Houstle
/House-el/
Simplifying the household hustle and reducing mental load.
Houstle
Household management app
Overview
Houstle is a mobile app designed to streamline shared calendars, household task management, meal planning, shopping lists simplifying collaborative living for modern families and shared households.
The project is a self initiated design project to showcase and develop design skills of a team of design graduates.
My role:
Project Co-ordinator, UX Design, UI Design
Team:
Me-as above, Zac - product design, Kristin - User Research, Patricia - UR & UX
Tools:
Figma, Figjam, Optimal Sort, Typeform
Research Methodology
What did we do?
Our initial product concept emerged from informal conversations about household management challenges. However, to validate the idea, we needed systematic research. We designed a comprehensive research approach combining an online survey with in-depth user interviews, both in-person and virtual, to transform anecdotal insights into substantive user research data.
Who did we speak to?
Our online survey was distributed within the team's various networks and due to our own diversities, the participants covered a wide range of living arrangements.
The user interviews were planned out so as the participants would be from 5 distinct living arrangements:
Nuclear family with two working parents and school-age children
Nuclear family with two working parents and grandparents that were actively involved in childcare and family arrangements.
Urban shared apartment with young professionals
Divorced/separated parent with children living in the same premises and parental responsibilities of a child/children living in a separate residence.
Couple living in first shared home
What did we find out?
Our contextual inquiry uncovered significant communication barriers in household management. Participants frequently struggled with fragmented communication channels, relying on inconsistent methods like verbal reminders, scattered text messages, and sticky notes. This led to missed tasks, repeated instructions, and escalating household tensions. Different living arrangements—from multi-generational homes to shared parental responsibilities across multiple households—revealed common communication pain points: unclear task ownership, lack of real-time tracking, and limited accountability. The absence of a centralised management system created household tensions, breeding resentment over unequal workloads and damaging the emotional fabric of shared living spaces, creating the need for a comprehensive, user-friendly management solution.
Key insights gathered:
Diverse household dynamics and management challenges
Varying technological comfort levels
Unique communication and task allocation methods
Specific needs across different living configurations
What other apps are out there?
Our analysis of both existing household management tools as well as task management and organisational tools revealed significant gaps in the market. Most applications offer fragmented solutions, addressing either task tracking & scheduling, shopping lists, and complicated budgeting but failing to provide a comprehensive household management experience. The current tools lack intuitive design, efficient communication features, and simplified inputting, creating an opportunity for a more user-centered solution.
Problem Statement
Modern households face complex coordination challenges that traditional management methods fail to address. Families and shared living arrangements struggle with inefficient task distribution, poor communication about responsibilities, and a lack of transparent accountability. These issues lead to increased household tensions, uneven workload distribution, and misunderstandings that can strain relationships and create unnecessary stress in living environments.
Research analysis and brainstorming
Once the interviews had been conducted by each of the members of the team and we had our survey results, we used figjam to discuss the insights and breaking down the relevant frustrations, needs and objectives.
Who are we designing for?
With a greater understanding of who our primary users would be, we created 4 user personas that we would be designing for.
Leon, 42
Divorced father with dependends in 2 households
Works shift work.
Tech savvy level: 8/10
Nicky 47
Mother and primary organiser in nuclear family household
Works full time Monday to Friday
Tech savvy level: 7/10
Frank, 72 & Lucy, 68
Grand parents who are actively involved in childcare not in their own household.
Retired
Tech savvy level: 6/10
Taylor, 27
Single, lives in a houseshare.
Employed full time
Tech savvy level: 9/10
How can we make their lives easier? What was our objective.
To create a user friendly household management app offering a shared digital platform for organising chores, efficiently updating shopping lists, planning meals, and coordinating schedules. This app would reduce stress, improve communication, and create a harmonious living environment with flexible tools that adapt to various household types, ensuring efficient and timely task completion.
Feature funnel
As a design project, we balanced creative freedom with a disciplined approach relative to our finite time resources. Leveraging our research insights, we developed an extensive list of potential features and then strategically prioritized them. Our filtering process focused on two critical criteria: potential user impact and competitive differentiation. We critically evaluated each feature by assessing whether it would significantly improve user experience and whether existing specialized tools already addressed similar functionality. This disciplined approach allowed us to distill our concept to a core set of integrated features that would deliver meaningful value to users.
Phase 1
Evaluation:
• Is the functionality of the feature already addressed with specialised tools?
• Would it significantly improve user experience?
Phase 2
Evaluation:
• Is it neccessary or can it be implemented in future iterations?
Phase 3
The final cut
How will they connect to each other
After finalising our core features, we mapped their connections to each other to ensure a cohesive user experience. By visualising feature relationships and user flow, we developed an initial sitemap that illustrated how different functionalities would interact and support each other. This approach allowed us to create a more integrated and seamless product design and effectively allocate work-streams amongst the team.
Time to design
A feature = a workstream.
Each team member was assigned one Team members led individual feature development while collaborating closely to maintain product cohesion. This balanced approach enabled focused work on specific features while ensuring a seamless user experience across the entire app.
Designing the interface
Before diving into detailed design work, we created a unified UI kit. This collection of reusable components formed our design system's backbone, ensuring consistency and efficiency across all future design work.
