Designing Cue – A Smart Assistant to Track and Replace Everyday Consumables

The Goal

To design a solution that helps individuals and small business owners track and receive timely reminders for replacing household and hygiene-related consumables—like batteries, filters, toothbrushes, razors, and dish pads. The goal was to reduce friction in routine maintenance by providing proactive, context-aware nudges that simplify replacement planning and ensure better upkeep.

Who, Why, How, What

Who was the user?

Based on the user research conducted, I identified 3 primary personas as target users –

Primary Users

• First time homeowners 
• Adults aged 35-50 who are responsible for maintaining a home
• Parents and caregivers responsible for family household management
• Tech-savvy individuals looking for low-effort solutions to household management

Secondary Users

• Property managers, Airbnb hosts, and Real Estate owners who are managing consumable replacements across multiple properties ensuring that critical maintenance tasks are completed efficiently. 

These users often overlook or delay replacements due to lack of visibility or mental load, leading to inefficiency, hygiene lapses, or device malfunction.

Why solve the problem?

Time pressed individuals often forget to replace essential household non-food consumables—such as

• Batteries
• Filters
• Hygiene items (like toothbrush, dish sponge, diaper wipes etc)

Until it’s too late!

This is a widespread but often overlooked issue.This results in frustration, health risks, and avoidable disruptions in daily life. With each item having its own replacement cycle and no unified tracking system, these routine tasks are easily overlooked, especially by busy individuals with no/little mental bandwidth.

Household consumables don’t always give warning signs before failing, yet affect quality of life, hygiene, and performance. Users often resort to mental tracking or ad hoc calendar notes—methods that are unreliable and unsustainable.

How did we solve the problem?

The process centered on a design thinking methodology of running iterative cycles of discovery, problem definition, prototyping, testing and refinements. I started with exploratory user and market research followed by converging on the problem statement and iteratively designing towards the final state.

What was the solution?

Process Deepdive

Critiquing the Original Dialog Box

I began with mixed-method user research to understand the real-world habits, workarounds, and pain points people face when it comes to replacing consumable items.

• Surveys
  A survey was conducted with 34 participants, targeting a mix of individuals and small business owners (e.g., Airbnb hosts). The responses revealed that over 70% relied on memory or scattered calendar reminders to track replacements—methods that often led to forgotten or delayed replacements.
• User Interviews
  I conducted in-depth interviews with 5+ users, including parents, renters, and Airbnb hosts. These conversations uncovered key patterns:
  • Users dislike “setting up” reminders from scratch for each item.
  • People value peace of mind more than perfect precision—they want to know they won’t forget something.
  • Airbnb hosts needed multi-property support and bulk tracking features.

These findings were synthesized into user personas, key user goals, and frustrations, which guided feature prioritization.

Defining Product Architecture
Based on research, I designed a relational data model where each device type (e.g., water filter, razor, air purifier) could have one or more replacement categories (e.g., HEPA filter, batteries), and each category could have specific replacement specs (e.g., “replace every 3 months” or “type AA battery”).

This flexible backend structure allowed Cue to:

• Handle diverse use cases from kitchen appliances to hygiene products
• Support advanced configurations for power users (e.g., hosts managing multiple devices across properties)
• Enable smart reminders based on estimated timelines or manual override

Designing Key Workflows
Three main workflows were defined based on user needs:

• User onboarding flow
• Calendar integration
• Notification management

Using these flows, I created hand-sketched wireframes, followed by mid-fidelity iterations that were validated internally.

Visual Design & Prototyping
Cue’s visual design prioritized simplicity, lightness, and mental clarity. I built a hi-fidelity clickable prototypes in Figma, incorporating:

• A clean, card-based dashboard showing upcoming and overdue items
• A guided flow for adding new devices with relevant replacement suggestions
• A reminder setup interface with smart defaults and repeat options
• Color palette and iconography designed to feel calm, helpful, and non-intrusive

All UI elements were designed with accessibility and scalability in mind.

Usability Testing & Iteration
I conducted moderated usability testing with 4 users, asking them to complete core tasks such as:

• Sign up and starting to use the app (onboarding)
• Checking reminder
• Setting up a new device
• Setting up calendar integrations

Artefacts

The following artifacts were generated as part of the project