Everystain

The Problem

My frustration with laundry comes in the form of stains. When I would encounter one, I’d have to sit down and look through a variety of different sources with mixed results. Here’s a summary of different areas I would check for advice:

Long-form Video Content

These were relatively reliable, however it took some time to find the advice you are looking for and I found many stain types lacking videos on them.

Books These are inherently less accessible to everyone as they require purchase. The book Laundry Love by Patric Richardson, a professional dry cleaner who has garnered online popularity with his advice. However, within it I have found that some of the advice given just did not work and was later debunked by others, which eroded my confidence in anything the book had to say.

Forums

Forums leave the professional dry cleaner advice realm and enter an anecdotal home remedies one. The issue with this is that everyone has their own different home remedies that they claim to work, which often don’t.

Blogs

Blogs can be split into two types, independent bloggers who share their own home remedies which present the issue mentioned earlier, or companies using them to drive traffic to their website and promote their own products, whereas a simpler and more affordable solution could achieve the same effect.

Short-form Video Content Short-form video content platforms such as YouTube or TikTok has another notable professional dry cleaner, Zachary Pozniak, who seems to consistently provide reliable laundry and stain removal advice. However, this advice is limited to his short-form videos which are not optimised for search and are more difficult to follow along.

Apps There are a few apps on the market which give stain removal advice. However, these apps seem to have terribly outdated UI, feel like they are made as a cash-grab due to constant banner and full-screen advertisements and often recommend using chlorine bleach which will ruin your clothes.

Primary Research

I wanted to understand if other people had issues with stains and what their approach was when dealing with them. I interviewed some of my peers and here is what I learned.

Usually, they would encounter a stain, if they don’t know how to remove it, their parents are the first port of call. If their parents can’t help, they resort to Google, and if they can’t find anything that works there either, the garment gets thrown out. I found secondary research to back up the last part especially.

Secondary research

30%

Of people in the UK have thrown away a garment because of a stain. This increases to 36% for women.

w/air and Hubbub, polling by censuswide of 3,000 UK respondents, April-May 2021

84%

Of people in NSW, Australia throw away four garments a year because of a stain.

Richard Noone, Washing out the ugly stain on our character - we'd rather replace clothes than wash stains, 2013

59%

Of people in UK are interested in learning more about stain removal from clothes.

w/air and Hubbub, polling by censuswide of 3,000 UK respondents, April-May 2021

Insight

People want to remove stains from their clothes, but there is a lack of reliable and easy to find guidance for stain removal. I firmly believe that every stain has a solution, and landfill is not one of them.

Wireframing

With those insights in mind, I started to sketch out some potential solutions and roughly test them. I focused on mobile as that is what I wanted to improve on and most people who own washing machines have smartphones.

Approach 1

The first concept was an alphabetised grid of stain icons, each linking to a numbered list of steps as instructions for stain removal.

Learnings

• The steps are too text-dense, requiring a lot of cognitive load.

• A list of icons made finding the right stain easy.

Approach 2

The second concept features a welcome screen showing the product value, followed by a questionnaire to find the stain type and full-screen stain removal step cards for focus.

Learnings

• The benefits of removing stains being communicated was appreciated by the tester.

• They felt that generally, people won’t know what stain type (oily, inorganic, etc) they have.

• The full-screen cards made it difficult to scan ahead.

Approach 3

In the third concept, you find your stain using a search engine. Once you find your stain, you are brought to more concise step-by-step instructions on stain removal, which highlights your current step and has a built-in timer for any waiting steps.

.

Learnings

• The tester was stumped at what to search for.

• They favoured this concepts’ step format above others as it allowed scalability and focus.

• The step removal instructions lacked required items.

Approach 4

With those learnings in mind, I took what worked best and left behind what didn’t to create the last concept. This meant including:

• Value add screen.

• Search engine.

• “Required Items” step.

• Highlighting current step.

• A list of icons for finding your stain.

• A timer step.

And leaving out:

• The stain questionnaire.

• Plain-test steps.

• Full-screen step cards.

An illustration of a stewpot with some features going into and others left aside.

Iteration

After settling on a direction for the app, I iterated for a while trying to nail down the style of the app. From showing the concepts to my friends and family I have gotten an unexpected piece of positive feedback: people really liked the sketchy look of it.

I aimed to weave this look into the final product as it aligned with the “mending” idea of clothes, while also bringing a warm yet professional look to it as well as most people expect from apps nowadays. This however turned out to be a challenge, as too much sketchiness just made it look like an unfinished wireframe rather than a functional app.

A series of app screens iterations, from rough wireframes to high fidelity.

Final Design

Welcome Screen This communicates the value of removing stains from clothes, it’s good for the environment, good for the wallet, and it is a way to show love for your family.

Home Feed The home feed shows a grid of icons, each signifying a type of stain and letting users quickly scan and find help on whichever stain they have encountered. To further help with that, the stains are grouped by category, and sorted alphabetically within said group.

Stain Steps The stain removal instructions are broken down and formatted in a way that is easy to read and follow. Highlighting the current step and providing a timer if needed.

Timer A built-in timer helps you stay on task by removing the friction of having to remember the time required to wait, leave the app and set a timer in your native clock app.

Progressive Disclosure Sometimes stains are extra tough and require additional work to remove them. Rather than presenting all possible routes of methods on removing said stain. Everystain first provides the option to be most likely successful. If the stain persist, they are given the option to reveal more steps they can follow.

Success State It is important to celebrate wins and make the user feel accomplished. Everystain congratulates the user on a job well done while also tracking how well a stain guide is performing.

Learnings

Start with a Design System
A very stylised UI and lack of a design system meant I was re-inventing the wheel for a lot of design patterns.

Start with a Pre-existing Product
What was meant to be UI practice resulted in a product idea which shifted focus from the projects’ initial purpose.

Don’t Skimp on Research
The small quantity of primary research made me question if this was even solving a problem for people.

Collaborate & Share Your Work
Working solo and not sharing my work made it feel like an echo-chamber. Am I going in the right direction?