Wash Wash : Your Laundry Manager

Uncertainty can be disappointing to the customers. This system can help the laundry business, to satisfy the customers.

What’s Wrong With Me

Her name is Buk Susi, owner of Buk Susi Laundry. Her laundry is famous because it’s cheap. The pricing calculations for the laundry are based on dirty clothes weight. Furthermore, she only needs two days to do it.

But, she is being confused. It’s been 6 months her income decreasing. She does believe there is nothing wrong with her business that has been run for 5 years. Her customers never complained about the laundry. It always clean, never swop, smell good, not musty, and cheap. What’s wrong? Let’s find out and help her.

On Time Should Be At That Time

When we met Anton, former Buk Susi’s customer, we were surprised by his explanation. He dropped his loyalty because he frustrated about the pick-up schedule. He didn’t know when he should pick-up his laundry, he pointed the time, not the date. The date was on schedule, but the pick-up time was delayed and he didn’t know it. He came in the morning but the clothes haven’t been ready. Then, Buk Susi told him to come again in the afternoon. He extremely worries that the afternoon, all the laundry was not prepared much as it has been stated by Buk Susi.

The Regret

Actually, Buk Susi has told the customer about the pick-up date. However, it’s hard for her to determine the time because she doesn’t know the exacts time (estimation) she needs to finish each work. Every laundry has a different quantity, so required different processing time. She feels bad about it.

Map

What Needs To Be Handled?

Hmmm trust and certainty are the keys to survive in this business. Bu Susi Laundry needs to bring back her customer’s trust. So, she can sustain and increase revenue. Let’s figure out, what we need to handle this issue?

Laundry Manager

Every customer brings a different quantity of clothes. It means, it has different processing times. How long she can finish this? When did they are able to get their clothes back? Even she has 2 days to spare on each, she still not capable to determine the finish time on that day. How might we build a feature that can count the time based on the number of clothes that she will be washed?

The idea is combining two variables, quantity and time. In the first preparation, she not only set the price but also she should set the estimation time that she needs for every weight (she uses kg). So, after the clothes were counted, the application will count the price and the estimated time for it. Then, the system will directly schedule the Buk Susi’s work and give a note to the customers. Buk Susi knows the arrangement time, and Anton gets certainty.

Wait, how might the feature also can allow Buk Susi to give feedback to her customers if the laundry finished or need additional time? The customers will get a message, like notification, when the laundry finished or delayed from the estimation time. Great!

Ok, let’s start making the ideal life.

User Journey

Before we dive deeper, we want to decide on the ideal user journey based on the map that we’ve design above. On this journey, there are two actors, customers, and laundry as the main actor. This journey starts with the customer who comes to the laundry until the laundry gets the money.

After we developed that idea. Finally, we arrived at this tangible solution. We decide to show the “Order” and “Schedule” sections. If you want to know the documentation, you can see it at the end of this discussion.

Order

This section is designed for the Laundry to input the order after they weigh the customer’s clothes. After they input all the requirements, the laundry will get the resume and confirm the order. After that, they will get the detail’s order. In that step, they can also print the invoice for the customer, which consists of the detailed order and the pick-up time estimation. Besides that, the system will automatically arrange the work order (schedule) for the laundry.

Schedule

The schedule is a section that focused on the way that the laundry does their work. They will be guided with the system in which orders that should they do. In this section, the laundry can give update progress for the customer, such as when their clothes are finished, postponed, or Aborted. When the laundry needs more time, they can delay the progress and give estimation time that they need. That information will directly send to the customer, so they will know when the pick-up time.

Soon, we should determine the type of the clothes / fabric, because it a has an impact for the processing time, especially for the jeans and bed linen. Beside that, we should also think the Buk Susi’s schedule arrangement. She supposed to arrange her free time, break, and holiday.

We Got Something

People tend to entrust their personal things to a trusted person. However, sometimes they still worried. The reason why they still worried about it is uncertainty. It will make them overthinking, frustrated and not satisfied with us, especially for the service work. So, certainty is the key to build trust. They will happy, and satisfies when they know the processing time, the treatment, and everything that we did to their stuff.

Like the clothes. It’s our personal stuff and we trust other people (laundry service) to do laundry on it. They know what clothes we often wear, even the smell of our underwear. They may sprinkle an itchy powder on our clothes, or even dangerous bacteria or viruses. But, we don’t worried about it, because we know what they will do, and when I can get my stuff back, for sure.

Thank you for your time to read my sandbox exploration. We hope with this exercise we can build a better design for better solutions.

If you want to see the full documentation, you can **click here.**