Freshfold2026
Personal project for a fictional, online-first, early-stage laundry startup targeting urban Indian households. Their core business model is collecting clothes and household items, servicing them, and delivering them back to customers.
Problem
I use laundry apps monthly to dry-clean my quilt and delicate clothes. The visual design, functionality and overall user experience are lacking.
After conducting a competitive analysis of the seven most popular laundry apps in India, I found that they lacked basic functionality.
| App | Select delivery date | Estimate order amount | Order tracking |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tumbledry | |||
| Uclean | |||
| Fabrico | |||
| Dhobilite | |||
| Laundrymate | |||
| Laundrokart | |||
| Spin Cycles |
Target users
Sunny
Cannot invest in a washing machine
Cost-conscious customer
Rahul
Does not have time to manage weekly laundry
Time-constrained customer
Sneha
Owns duvets that require dry cleaning
Special-treatment customer
Assumptions
- The company owns all the necessary equipment and employs trained staff at a centralised store.
- The company hires gig workers for pickup and delivery. This enables just-in-time order pickups, within 2 hours. Scheduled pickups would be the fallback.
- The company offers four standard laundry services to stay competitive with existing apps: wash, wash + iron, iron, and dry clean.
Pricing strategy
Weight-based pricing
Ideal for optimising bulk item intake and improving wash load efficiency.
Per-item pricing
Offers greater control over unit economics, since different items require different levels of handling. For example, ironing a blazer is more labour-intensive than ironing a T-shirt.
Solution
Here's a view of the complete app.
Prototype
Design decisions
I made certain design decisions based on my assumptions. For example, for the item-selection page, I had the following thought process:
I assumed that customers would place high-volume orders, typically around 10–15 items. To support this, I added separate steps for reviewing items in the basket and completing the checkout process.
Iterations
Some iterations of the screen designs did not make it into the final app.
Learnings
- Always start by researching the problem statement. Organise the data and list the assumptions before moving into design.
- Iterate on designs and seek continuous feedback from mentors to improve visual design, user experience and the overall flow.
- Do not get attached to one solution too early. Evaluating the trade-offs of different approaches helped me make better design decisions.