to the cycle temp selector on the Choose Washer section. Maybe the orange select state on the button is confusing. Or it could be the limits of a prototype.
Full prototype and all screens:
