Laundreasy
Problem and Background
For many students, college is the first time they've had to consistently do their own laundry. When you're busy with adjusting to a new lifestyle and trying to balance mountains of homework with making new friends, nobody wants to deal with their favorite light-colored clothes being ruined in the wash, or accidentally dropping socks in the mysterious water that has been pooling up for weeks. Even seasoned professionals sometimes forget their tide pods or dryer sheets, and have to trek up three flights of stairs to retrieve them.
Based on testimonials from Dartmouth freshmen, we identified what the typical laundry basket was lacking, and set out to make improvements.
Here's what some of our target users had to say about their current laundry experience.
Stats on Laundry at Dartmouth
Compiled from a survey of 40 freshmen
43%
dread doing laundry
46%
say their hamper is inconvenient to carry
80%
wish laundry took less time
Specifications and Final Prototype
Based on user research, we determined that our device must be:
Convenient to Carry
Lightweight
Sturdy, self-standing
Able to keep laundry dry/clean
Able to hold TidePods, dryer sheets
Able to separate Lights and Darks
Fashionable
Mark size of single load
Foldable
Below are pictures of our final prototype. Mouse over each one for details about the key features.
User Feedback and Next Steps
Overall, our user feedback was positive. We hit nearly all of our specifications, and we had many people tell us that they would actually buy our product. From testing we concluded that users saved two minutes by separating their lights and darks by using the Laundreasy, rather than having to separate everything in the laundry room and risk dropping something on the perpetually-flooded floor.
However, there were a few things that can be improved upon, described below.
