New Metaphors: Voting & Apartment Furnishing

For the past few months, my roommate and I have slowly been furnishing our apartment. The process is complex; we both need to account for our individual tastes, budgets, and the amount of room in the spaces we’re decorating. There are decorating consultation services that exist, but they tend to be expensive, and any in person consultation is out of the question right now with COVID-19. For this assignment, I decided to look through the card decks for new metaphors that could help redesign these services.

Using the Social Innovation Lab Method Deck, I found a card that I felt could be useful in reimagining this process: Voting. The card mentioned that voting used “collaborative engagement” to decide on a direction for a project “during times of indecision”. I felt that this definition translated nicely to the process of collaboratively furnishing an apartment — all parties must be equally engaged and work together to make decisions about what belongs in a space. After finding this card, I created a diagram to further outline similarities between the two processes:

The next step was thinking about how this new metaphor could be used to redesign the process of furnishing an apartment (or using consultation services). I immediately began to think about a mobile application that would allow the residents to remotely get in touch with a design consultant and submit to them pictures of the space to be furnished. The design consultant could in turn submit pictures and links to the residents that they felt would best compliment the apartment. Finally, the residents could vote on which pieces they liked the best, based on price, style, or other factors. This application would make the apartment furnishing process easier, more collaborative, and more democratized.

The sketches above include screens that would be included in this design consultation app. Below is the breakdown of each screen’s purpose:

1. This screen is essentially the home page. On it, you have the option to navigate to the picture upload page, the design consultant’s recommendations page, and the polling results page. You are also able to see the name of the design consultant, and the names of each resident in the apartment.
2. This page allows residents to upload pictures of their apartment to the application. Each room will need to be photographed thoroughly. If enough pictures aren’t uploaded, there will be no check in the checkbox. After the consultant has approved the pictures and begun to look for options for the room, the checkmark will appear.
3. This is an example of the furnishing options page for the living room. There are filters at the top of the page that allow users to sort the options by price, color, and type (lamp, couch, etc). If a user clicks on a particular item, they will be taken to the ‘more details’ page.
4. This more details page allows users to see more images of the item they selected, as well as more detailed product descriptions. Ratings will also be shown on this page. If a user decides to vote for an item to be included in their home, they can cast their vote here.
5. This final page will show the results of the polling for any given room. The user can select which room’s results they’d like to view by clicking the Room button and choosing from a drop down menu. This page also includes filters, where users can view ranked items sorted by color, type, and price.

Ultimately through this exercise, I’ve seen new possibilities for the future of apartment shopping. I believe by applying a voting metaphor to the redesign of apartment furnishing services, the process will be transformed into something collaborative, efficient, and fun.