During an interview process I went through in 2023, I was tasked with designing a mobile app that would allow users to track their household chores. A one liner brief was provided and I had an hour and a half to work on this exercise in front of a live panel of judges.
I was not allowed to use the internet for the first part of the exercise as the aim was to evaluate my design thinking, approach and process. But I was able to brainstorm and ask questions directly to the judges to make decisions and collaborate.
I began by asking the 5Ws (why, who, when, where and how) to have a better idea of the possibilities and the problem we were trying to solve. The following are the conclusions I gathered after discussing:
Why build it?
Managing household chores is difficult when everyone works or studies full-time.
Dividing responsibilities evenly is often unclear or forgotten.
Conversations about chores can easily become uncomfortable or avoided.
Who is it for?
Users aged 12–70, with a focus on Millennials and Gen Z—families, couples, and housemates looking for a simple and fair way to manage chores.
When and where is it used?
When moving in with others or when household routines become hectic.
Typically at the start of the day to review tasks and end of the day to mark them as complete.
Where will it be used?
It can be used anywhere, but users are most likely going to check it in the early morning to understand what is expected of them or what they need to do or coming back from a long day at work so they know what they need to do when they are about to arrive.
How success can be measured
Number of tasks completed vs. total assigned.
Number of consecutive active days.
Number of “households” created.
And I came up with a Problem Statement
Keeping a home organised can be challenging, especially for busy households. Dividing chores, remembering tasks, and holding one another accountable often lead to tension and inconsistency—particularly among people who work full-time or share spaces with friends, partners, or flatmates.
As you can tell, based on the nature of this exercise, I had to make decisions with the information provided and my own experience. I made some assumptions about our potential users I was not going to be able to validate, but for the sake of this case study, I will list them bellow:
Users struggle with the amount of house work they need to do and their responsibilities (either school, work or social life) > Organisation
Users need a better way to organise themselves and their households, trying apps on end, not finding one to stick to > Adoption
Expectations and standards differ from person to person, so there needs to be a way in which they can communicate those with each other > Communication and guidelines
If users don't have the time to organise their own chores, they will be unable to delegate them if necessary > Workflow
I also thought it would be easier for users if they could leverage AI to generate the tasks based on their profiles, the size of their households and their sign up preferences. Removing the burden of having to introduce instructions for each task they need to do, assigned to them or to others.
Tidy.ai introduces a gamified approach to household management with four main sections:
Manage Your Chores: Displays all shared tasks and allows easy status updates.
To-do Creation: Enables both manual and AI-assisted task creation.
Your Stats: Tracks completed tasks, streaks, and earned points.
Your Household: Shows other members, allowing collaboration and visibility.
Users are also allowed to postpone to-dos, change dates and time for recurrent completion and ask another user to “pass” a chore when the user is unable to complete certain to-do. Notifications would be pushed during the day to remind the user to complete the to-do and after completion they gain points that add to their overall score. With these scores, I assumed users would be more engaged to complete they to-dos and have higher scores than their flat mates or family members.
After defining these app features I moved to the next step that would be creating a series of wireframes to understand how I wanted the layouts to look like before jumping on the actual visual design. Here's an example of one of the flows in which a user would request to pass the chore to another member of the household.
Tidy.ai transforms chore management into an engaging and social experience.
Simplifies everyday task coordination.
Encourages accountability and friendly competition.
Keeps users motivated through AI assistance and progress tracking.
By turning household maintenance into something collaborative and enjoyable, Tidy.ai helps users bring order to shared spaces while maintaining harmony at home.