Dish Out wants to be the Evernote for couples, makes chore delegation fun

Jacky Yap

February 17, 2014

With Valentine’s Day over, one would have thought that most of the mobile apps centering around “dating” and “couples” would have been launched.

But an upcoming mobile app caught our attention.

Know how couples are always arguing with one another on who should do the dish or get the groceries? Well, there’s an app for that soon.

Dish Out is a new task-sharing mobile application for couples. It converts the daily routine chores such as ´walk the dog´ or ´change this bulb´ into a fun and healthy competition game with your partner.

Started by couple Etienne Do and Beatriz, the idea came out from their own experience of managing chores as a couple.

“As we’ve been living abroad for so many years, moving house, setting up new accounts, getting new jobs, new friends, travelling, we saw the need and benefits of having a shared todo list to keep moving forward and doing new things,” Etienne shared with Vulcan Post.

The duo have lived in Singapore for about three years, working respectively in the online advertising and corporate event industry. They then moved to Thailand now because life is cheaper and it allows them to dedicate more budget for Dish Out.

Would the app work? Etienne sounded confident, and told Vulcan Post that the app is meant for busy couples.

“We ran a survey who showed that couples in a relationship between 2 and 6 years are probably the ones that would benefit from Dish Out the most. Typically, think of couples that are moving together for the first time: young working executives, newlyweds, et cetera. Now, all the plans and chores have to be decided and executed together.”

Etienne added that at the beginning, couple would tend to maintain a mental points score in their minds to keep track on who’s doing what in the house and to keep it fair. However, it is easy to lose track and the consequences can be annoying: more expensive flights tickets, last minute shopping, procrastination, cancelled plans, outstanding bills, et cetera.

Etienne had first hand experience in this, when he had to change a broken kitchen bulb.

“What happened is that we spent one month without light in the kitchen as I slacked quite a lot on this one. She kept on reminding me until we had this idea of an app where she could make sure I would do it.”

Dish Out is meant to extend that “ability” to other couples, as it encourages couples to delegate and keep track of common chores. Couples can use Dish Out to create, assign, manage and complete chores. Other than that, there will be a shared calendar as well as an achievements page on the app, which is powered by a system of points. Upon completion of tasks, couples will be able to thank each other by sending virtual gifts in through an in-app purchase catalogue.

Dish Out is currently under development, and the app is due to be launched in April. The team is starting to build up its social media presence now while waiting for the development to be completed.

We can’t help but ask, are there similar apps meant for couple apps out there? We have heard about couple apps such as Between and LoveByte, which is like a private app for couples where they can chat with one another and share common memories and photos on the app with one another.

But a task or chore manager for couples? Is there a need for this?

Etienne believes so. He observed that various couple apps are focusing on “getting couples closer”, and Dish Out wants to take a different approach of “bridging the gap between the mobile world and real life”, adding gamification elements to provide an effective and playful task-sharing application for busy couples.

Would you use it? Maybe the team should focus their marketing more on users outside of Thailand, because there seems to be a lot of singles in Thailand.