Mayday is Making
Co-Living Feel More
Just Like Living.
The Problem
Co-Living has long been the standard solution to New York City’s overpriced housing. Today, roommates are less reluctant to share chores and responsibilities, but despite the move towards a sharing economy, many of the problems that traditionally plagued roommate relationships haven’t disappeared. Given peoples’ hectic lifestyles and busy schedules, it’s hard to find the time to delegate responsibilities and define rules for common and private spaces. The combination of group text and sticky notes is no longer an effective communication method among roommates.
Resolving Roommate Conflicts Before They Happen
Living with roommates isn’t always easy. Instead of engaging in passive-aggressive behavior and arguing about shared responsibilities, a mobile app could provide a more mature, respectful, and convenient way to handle conflicts.
This app would help resolve the four biggest problems plaguing roommate relationships:
- Task Management
- Ownership of Belongings
- Monitoring the shared environment
- Reserving Common Spaces
Create your task list by choosing from a standard set of options. Swipe right if you’re willing to take it on, swipe left if you’d rather not. You’ll need to say Yes to at least 50%.
Receive your task list for the week, showing how frequently each of your chores will need to be completed.
Track your roommate’s progress and work together to keep a consistently tidy space without having to endure passive aggressive reminders or anyone dodging their responsibilities.
Even though your roommates all keep different schedules, you can keep tabs on the apartment activities through automatically logged progress updates.
Task Manager: The Easy Way to Share Chores & Responsibilities
Getting several roommates to agree on the shared code of conduct for the apartment is nearly impossible. While a lease typically specifies legal obligations between a landlord and the tenants, it ignores critical issues between roommates like how to delegate chores and responsibilities.
Using an integrated task management feature, you would be able to avoid miscommunication and make sure everyone is on the same page. While it’s impossible to specify every issue, divvying up chores would help avoid surprises. If a serious issue emerges such as a roommate continuously shirking his or her responsibilities, the apartment task manager can document the person’s inability to perform assigned duties.
Set Ownership Parameters for Your Personal Belongings
Now, there’s a blame-free way to decide on who can use and borrow what items. With an optimized ownership setup feature, you could decide what items are for personal use only and what items can be shared among roommates. This feature can help you avoid ugly confrontations with roommates who keep borrowing your stuff without asking.
This feature also means that you or a roommate will no longer have to wait around and ask to use things, because everything would be clearly marked off as personal or shared from the get-go. With this feature, you would be able to more confidently leave items in a common space without the worry of them being misused.
Put an End to Noise Pollution
Don’t know what to do about a roommate’s excessive noise levels? This app will utilize a sound level meter to access your smartphone’s microphone to measure decibels in your apartment. By cross-referencing agreed upon volume thresholds, the app will determine whether your roommate is producing unacceptable levels of noise. Instead of awkwardly having to confront an excessively noisy and disruptive roommate, all you have to do is record a sound clip. If the sound level is exceeded, you can send a report to the person making the commotion via the mobile app. This way, you can avoid arguing over what constitutes an acceptable noise level. You’d also have a record of the instances where a roommate repeatedly violated acceptable noise levels; this could be an especially useful record if the problem is ongoing, and may help if you decide to take further action.
Reserve a Common Area from the Convenience of Your Smartphone
Now it will be simple to reserve a shared living space such as a living room, bathroom, kitchen, study room, or any other common areas. The ‘book a room’ feature could be used to avoid arguments by allowing you and your roommates to schedule time blocks to watch their favorite show, invite guests over, or reserve a space for some quiet time and solitude. Rather than having everyone gather for a group meeting, this application would make it simple to book a space based on calendar availability and help avoid duplicate scheduling conflicts.
Everyday Integration
This app would not be for all Co-Living situations, but would prove especially helpful for those cases where communication is just as rare as compromise. With this management tool, renters would be better equipped for their future in navigating diverse renting situations. This app concept would be just another way to utilize your smartphone to solve a pressing, everyday issue.
