UX/UI Design Case Study: Managing your chores with Tricount
Do you complain about chores? Do you argue with your mates on who is taking the trash out? Do you feel that you are the one doing everything in this house?
If you answered “yes” to one of those questions, well read what’s next and discover how I got to work on solving this situation.
Today I want to talk to you about a feature I was challenged to add to the mobile application Tricount: managing the householding tasks in Tricount.
Before jumping into the subject, let me introduce you to Tricount if you don’t already know them.
Tricount was born in Belgium 10 years ago and quickly, the app had tremendous success. More than 1 million downloads on Android, 4,8 rating in the app Store and the app is even n°35 in the Finance section which is pretty amazing considering that the app is competing with bank apps also.
- Tricount is about dealing with the expenses in all shared moments: it can be within a couple, a group of friends or family during holidays, and even for flat shares.
- Tricount relies on 3 design principles which are: the service has to be Intuitive, Transparent and with a strong Social link between the users.
In that context, I wondered Why would Tricount want to give his users the possibility to manage their chores ?
It can sound kind of weird, right ? Tricount and chores have nothing to do together when you first think about it. But make no mistake! The link is actually pretty smart.
Tricount + Chores = Happy consumers
Doing some research on the subject I found out that chores are the first reason for fights in couples (as a study conducted on 3000 persons by Betterbathrooms.com in 2019 showed us). Those fights lead to so many wasted days in conflict that “Something has to be done” ! Tricount doesn’t want unhappy users of course, so that’s when I came into play.
Addressing this challenge
I first started with some analysis on Tricount’s competitors. Regarding apps to manage expenses, 3 apps stood out: Splitwise (the main competitor), Settle up and Splid. Here I didn’t see design opportunities since those apps have almost the same features.
On the contrary, regarding the apps to manage the chores, they were more oriented towards parents to educate their children. So here, I add an opportunity to design something different!
I headed to some quick user interviews to get first impressions on this new feature for Tricount. My interviewees were quite intrigued and interested. “It’s funny, why not?”
At the same time, they were skeptical “Tricount is extremely efficient, I’m afraid that this new feature could had mess in the app”.
Regarding the chores, I asked them if they’ve already used an app to get organized and Daniela for example told me she had but didn’t like it “It’s unhealthy, there is too much competition, it didn’t help us”. Clémence also told me “Washing the dishes is not fun, adding points and rewards will not make it more fun”.
So here was my approach:
- Keep Tricount’s essence: stay Simple, Straightforward and Transparent
- My goal here is to ease the pain as much as possible about chores
I want to avoid rewards and points like in other apps, I want to stay away from this sense of competition that could highlight the tensions.
- So I want to — if I can — add a pinch of humor
Chores can cause tensions so I would like to lighten up the subject.
Let the users decide
- In tricount, you can now create Boards of chores
- The goal is to make it simple and yet customized to your way of doing chores: you can set preferences if you want to see what you have to do during the week
- People can also receive notifications when someone validates a task. Indeed, when you argue it’s because most of the time, you washed the dishes but no one really noticed it! Here we want people to see it and even thank you for it :)
- Finally, just as in Tricount, you can see the balance but here, Tricount will let you decide on How to balance. Since it’s about time and not money, there is no way better than the other to balance. The other member might do more next week or maybe he will buy you dinner! It’s up to you:)
In a word, the users — just as for the tricounts — are autonomous!
From Low-fi to High-Fi
Wireframing that new feature was not very hard since Tricount has a pretty simple and straightforward design system. The typo is Roboto, the colors are not numerous and the different components were easily repeatable.
That’s why, I created this feature directly from Low fidelity wireframes to High-fidelity ones.
Testing my wireframes and detecting issues
Create a board of chores
To add this feature I created a new nav bar to distinguish the 2 features. This navigation was clear and easily understood by my users when I tested it with them.
Creating a board
When creating a board, you can add some basic information about it. Again here, it was clear and the task was performed with no problem. I was only asked if I could add colors to differentiate the users for later in the board.
Set up preferences and goals
Here the users got confused. They didn’t understand what the preferences could do and the goal was unclear if it was for them, for the group, for a week or forever… In other words, I had to change it. So I decided to combine those 2 functionalities in one so that: the preferences you set here, will set the TO DO list you will have later on your board, and the notifications you can receive
Board and balance
Here, I was clearly inspired by the presentation of the expenses. Users are familiar with it and it goes straight to the point. That’s why I replicated the design for the list of chores but users had a little wish here. They wanted to see the difference between the tasks to be done and the tasks that have been done. So I added the 2 sections in the same screen, organizing the list by week. You can recognize here the colors chosen when creating the board, to differentiate the tasks among the users.
Pinch of humor
Finally, about the pinch of humor added in the app, it was well received by my interviewees. They were quite happy not to feel guilty or on the contrary unreasonably rewarded.
If you are interested, you can see here the details of my prototypes in this video: https://youtu.be/uX8v9sGqK24
Conclusion
Thank you for reading this case study about Tricount! The subject was very interesting and the Design Thinking process really helped me find out where to head with this feature. Prototyping and testing it was a first for me and it gave me so many insights that I hope that the result could actually work if it had to be implemented one day :)
I hope you found this case study interesting and don’t hesitate to leave comments if you want to discuss it.
