University of
Melbourne students and graduates have collaborated on a new smartphone app for
iOS and Android that helps make share-housing a success.
Fairshare, cofounded by Jules Malseed-Harris and Oliver
May, is an app that helps flatmates organise household tasks, split expenses
and easily communicate with each other.
Although launched in February this year, the idea for
Fairshare developed over several years.
While completing an Economics and Management degree in
2004, CEO and cofounder Jules Malseed-Harris moved into a house with fellow
students. After a few years of living together, he and his housemates found
chores difficult to manage. They decided to try and make a system that would
solve share-housing issues and help make tasks such as cleaning or making
dinner more enjoyable.
“The app helps you organise and manage the communal tasks
of cooking, cleaning and shopping,” he said.
“The app keeps track of all the house finances
surrounding rent, bills and shopping. It has a house feed where all that
information flows and allows people to have a private social network with their
housemates,” he said.
Fairshare users are able to earn points for doing various
tasks around the house and record different house expenses.
“As some people have observed, there’s a lot of basic first
year microeconomics ideas in the app, in terms of incentive structures and
transparency. It’s ultimately about aligning individual incentives with
the overall household, which is something I studied at Melbourne.”
Current Bachelor of Science student Alex McLeod balances
his studies with his role of Chief Technology Officer at Fairshare. “For me, a great deal of the technical skills required to
create the app were learnt in my studies here at the University,” Alex said.
“If there was one thing I would want to convey, it’s that
people should definitely consider studying software engineering, computing or
anything like that, because the opportunities are huge. It’s a great industry
to be in, and there’s a massive shortage of people doing it.”
The team can track the success of their app based on the
number of users, which has been growing very quickly and is now approaching
10,000 registered users.
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You can also download the app from the App Store or
Google Play.
