Living in a clean home with roommates is possible
A startup project powered by Kitchen Budapest.
1. Problem — the cost of living together
Did you know that two thirds of humanity is expected to live in urban areas by 2030? All around the world millions of friends, lovers, even strangers choose to live under the same roof. We know that living together is cheaper and more fun, but sometimes it is so hard to get along! What once seemed the best idea can easily become a constant nightmare if you can’t agree on shared tasks. We believe life together can be happy and harmonious. It’s all about organising.
Online survey to determine the user base
We wanted to create a solution that could help people to live in peace and cleanliness. We run a quick online survey to have a more general picture of the possible user base. These answers below were a critical must have to create our final personas. We followed the mom-test method to learn if our business is a good idea even known most people who fill in the questionnaire are our friends and acquaintances.
Benchmarking
There is no solution at the moment that can really take over these issues. People are using chore boards, chat and google docs or hire professional cleaning staff. Believe it or not most of us still use the post-it/fridge combo.
Some of our fidings are the following:
2. Research — do we really hate doing chores?
In-depth interviews revealed four major pain points in connection with shared living spaces and household chores.
- task delegation — Who should delegate chores? Someone needs to be the evil boss.
- tracking personal performances — How can we know for sure if someone did less or more than others?
- reminding — Should I always remind others to do their job? That’s not a popular role.
- lack of acknowledgement— I want people to appreciate my efforts, but in most cases they don’t even realise it.
3. Solution — leave it to the AI.
We wanted to create a system that can take over all the nuisances of organising a shared household. Very simply Misto is a todo list. You can see all the chores that must be done in the apartment on a beautiful list, or you just choose the “me” filter to check what exactly YOU should do. Each roommate can choose their own colour ID.
The app’s heart is a built in AI , an algorithm that ensures fair task sharing. Any roomie can add the task that needs to be done and Misto’s going to delegate it to someone. One of our main goal is fairness, so the person who performed the least gonna get the new task.
Misto offers some level of flexibility, too. In case a user doesn’t want to complete a task given she can swap it to another one. Simply choose the chore you can’t complete at the moment and the one you would do instead. Send your swap request your roomie and wait for their reaction.
Once a chore is done , the user needs to evaluate the experience. That means if she really hated this job, MISTO probably won’t assign it to her again but will try to give other chores that she likes more. As you can see this is a learning algorithm.
We gave special attention to the details of interaction with the screen. The action of tapping is totally unique (and we think it’s pretty nice :)
On the home screen you’ll find a nice little house. This simple infographics clearly shows you each roommate’s score. It works like a rectangular pie chart. To see exact percentage drag your finger on any colour. Misto tries to balance this performance-ratio. The ones who worked less gonna get the next chore.The app will notify every housemate from daily to-dos, this way no one needs to endure the stress of being the evil boss.
Misto has some outstanding mini-features like the “hi5 button” after each job done, or the “thanks stickers” you can stick on the screen to appreciate your roomie’s work. Our research showed that these positive reinforcement make users willing to open the app day by day.
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Tone of voice — Yo bro!
Misto has a (quite simple) intellect so he needed a real personality, too! His comments and responses reflect a happy bro who’s always encouraging and whose negative critiques are also a bit funny. We pictured him as a surfer coach from California strangely fascinated with cleanliness. The use of multiple bright colours and bold fonts underlines his easygoing attitude towards life.
Behind the name
MISTO is the italian world for mixed. Our ultimate goal was to help different people to mix their everyday life smoothly. Italian people are famous for their vibrant social life and their easygoing attitude, even when several generations live together in one house. Misto is also a type of hot drink with equal parts of coffee and milk in it. Using the Misto app you’ll surely see that we believe in equality in terms of housekeeping.
Did you find this case study interesting? Kindly tap that 💚 button ! I’d love to hear your thoughts on this story and your ideas on pros and cons of living with roommies by replying below👇.
