Improvement of an inventory management app and development of a sharing feature

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Examensarbete för masterexamen
Program
Industrial design engineering (MPDES), MSc
Publicerad
2019
Författare
Chalandon, Olivia
Lidborg, Patricia
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Abstract The thesis has been conducted in collaboration with the startup company Sortapp, with support from FutureMemories AB, at the division Design & Human factors at Chalmers University of Technology. Sortapp is an app in development and on its way to be released, with a purpose to be used as a smart way to digitally organize one’s home inventory. The ability to reuse stored items by sharing this information through the app, leads to having a better overlook of one’s belongings. Sortapp aims to reduce the overconsumption and support a new movement towards a circular economy by encouraging people to reuse items stored away. The initial aim of the project was to ensure that the main functions in the existing application work fluently, generating a coherent and intuitive app. Secondly the aim was to explore how the application, Sortapp, can be further improved by identifying user needs and conducting various user tests and interviews to translate the needs into new useful features to include. In addition to improving the foundation, exploring ways of how to include and develop on added sharing feature has been completed to support Sortapps aim of offering a sustainable option of obtaining products. The results from the different studies on Sortapp v.1.0 lead to insights on what needed to be changed for the app to be ready for a release. The gathered data about if and how people share belongings, showed a demand in a communication tool, presenting an accessibility of items to borrow, representing the first part of the sharing journey. These insights and results were prioritized in a journey map and were further refined to issues that were translated into features, to add to Sortapp. The first two features were generated from Sortapp v.1.0 basic feature of adding an item to a storage, the third to communicating the availability of sharing an item is an obstacle people encounter today, the fourth feature is similar to the search for an item to see what the contact has chosen to share with the user and lastly, the final feature is a solution gathering information about various changes in the app: • Adding an item and sharing • Adding multiple items and sharing • Search for an items/boxes/storage to borrow • Search for a certain contacts items/boxes/storage • A notification center gathers received information about items/boxes/storage Ideas and concepts were designed based on the found issues to facilitate the interaction with the app. An evaluation of the features was conducted by testing prototypes on potential users. The final concept including all five features is presented as a result of the evaluation and is a representation of the thesis outcome.
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