Rootmate
A roommate coordination app built on cooperation, not competition.
Product Design
Project Overview
My Role
Product Designer
Timeline
8 weeks
Process
User Research, Ideation, Prototyping, User Testing, Visual Design
Often, stories about college roommates are filled with conflict, tension, and irritation. And even in the best scenarios, developing a system for living together requires quite a bit of work and time. Rootmate seeks to simplify the experience by letting an app handle the communication, tracking, and more!
User Insights
During this process, I collected user feedback via a Google Form, where I received 16 responses. My goal was to learn as much about the college roommate experience as possible.
10/16
said chores are the biggest source of tension in their household
14/16
felt the chore workload is split unevenly
10/16
identified a rotating chore system as their ideal setup
100%
of respondents want daily reminders for chores and expenses
10/14
noted that better communication would have helped prevent conflict
4 users
specifically mentioned wanting anonymous roommate reminders
Competitive Analysis
App 1: OurFlat
Strengths
Options for splitting expenses
Great notification options
Weaknesses
Cluttered background photos
Poor event time selector
App 2: Flatify
Strengths
Options for polls in chat
Shared repeated expenses
Weaknesses
No notification options
Poor repeated event options
App 3: Flatastic
Strengths
User friendly design
Both shared and personal tasks
Weaknesses
Contracts can’t be shared
Poor notification options
While each competitor had distinct strengths and weaknesses, one pattern was consistent across all three: paywalls and locked features that limited full participation. This was a real problem for tools built to support cooperative living, as some of the most necessary features were only available in the paid version.
Ideation
With my research findings in mind, I explored the early stages of this project through whiteboarding. I thought through multiple areas of the project: three user personas, example layouts of main pages, and page navigation structure. This exercised helped lay the foundation for my navigational flow for the rest of the project.
The Opportunity
After reflecting on my user research, competitive analysis, and whiteboarding, one gap became clear: cooperation. All three apps had various unique ways of tracking chore completion, and in all three, there was some type of leaderboard, tracking the number of points each roommate got, and ranking them against each other. At its core, this was only serving to reinforce the core issues at the heart of my user feedback: tension. By pitting roommates against each other, there was always an emphasis on competition and winning, which is counterproductive to a situation that requires cooperation, compromise, and communication to truly thrive.
This is what Rootmate's goal now became: to provide a digital space that, at its heart, fostered community and teamwork. Not competition.
To achieve this, Rootmate would replace individual task tracking with a shared, cooperative measurement of household wellbeing. The app centers around a plant and a 'household health' metric. As roommates complete tasks, update shopping lists, and mark expenses as paid, they contribute to the health of a plant the whole household shares. When tasks go overdue, the plant's health declines, with drooping leaves and stalled growth. When household health is high, the plant flourishes, and every roommate can feel proud that they contributed.
Prototyping
When designing my mid-fidelity prototypes, I first made two complete pages, a chat page and a home page, where I developed early branding decisions like icon style and type treatments. Once those were done, I used Figma Make to generate 10 mid-fidelity screens based on those decisions. Figma Make saved significant time, but the resulting frames weren't quite what I'd envisioned, and I was still building fluency with Figma's components, variants, and auto layout. So I rebuilt the remaining screens from scratch, using the generated frames as a reference; a slower process, but one that gave me hands-on practice with the systems-thinking tools I'd need for the rest of the project.
Component Library
After completing the medium fidelity prototypes, I decided to go back and build each frame myself using components, variants, and auto layout; my first time working with any of these three elements. Building from scratch was slow and sometimes frustrating at first, but this process taught me to think in systems rather than individual screens. Some things I did for my component library:
Built selected/unselected states for nav icons
Created variants for levels of household health
Designed reusable list widgets
Experimented with boolean variables
Used auto layout throughout
And so much more!
By the end of this process, I had a fully reusable component library. Having this library as an asset for the rest of my project was crucial for quick and easy implementation of changes later, especially when it came to implementing color.
User Testing
I conducted three in-depth user tests on an early prototype. This proved to be incredible useful, providing both direction for my future design decisions and awareness of bugs and issues that needed fixing.
Two users wanted the the chore assignee more visible
Layout was changed to prioritize the name of the assigned person
One user suggested adding a label to the household health bar
"Household Health" label was added
Users mentioned adding an interaction for completing a task
Animated interaction was added for all task completion
Two users wanted a full size version of the calendar
Calendar widget was reworked, and full calendar view was added
One user mentioned wanting arrows next to expense totals
Up and down arrows were added to expense widgets
Bugs and missing links were reported by all users
Bugs and missing links were investigated and solved
Visual Design & Color
To explore color options, I created four mood boards, each representing a different emotional direction, then designed three home screen mockups per board to see how each palette felt in context.
From those twelve options, I narrowed it down to my top three, then selected option #2, as it was the one that felt warm and grounded without being overly saturated, reinforcing the plant and growth metaphor at the center of Rootmate's concept.
After selecting my top option I refined the color scheme into the final palette that was implemented throughout the rest of the app.
Results
The final prototype includes several key features designed around Rootmate's cooperative core focus: an anonymous chat for addressing sensitive roommate issues without direct confrontation, a shared chore list with clear assignee visibility, a household health bar that reflects the group's collective progress, and expense tracking with shared and individual views. Each interaction, from marking a task complete to updating the shopping list, was designed to reinforce the sense that roommates were contributing to something shared, not just checking off their own to-do list.
The final stage of this project was a presentation at the Adobe office in Lehi, Utah. I presented to three professional designers, and was able to receive personalized feedback from each of them. Some of the comments include:
Successes
Cohesive visual design
Hierarchy of elements
Household health feature
Things to Improve
Add a button to show only personal chores
Add options for personalizing home page widgets
App should be the bad guy, not anonymous chat
Next Steps
My presentation at Adobe left me feeling excited for what the future of Rootmate could be, and gave me ideas for how to improve upon the design in the future. Some of the most notable changes I would make are:
Add the ability to filter by personal vs group tasks
This would allow users to easily check in on their own personal responsibilities for chores and expenses.
Allow users to customize their home page widgets
This would increase personalization for each user, and make the app more beneficial for long-term use.
Remove anonymous chat and build in reminder notifications
This would improve the cooperative nature of the app, and remove opportunities for tension to build.
Implement a plant animation upon task completion
This would allow users to get real-time visual feedback on how their action affect the household health
Integrate onboarding into the prototype
This would include an opportunity to let each household select a unique plant as a group
Continue user testing, and refining based on feedback
I'd love to keep testing and refining Rootmate until it's something real households actually use.
I'd love to connect with you!
I'd love to connect with you!
Rootmate
A roommate coordination app built on cooperation, not competition.
Product Design
Project Overview
My Role
Product Designer
Timeline
8 weeks
Process
User Research, Ideation, Prototyping, User Testing, Visual Design
Often, stories about college roommates are filled with conflict, tension, and irritation. And even in the best scenarios, developing a system for living together requires quite a bit of work and time. Rootmate seeks to simplify the experience by letting an app handle the communication, tracking, and more!
Competitive Analysis
App 1: OurFlat
Strengths
Options for splitting expenses
Great notification options
Weaknesses
Cluttered background photos
Poor event time selector
App 2: Flatify
Strengths
Options for polls in chat
Shared repeated expenses
Weaknesses
No notification options
Poor repeated event options
App 3: Flatastic
Strengths
User friendly design
Both shared and personal tasks
Weaknesses
Contracts can’t be shared
Poor notification options
While each competitor had distinct strengths and weaknesses, one pattern was consistent across all three: paywalls and locked features that limited full participation. This was a real problem for tools built to support cooperative living, as some of the most necessary features were only available in the paid version.
Ideation
With my research findings in mind, I explored the early stages of this project through whiteboarding. I thought through multiple areas of the project: three user personas, example layouts of main pages, and page navigation structure. This exercised helped lay the foundation for my navigational flow for the rest of the project.
The Opportunity
After reflecting on my user research, competitive analysis, and whiteboarding, one gap became clear: cooperation. All three apps had various unique ways of tracking chore completion, and in all three, there was some type of leaderboard, tracking the number of points each roommate got, and ranking them against each other.
At its core, this was only serving to reinforce the core issues at the heart of my user feedback: tension. By pitting roommates against each other, there was always an emphasis on competition and winning, which is counterproductive to a situation that requires cooperation, compromise, and communication to truly thrive.
This is what Rootmate's goal now became: to provide a digital space that, at its heart, fostered community and teamwork. Not competition.
To achieve this, Rootmate would replace individual task tracking with a shared, cooperative measurement of household wellbeing. The app centers around a plant and a 'household health' metric. As roommates complete tasks, update shopping lists, and mark expenses as paid, they contribute to the health of a plant the whole household shares. When tasks go overdue, the plant's health declines, with drooping leaves and stalled growth. When household health is high, the plant flourishes, and every roommate can feel proud that they contributed.
Prototyping
When designing my mid fidelity prototypes, I first made two complete pages, a chat page and a home page, where I developed early branding decisions such as icon style and type treatments. Once those were completed, I used Figma Make to develop a total of 10 mid fidelity screens, based on those design decisions.
Figma Make saved significant time at this stage, but the resulting frames weren't exactly what I had envisioned. Overall, it was a useful starting point for prototyping, but the frames still needed quite a bit of refining.
Component Library
After completing the medium fidelity prototypes, I decided to go back and build each frame myself using components, variants, and auto layout; my first time working with any of these three elements. Building from scratch was slow and sometimes frustrating at first, but this process taught me to think in systems rather than individual screens. Some things I did for my component library:
Built selected/unselected states for nav icons
Created variants for levels of household health
Designed reusable list widgets
Experimented with boolean variables
Used auto layout throughout
And so much more!
By the end of this process, I had a fully reusable component library. Having this library as an asset for the rest of my project was crucial for quick and easy implementation of changes later, especially when it came to implementing color.
User Testing
I conducted three in-depth user tests on an early prototype. This proved to be incredible useful, providing both direction for my future design decisions and awareness of bugs and issues that needed fixing.
Two users wanted the the chore assignee more visible
Layout was changed to prioritize the name of the assigned person
One user suggested adding a label to the household health bar
"Household Health" label was added
Users mentioned adding an interaction for completing a task
Animated interaction was added for all task completion
Two users wanted a full size version of the calendar
Calendar widget was reworked, and full calendar view was added
One user mentioned wanting arrows next to expense totals
Up and down arrows were added to expense widgets
Bugs and missing links were reported by all users
Bugs and missing links were investigated and solved
Visual Design & Color
To explore color options, I created four mood boards, each representing a different emotional direction, then designed three home screen mockups per board to see how each palette felt in context.
From those twelve options, I narrowed it down to my top three, then selected option #2, as it was the one that felt warm and grounded without being overly saturated, reinforcing the plant and growth metaphor at the center of Rootmate's concept.
After selecting my top option I refined the color scheme into the final palette that was implemented throughout the rest of the app.
Results
The final prototype includes several key features designed around Rootmate's cooperative core focus: an anonymous chat for addressing sensitive roommate issues without direct confrontation, a shared chore list with clear assignee visibility, a household health bar that reflects the group's collective progress, and expense tracking with shared and individual views. Each interaction, from marking a task complete to updating the shopping list, was designed to reinforce the sense that roommates were contributing to something shared, not just checking off their own to-do list.
The final stage of this project was a presentation at the Adobe office in Lehi, Utah. I presented to three professional designers, and was able to receive personalized feedback from each of them. Some of the comments include:
Successes
Cohesive visual design
Hierarchy of elements
Household health feature
Things to Improve
Add a button to show only personal chores
Add options for personalizing home page widgets
App should be the bad guy, not anonymous chat
Next Steps
My presentation at Adobe left me feeling excited for what the future of Rootmate could be, and gave me ideas for how to improve upon the design in the future. Some of the most notable changes I would make are:
Add the ability to filter by personal vs group tasks
This would allow users to easily check in on their own personal responsibilities for chores and expenses.
Allow users to customize their home page widgets
This would increase personalization for each user, and make the app more beneficial for long-term use.
Remove anonymous chat and build in reminder notifications
This would improve the cooperative nature of the app, and remove opportunities for tension to build.
Implement a plant animation upon task completion
This would allow users to get real-time visual feedback on how their action affect the household health
Integrate onboarding into the prototype
This would include an opportunity to let each household select a unique plant as a group
Continue user testing, and refining based on feedback
I'd love to keep testing and refining Rootmate until it's something real households actually use.
User Insights
During this process, I collected user feedback via a Google Form, where I received 16 responses. My goal was to learn as much about the college roommate experience as possible.
10/16
said chores are the biggest source of tension in their household
14/16
felt the chore workload is split unevenly
10/16
identified a rotating chore system as their ideal setup
100%
of respondents want daily reminders for chores and expenses
10/14
noted that better communication would have helped prevent conflict
4 users
specifically mentioned wanting anonymous roommate reminders