MARKET ANALYSIS

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We scoured the internet for digital solutions to roommate living problems. While we found a lot of inspiration (Chore trackers! Messaging platforms! NextDoor!), we couldn’t find any products that specifically addressed our users’ gripes with co-living. There were no apps that promised to facilitate a positive and holistic experience for roommates.

Apps we liked

Venmo and Splitwise

User adoption in our target age range is insanely high—a majority of interviewees mentioned using these platforms to settle their finances.

NextDoor

Although NextDoor is quite outside our project scope, we resonated with its mission: "We believe that by bringing neighbors together, we can cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on."

OurHome and Tody

These apps tackle the problem of family chore distribution. Though each has a slightly different approach, both are reward-based and create incentive structures for people to complete their chores

What we found missing

1.

There were no apps that promised to facilitate a positive and holistic experience for roommates.

2.
Existing chore apps are geared towards families, inherently structuring them with parents as moderators and children as participants. This is not an egalitarian structure for adult roommates.

3.
No all-encompassing “hub” for roommate communications.

Feature Prioritization

After reviewing existing apps in the market, we parsed out features we’d like to add to our app, and filled the gaps we thought were missing. We created a prioritization diagram to help with this.