Your Laundry's Ready
I've been living in dorm rooms and apartment buildings for the past ten years of my life, and one of my biggest pain points is doing laundry. I've never had my own washer and dryer in the unit, so I either have to wait until the communal laundry room in my apartment complex is free, or I have to haul everything to a laundromat. (The laundromat isn't all bad.)
Coordinating the use of the laundry room with all of my neighbors in the apartment complex is an odd thing. Very few of us have ever met each other personally, so you just wander down there to see if the machines are free. If so, you run back to your place, hoping that they're still free by the time you get back. Or if you arrive and see that the washers are in use, then you have to check back a little later, and just hope that the person with their stuff in the wash didn't get roped in a marathon of watching Heroes on DVD and forgot about their clothes.
Coordination among strangers is an odd thing to accomplish, but I wonder if the whole workflow couldn't be made easier with some simple technological additions. The first problem is that the person doing their laundry really never knows for sure when their laundry is done, in either the washer or dryer. New units were just installed in my building, and while the old ones had timers that counted down (it took 38 minutes to do a load in the washing machine), the new ones don't offer any indication about how long the load will be. So the most convenient thing for me to do is wait longer than is reasonable, and then go check. This works, but it wastes time, potentially leaves the next person waiting for the machines longer than necessary.
And even if washers do come equipped with a timer, and you know from the start that your load will take 38 minutes, people don't like doing that math. ("Okay, it's 6:37 now, which means that it will be ready at...um...") And you may still lose track of the time.
What about those coasters they give you when you're waiting for a table at restaurants? Would it be terribly difficult to work those into the mix so that a person gets a similar coaster that buzzes when their load is ready? Some kind of alerting system would certainly decrease a lot of the lag time between the machine cycle finish and when the owner returns to claim the laundry.
And the alerting system could be used to let people other people in the complex know when the current load in the wash has finished, so they can plan to bring their own loads down shortly after. Or, if I'm done using the washing machines for the day, and I notice that the second alert coaster is gone (meaning that someone else is currently waiting for the machines), I could push a button to send a signal letting them know they were now free.
Of course, this overall proposal suggests that the solution to the problem is to avoid talking directly with any of our neighbors. Perhaps it's just the programmer in my talking, and I'm inclined to think that a technical solution is better than mere face-to-face communication. I still think there's potential here.
Coordinating the use of the laundry room with all of my neighbors in the apartment complex is an odd thing. Very few of us have ever met each other personally, so you just wander down there to see if the machines are free. If so, you run back to your place, hoping that they're still free by the time you get back. Or if you arrive and see that the washers are in use, then you have to check back a little later, and just hope that the person with their stuff in the wash didn't get roped in a marathon of watching Heroes on DVD and forgot about their clothes.
Coordination among strangers is an odd thing to accomplish, but I wonder if the whole workflow couldn't be made easier with some simple technological additions. The first problem is that the person doing their laundry really never knows for sure when their laundry is done, in either the washer or dryer. New units were just installed in my building, and while the old ones had timers that counted down (it took 38 minutes to do a load in the washing machine), the new ones don't offer any indication about how long the load will be. So the most convenient thing for me to do is wait longer than is reasonable, and then go check. This works, but it wastes time, potentially leaves the next person waiting for the machines longer than necessary.
And even if washers do come equipped with a timer, and you know from the start that your load will take 38 minutes, people don't like doing that math. ("Okay, it's 6:37 now, which means that it will be ready at...um...") And you may still lose track of the time.
What about those coasters they give you when you're waiting for a table at restaurants? Would it be terribly difficult to work those into the mix so that a person gets a similar coaster that buzzes when their load is ready? Some kind of alerting system would certainly decrease a lot of the lag time between the machine cycle finish and when the owner returns to claim the laundry.
And the alerting system could be used to let people other people in the complex know when the current load in the wash has finished, so they can plan to bring their own loads down shortly after. Or, if I'm done using the washing machines for the day, and I notice that the second alert coaster is gone (meaning that someone else is currently waiting for the machines), I could push a button to send a signal letting them know they were now free.
Of course, this overall proposal suggests that the solution to the problem is to avoid talking directly with any of our neighbors. Perhaps it's just the programmer in my talking, and I'm inclined to think that a technical solution is better than mere face-to-face communication. I still think there's potential here.