Kavya's Morning Check

Tap each room as you walk through the building, and watch it light up to show who slept in and who has gone.

Who this is for

Kavya Bhosale runs a fourteen-room ladies' PG off Karve Road in Kothrud, Pune. Twenty-eight beds across three floors, one cook who leaves at half past nine, one helper who does the stairs. At quarter past seven every morning Kavya climbs with a register under her arm, knocking on half-shut doors, trying to know how many girls slept in last night before the owner rings at eight to ask how many beds are free.

How the job is done today

A long register with a plastic cover and a pen tied to it with string. Kavya calls names up the stairwell and ticks whoever answers. The ones in the bathroom she means to come back to and forgets, so their row stays blank and blank could mean anything. Vacated beds get a line drawn through them, sometimes. When the owner asks on WhatsApp how many beds are free, she counts the register once and gets nine, counts again and gets eleven, and sends the lower number to be safe. The cook makes lunch for whatever number reaches her by ten.

The screens, in order

1. The dark building — Shows the whole PG drawn as three stacked floors of unlit rooms, so it is obvious at a glance that the morning walk has not been done yet.
2. Inside a room — Opens one room into its beds, each bed carrying the photo of the girl who sleeps in it, so Kavya can stand in the doorway and match faces to beds.
3. The tap — Turns one bed from dark to lit on a tap, then to a suitcase on the next tap, then to bare mattress on the one after, so a wrong tap is fixed by tapping again rather than undone.
4. The lit building — Fills every room with light once the last bed is marked, and shows the free beds as a row of bare mattress shapes beside the glowing ones.
5. The picture to send — Makes the lit building into one image Kavya can send straight to the owner and the cook without typing a word.

What it keeps track of

• Rooms — which floor, where it sits on that floor, how many beds inside
• Girls — her photo, which bed is hers, the day she moved in, the day she moved out
• Morning walks — which day, which beds were lit, which showed a suitcase, which were bare, what time the walk finished
• Pictures sent — the image made, the day it was made

The one decision that matters

Does the building start lit or dark? Starting lit is faster, because most beds are occupied most mornings and Kavya would only tap the absences. But that is exactly how the register lies today, blank meaning either present or never checked. Start it dark. Every bed begins unlit and only becomes lit because Kavya stood in front of it and tapped. It costs her twenty-eight taps instead of four, and those taps are the whole point, because a room that is still dark at eight o'clock is a room she has not actually walked into. It also gives her the one thing the register never did, a building that visibly fills with light as she climbs.

What to leave out of the first version

Leave out rent, dues and payments completely. The moment money is in there, it needs names spelt correctly, amounts, dates and receipts, and all of that is writing. The no-writing idea is what lets the cook and the helper use it on the second morning without being taught. Also leave out any separate login for the owner. He gets a picture on WhatsApp, which is what he actually wants.

How you would know it worked

The owner rings on a Tuesday to ask how many beds are free and Kavya has already sent him the picture from the second-floor landing, before he asked. The cook cooks for that number without going and counting slippers outside the doors.

Build it

Paste this in and let it run.

I run a ladies' PG in Kothrud with three floors and fourteen rooms, twenty-eight beds in all, and every morning I walk up with a register to see who has stayed and who has gone. I want an app with no writing in it anywhere, just my building drawn as rooms, all of them dark when I begin. I tap a room and see its beds with each girl's photo on them. Tapping her photo lights her bed. Tapping again shows a suitcase for gone home for a few days, and once more leaves the bed bare for vacated. When the last room is done the whole building should glow, and I want to send that one picture to the owner and my cook. My helper should manage it on her own without reading anything.