As part of the amenities offered by MIT graduate housing, residents are provided with a common laundry room located within the premises of the graduate housing thus providing ease access to this weekly, biweekly or monthly chore (depending on your stock of clothes and degree of cleanliness). As a typical self-service laundry, residents place their stained and/or smelly attire through a washing and drying cycle which post-process provides a clean and hygienic supply of clothes.

As with most utilities, the use of the washer and drier is accompanied with a fee per batch of clothes placed into each machine. In the current set up in the Ashdown House residence, each machine is equipped with coin slots for the user to pay for their respective use of the machine. However, the laundry system in the Ashdown residence has another feature that provides the user with another means to pay for their use of the laundry room, Tech-Cash.

Most MIT students are familiar with the Tech-Cash system and use it on a regular basis. It's an MIT-based currency system that allows MIT students to pay with their student ID card for amenities and services offered within MIT facilities such as the laundry room at the graduate housing. The Tech-Cash system set-up for the laundry room at the Ashdown residence will be the object of study for the purposes of this human-use experience analysis.