UX Research · Usability
Laundry Booking Experience
Rethinking the shared laundry room — from a source of dread to a well-behaved little service.
Placeholder image- Project type
- UX Research · Usability
- Duration
- 6 weeks
- Team
- Team of 3
- My role
- Heuristic evaluation, Think-Aloud moderation, synthesis
- Tools & methods
- Figma · Notion · Otter · Nielsen's heuristics
The challenge
A student housing laundry booking app had a 41% task abandonment rate. We were asked to figure out why.
Research & insights
A heuristic evaluation flagged 27 issues; Think-Aloud sessions with eight residents surfaced the emotional ones — anxiety about double-booking, guilt about no-shows, quiet resentment of the interface.
Design process
- 1
Heuristic audit against Nielsen's ten
- 2
Think-Aloud sessions, recorded and transcribed
- 3
Affinity mapping in Miro
- 4
Priority matrix of pain points
- 5
Redesign proposal with annotated wireframes
I just always assumed I was the one being stupid.
Final outcome
A redesign proposal that cut the booking flow from nine to four screens, added a 'gentle reminder' pattern for slot handovers and re-framed cancellations as a positive act.
Key learnings
- People don't misuse systems — systems mis-anticipate people.
- A five-minute Think-Aloud tells you more than an hour of analytics.
- The right default is quieter than the loudest feature.