Here’s the opportunity DormBo could unlock
After initial research and interviews, we found that first-time dorm students had the hardest time adjusting to shared responsibilities. Many were living away from home for the first time and weren’t used to sharing space, which often led to conflicts. So, we decided to focus on this group to design more relevant and helpful solutions.
“We believe in empowering students with practical tools and habits that enable them to thrive in shared living environments, helping them to succeed in any collaborative space or community”
Dormitory Rules provides step-by-step guidance for setting shared cleaning schedules, ensuring everyone’s needs are heard and respected.
Students can track and complete tasks based on shared dorm rules, with roommate confirmation keeping everyone accountable.
On the Completed page, students can view roommate-verified tasks and claim earned points, encouraging them to complete their own tasks or help others.
tudents can view both dorm and individual rankings, then redeem points for rewards—keeping them motivated and engaged in dorm life.
Living with a “ bad ” roommate, you might have...
Research Goal
To gain a comprehensive understanding of the overall experiences of students living in the United States including contributions and challenges
Interestingly, on-campus residents make up less than half of the first-year student population — a surprising insight that suggests students may be less inclined to choose dormitory living.
Throughout our survey with 55 responses and 12 participants for interviews to gather deeper insights into students' needs and concerns.
Our goal was twofold
1. 77.4% of students lived on campus during their time at university.
2. 83% of students indicated that they have experienced conflicts with their roommates.
3. 47.2% of students experienced the most frequent conflicts with roommates while living in dorms.
4. Based on their experiences, 71.7% of students expressed a preference for off-campus housing.
To uncover real roommate dynamics, we interviewed 10 students and 2 Resident Assistants (RAs) living on campus. While students shared firsthand struggles in shared living spaces, RAs revealed the daily challenges of mediating conflicts, giving us a fuller picture of dorm life from both sides.
Synthesizing what we heard, we built a user emotional journey map to surface patterns in student struggles and opportunities for design to intervene.
1. Roommate Conflicts: Users experience frustration when the preferences they select in their roommate matching questionnaire do not align with the characteristics of their assigned roommates.
2. Unsuccessful Open Discussions: Users feel disheartened after attempting open communication with their roommates, only to find that their efforts do not result in any meaningful changes or resolutions.
3. Seeking Help from RAs: Users report feeling awkward and more strained in their roommate relationships after seeking assistance from RA, as these interventions often fail to resolve conflicts effectively and instead exacerbate tension.
“Students need to learn how to get along with roommates who have different lifestyles”
HMW Statement
A dorm task management app that organizes shared responsibilities into clear task statuses. Users can track their own tasks, view roommates’ tasks, and request or offer help, fostering a collaborative and supportive environment. By completing tasks and helping others, students can earn rewards, building a positive dorm culture that promotes cooperation, mutual respect, and a sense of community.
We analyzed existing dorm life services, which primarily focus on campus safety, housing management, and personal well-being. Our goal was to identify gaps and uncover unique opportunities that set our concept apart.
Current services like LiveSafe, StarRez, they are good at providing supportive resources. But they don’t really focus on relationship building. While RA and RD help with that to some extent, they just don't do enough to really guide students through the complexities of coexisting with roommates.
Competitive chart
Our solution are gonna fill the gap. Focuses on both areas, we’re all about creating a great dorm environment while also helping students build positive relationships with their roommates.
🔵 No service or app is currently addressing how students collaborate on a daily basis, build cohesive relationships, or foster personal growth and character development within their living environments. That's why we want to collaborate with schools to foster a comprehensive dorm and campus experience.
Based on our previous research, we categorized and summarized the insights using Maslow's hierarchy of needs, ultimately identifying 8 user needs. Since lower-level needs are more essential, we selected three critical needs as user goals：
By understanding what students associate with supportive and harmonious dorm life, we translated user goals into tangible design features.
We mapped out the site map of the mobile app based on the prioritized features discussed above, which serves as the framework for designing high-fidelity products in the later stage.
Our task flow for the participants is to create an overall experience from the first day living in the dorm, set up rules, and task arrangements & implement them to receive awards, and achieve shared goals for a better dorm environment.
Based on the low-fi wireframes and feedback from our tester, we transformed low-fidelity sketches into mid-fidelity wireframes, which set a solid foundation for usability testing. In this stage, We did two rounds of tests to make sure our mid-fidelity designs made sense before moving into high-fidelity prototypes
Our second round of testing was a significant success, with each task achieving a success rate of over 95%. Users found that the clean and colorful UI really made them want to use it, the UX writing is clear and intuitive, and the rewards give them motivation to finish cleaning tasks and help others.
We partner with universities, which pay a service fee for our solution.
We offer students a task management and rewards system to help foster positive roommate relationships.
Additionally, we coordinate events with residence hall, building a stronger student community.
More importantly, students with a positive dorm experience are more likely to recommend the school to prospective students, boosting future enrollment and revenue.
Mastering Logical Problem-Solving
Design started to feel like a logical puzzle to me — not just about making things look good, but figuring out how people think, feel, and interact. I’ve learned that it’s not just about the final solution, but how you get there. The real value is in the process — understanding users, testing ideas, and learning from each step. That’s what makes a solution not only smart, but truly meaningful and human.
I embraced evidence-based design as my North Star
I moved away from relying on gut feeling — every design decision became a well-reasoned argument grounded in data and research. I started thinking like a data scientist, focused on creating solutions that not only look good, but are smart, measurable, and rooted in real user insight.
