User
Needs

We conducted user research by talking to fellow students who share living space with other housemates. Personal experiences of living with multiple people also helped us determine the main user needs we were designing for. We determined that there were 3 major issues that housemates struggled to deal with: sanitation, utility usage, and maintenance. First, we found that students often had a hard time keeping track of household responsibilities as simple as taking out the trash and doing dishes. Also, the refrigerator situation was an important issue when it came to sharing (or not sharing) food. Second, users said they faced problems when dealing with keep track of utility usage and splitting bills. Lastly, maintenance of the living area was an important issue. This includes contacting the landlord for repairs as well as keeping the space safe/healthy to live in. After discussing with our users, we determined that these were a few major needs that should be addressed when designing our agent.

However, when presenting these needs to our class and discussing the human-agent idea further, it was brought to our attention that an agent would not necessarily be able to solve all of these needs. Although these were common problems that existed among most college households, they were not needs that an agent would be useful for addressing. Intruding on privacy as well as placing blame on housemates are just a couple concerns that would evolve if an agent was used for the needs specified above. Therefore, we decided to re-focus our design on enhancing the “shared living” experience.