A STUDY OF BILL SHARING AMONG ROOMMATES
Sharing your living space with someone else could result in problems when dividing bills equitably, including lack of access to bills, forgotten payments, varying payment platforms and an overall missing view of account information.
In this project, we researched bill sharing behaviors in order to answer the question: How can we facilitate shared bill paying with roommates through a technological solution? We used three methods to gather and analyze data: observation, interview and survey in hopes to identify the best way to share bills.
OBSERVATION
Data collection methods
Each member conducted one observation with a participant and took field notes during the process (four observations in total).
To minimize bias, no family, marital, or romantic relationships were included.
Participants were asked to demonstrate their process of preparing, executing and confirming payment of their monthly bills.
We watched how they split their bills and how they used online tools to transfer money, as well as other unexpected actions, including communication behaviors, and finance tracking.
INTERVIEWS
Data collection methods
Each member interviewed three participants independently (12 interviews total).
Participants were asked a series of questions regarding their current living situation, bill splitting and bill sharing conflicts.
We took notes during the interview and recorded audio with the participants’ consent.
Data analysis methods
Each member transcribed his/her interviews.
As a group, we reviewed the 12 interviews one by one and performed inductive analysis on each of them. We then coded the findings into major categories.
We identified 10 spectrums of characteristics and behaviors in our participants and placed our participants onto the spectrum according to their responses.
Key findings
We found participants showed distinctive characteristics based on two spectrums: Account Management Methods and Bill Sharing Methods.
We created a matrix to place our participants on the two spectrums and identified three distinctive bill-sharing methods.
We re-colored our original spectrums based on the matrix and identified additional similarities in each method We synthesized three models.
The sequence model that we identified in our observation belongs to the second bill-sharing model (single account holder + equally split payments). The data from our interviews supported our finding that this method is not ideal because the only three people who revealed severe, negative emotions toward their roommates all used a single account holder method.
Conversely, while only two participants used this method, the third model (mutually shared accounts + equally split payments) shows great potential in ensuring the transparency of the accounts and bills, keeping moderate amount of work for every roommate and maintaining positive relationship between roommates.
Interview Sorting
Spectrums
SYNTHESIZED MODELS
SURVEYS
Data collection methods
We used Qualtrics to conduct our survey, which contained 36 questions in total including four open-ended questions.
We asked screened participants to ensure they fit our criteria, followed by questions concerning their relationship with their roommates, personal opinions on living with others, payment process, account management and demographics.
We recruited participants through the DePaul University participant pool, social media and our personal network. We received a total of 35 responses.
Data analysis methods
We sorted our raw data into spreadsheets and generated charts to illustrate the participants’ responses.
We raised several hypotheses, including:
Hypothesis 1: The needs of transparency will be affected by external factors (test 1, test 2, test 3).
Hypothesis 2: Roommates’ relationship will impact their communication methods (test 4, test 5).
Hypothesis 3: Digital tools will help to improve efficiency when sharing bills (test 6).
With the data collected in the survey, we conducted Mann-Whitney Test and Kruskal-Wallis Test for the three hypotheses.
Key findings
We believed that the need for bill transparency would be affected by the level of trust users had in their roommate. However, our test showed no significant differences. Even in the most positive relationship, roommates still want a level of transparency.
We found a connection between roommates’ relationship and the communication methods they use. The more positive the relationship, the more likely they will communicate in person.
We believed digital tools, such as Venmo and Chase Quickpay, can improve efficiency when splitting bills. However, we found no correlation between using digital methods and the time it takes to share bills.
IMPLICATIONS FOR DESIGN
Design Principle
So how should we handle the problem with a technology-based solution? Based on our findings, , we propose three design principles: transparency, efficiency, flexibility.
In addition, we split the bill-sharing process into 4 steps: management accounts, viewing bills, make a payment, split payment. We wanted to ensure design principles are followed in each step, so we created this matrix to help inform future design decisions.
