Mobile App Wireframe for an IoT Laundry-Folding Robot

Create a wireframe for a laundry-folding robot.

The UI design was to be outsourced to a famous design company in Japan due to their name brand and "cool" aesthetic. However, the design company is mostly known for style and not at usability. The personas, user stories, wireframing, userflows, usability testing were to be determine internally, with the high-fidelity UI images provided by the outsourced design company.

The laundry folding robot took 6+ hours to fold a load of laundry.

The target market was wealthy, early adopters who would buy the robot for their wives in Japan. The target end user would be mothers in their 40s that likely have experience using gadgets like iPads and Roomba, though are not necessarily tech-savvy in terms of understanding how things work.

The app was to be connected to the robot via bluetooth.

After laundry was loaded into the robot, ideally users would start the machine using the app.

The status of their laundry could be checked in the app, along with a camera.

After folding was completed, users were to sort their clothing based on family members. This would enable the AI of the robot to later automatically sort the clothing in the future.

Users could also see all their clothing in the app to make a virtual closet.

Clothing photos taken by the robot were often not aesthetically pleasing.

The robot would often result in errors.

The long folding time would make it easy for users to be unsure if any progress was made.

Users may not want to take the effort of organizing clothing in the app, or may be done with errors.

The wireframe was tested in 2-3 rounds of 5-10 Japanese housewives and mothers around middle age.

Several preliminary questions were asked to understand their experience with technology, their laundry needs, their family composition, and how closely they matched our personas.

The main functionality of the app was extracted into 3-4 tasks, which were asked of the users in order. The users used an iPhone with a paper prototype app, created on Marvel, to mimic what actions they would take. They also were asked to voice their thoughts aloud. The user test was recorded using Lookback.