iOS/Android Mobile App
CoHab – The One Stop Platform for Communal Living
Project Summary
Our team embarked on a mission to develop a superior solution—CoHab. Recognizing the relevance of streamlined communication in shared living spaces, we sought to address the shortcomings of Roommate by creating a comprehensive, user-friendly platform tailored to the needs of cohabitants.
Responsibilities
Frontend Developer
Technology Stack
React Native
Expo
Tomcat Server
MySQL
GitHub
Problem
Roommate emerged as a focal point due to its relevance to university students living on campus. However, Roommate's shortcomings in user interface, navigation, and functionality became apparent upon closer inspection.
Objective
To serve as a centralized platform, offering a seamless experience for roommates in managing various aspects of communal living. By building upon the foundation laid by Roommate, our goal is to create an application that not only addresses the shortcomings identified through user feedback but also introduces new and enhanced functionalities.
Key Features
CoHab revolves around three core pillars of functionality
Finance
CoHab facilitates transparent tracking of expenses and bills among roommates.
Integration with roommates' credit cards streamlines transactions for shared resources.
Chore and Tasks
The application allows for efficient planning of shared household chores and tasks.
Roommates can collaboratively create, assign, and view chores and tasks, fostering a more organized living environment.
Calendar
CoHab's calendar feature synchronizes roommates' personal schedules.
Users can update and share plans within the application, ensuring everyone stays informed about upcoming events
Design
Motivated by the desire to enhance the cohabitation experience, the team conducted surveys to understand user demands within the co-living community. The findings reinforced the need for an improved application, leading to the conceptualization of CoHab.
Colour Palette
One of the design goals behind CoHab was to create a welcoming, cozy and homely atmosphere for users to enjoy. Therefore, the colour palette as shown above is generally followed throughout CoHab as it consists of warm colours and a balanced mix of colour values.
Navigation Icons
Customised navigation icons were created to bring CoHab a sense of originality and to better suit the overall colour scheme of the application. The icons are designed in a vector art style and are in an isometric perspective to match the rest of the graphics in CoHab.
Avatar
The avatar was created with the intention of providing users with an initial contact point to introduce them to the rest of the application. Similar approaches can be seen in games such as Dave in Plants VS Zombies, or Nook in Animal Crossing. We chose to use a dog because it is a common household pet that conveys the notion of warmth and comfort. The avatar will appear to be befriending its new owner upon their arrival, helping users to treat the room as their home.
Features
Splash
Designed to create a positive first impression to set the tone for the rest of the application. The gentle bobbing animation of CoHab’s avatar, Carl, greets the user accompanied by animated dots moving in waves as the application loads.
Login / Register
The same background as the splash is used for a sense of continuity. The login screen follows the common standard of allowing users to access their account by a unique username or email and password. When creating a new account, users are to key in their credentials and to confirm their password.
Neighbourhood
Designed to simulate a virtual semi-realistic world that the users can personalise and immerse themselves in. Upon initial login to the application, users will encounter an empty plot of land. As they either form or join neighborhoods, a new building will materialize, akin to the real-life addition of a new address. To enhance the realism of the neighborhood interface, three distinct versions have been designed to simulate various environments during different times of the day—morning, afternoon, and night. Consequently, the neighborhood screen will dynamically adjust to reflect the changing times of day.
Avatar
We believed that users could gain a more comprehensive understanding of our app through an interactive walkthrough. Therefore, we integrated an in-app tutorial within the neighborhood screen to offer interactivity, convenience, and efficiency. Recognizing the avatar as the key link between the user and our CoHab app, we opted to designate the avatar as the starting point for the tutorial.
Home
Designed to simulate the environment of shared spaces in a house, specifically the living room and the kitchen. The furniture is also designed to encapsulate the main functions of the app, so that users will be able to attach a default function to the added furniture if they do not wish to personalise.
Notification
Primarily to aid communication between people living together. All main features within the group tab are condensed here for easy access. The check in and check out function is also here, which serves as a key method of communication between roommates.
Finance
Designed to show the user’s wallet balance and the important buttons to manage finances at first glance. The finance screen is split into 3 sections, the monthly budget section, roommate section and the group section with the use of scrollview.
Chores
The goal is to set up a task, usually a chore, that automatically repeats for the users. The users should be able to clearly tell how often the chore repeats, when it is due, what kind of chore or task it is, and most importantly, who is currently responsible for doing it. Adding and editing chores is also meant to be hassle-free for the users.
Tasks
The main difference that separates the task screen from the chores screen is that chores screen is used for repetitive weekly or monthly routines whereas tasks screen is used as a reminder for single, unrepeated events. The screen is divided into 2 different sections; a section for users to claim tasks and another section to keep track of tasks. There is also a section to view missed/overdue tasks. The missed task card has a prominent red background as compared to others so as to serve as a reminder and notify the user.
Calendar
Although most modern mobile phones already have a calendar function, they generally do not support sharing a calendar and events among multiple people. For people who are sharing a living space, it is common to plan events using that same space. As such, the main goal of the calendar screen is not to reinvent the calendar, but merely to allow multiple people to edit and use the same calendar and events function easily and intuitively.
Summary
CoHab serves as a one-stop platform for all things related to communal living. It provides convenience for cohabitants by allowing them to organise household and financial matters or life events in a centralised application through the various functions such as chores, task, finance and calendar.
Recommendation for Future Works
Non-player Character (NPC)
As each user has a unique username, a personalised NPC could be created for each user. Based on the GPS location of the user or whether they have checked into their house on CoHab, an NPC would appear or disappear on the home screen.
Greater customization features for the furniture
We will like to allow users to be able to set different colors for their furniture and also be able to rearrange the furniture in the room, hence this will intensify their user experience on using CoHab.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Avatar
At present, our avatar dialogue is based on hardcoded text. To make our avatar, Carl, more interactive, we would be interested in introducing AI to Carl such that each user can have a unique experience on CoHab. Each user would be able to talk with Carl and Carl would be able to understand and generate suitable responses for a two-way conversation.
Gamification
We could use Unity 2D to create mini games for users to play within CoHab. Users may be able to customise their own avatar for a sense of personalisation. A reward system based on completed tasks or chores may be implemented within CoHab to encourage frequent usage and motivate each user to carry out their assigned chores or tasks. The awarded points from completing tasks or chores could then be converted to CoHab’s game currency which allows users to “buy” in-game items or unlock more customisable outfits for their avatar.
Link finance features with PayLah!/PayNow and enable Scan-to-Pay
In the future, we are still very much interested in bringing these features into the app so that users would not need to switch apps to pay for their expenses or food, especially for students living in the universities’ halls.