husky social | Academic Project
Campus Event Discovery & Creation: Mobile App Design for Enhanced Student Engagement and Community Building
University of Washington students struggled with fragmented event discovery across multiple platforms, leading to missed opportunities and social disconnection on campus. As the Lead UX Designer, I identified an opportunity to revolutionize campus social engagement by designing a comprehensive mobile platform. I led the complete design transformation from research through implementation, creating an intuitive app that consolidates scattered event information and empowers students to easily discover and create events that match their interests.
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context
Campus events are advertised on different platforms.
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Each department, organization, and club had its own social media accounts, email newsletters, or bulletin boards on campus.
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The event information is shared on their preferred platforms when they conduct an event.
Students miss events because they are unaware.
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Students have to use multiple sources to get information about events happening on campus.
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With many events happening weekly, they find it difficult to navigate the different platforms just to keep up.
Lack of belongingness in campus. FOMO is high!
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Students feel left out when the see other students attending events on social media.
The challenge
How Might We create a platform that helps students easily discover on-campus events that match their interests, while reducing the overwhelm of navigating numerous weekly events?
My iterative design approach enabled rapid learning and refinement, moving seamlessly between empathy research and solution testing to validate each design decision.
USER Research
Understanding what students want and need for a better campus life.
Through secondary user research and user interviews, I identified three key issues preventing website conversions despite the consultancy's growing success.
Secondary User Research findings
UW's 60,000 students represent 8% of Seattle's entire population, creating exceptional density and diversity for interest-based community building.
Source: Fast Facts by UW (2023-2024)
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This diversity spans all 50 states and 39 countries, with 40% being non-resident students actively seeking community connections, creating both rich potential for niche interests and built-in demand for event discovery.
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The concentrated campus population means even specialized interest groups can reach critical mass for sustainable communities
User interviews findings
Students struggle with discovering relevant events through fragmented platforms and lack the tools to create the communities they want.
Method: In-depth interviews to understand current behaviors and pain points
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Students receive too many notifications from different sources, making it hard to focus on relevant events and consuming too much time searching across multiple platforms.
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Even if students want to create events or clubs, they feel powerless, held back by limited reach, weak networks, and lack of institutional support.
PERSONA SYnTHESIS
With clear pain points identified, I needed to understand the different types of users who experience these problems to design targeted solutions.
Users exist on a spectrum of social needs and initiative levels, requiring flexible design solutions rather than one-size-fits-all approaches.
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Social needs vary widely - from introverted students seeking small gatherings to extroverted ones wanting large social events
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Initiative levels differ significantly - some users prefer discovering existing events while others want to create and lead communities
We created two personas representing opposite ends of the social initiative spectrum—the passive event-seeker and the proactive community-builder.
product roadmap
Next, we needed to determine which features would best serve both passive event-seekers and proactive community-builders.
We identified two core user tasks, finding events and creating events, and then systematically prioritized features around these workflows.
TASK FLOWS & LO-FI WIREFRAMES
With prioritized features defined, we designed detailed task flows for attending and creating events, then translated these workflows into initial wireframe concepts to validate the user experience.
APP FLOW & INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
We then mapped the complete app structure to ensure seamless navigation between different user journeys and feature sets.
WIREFRAMES
I then created detailed wireframes for each screen, focusing on content hierarchy and interaction patterns to establish a solid foundation for user testing and validate our design decisions.
USER FEEDBACK & ITERATIONS
We conducted user interviews with 12 participants to test key user flows and gathered valuable insights that directly informed our design iterations and improvements.
Some key themes arose across our research:
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The single-page ‘Create Event’ form caused decision fatigue and felt overwhelming.
"I need to fill out so many things all at once - have all the information ready, and only then can I even start the process!"
"There's no way to save all this information if I'm not 100% ready to publish my event!"
BEFORE
To address this:
We transformed the entire event creation process from a single-page interface to a multi-step wizard.
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Introduced a "Save Draft" feature to allow users to save their progress and return to it later
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Added a "Review Your Event" feature enabling users to preview the event page after completing the form, ensuring accuracy in event creation
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Added Terms and Conditions (T&C) to effectively communicate user responsibilities and ensure platform security
AFTER
Key Takeaways for UX Practitioners
Breaking complexity reduces cognitive load
Transforming single-page forms into multi-step wizards significantly improved task completion and user confidence.
Balance personalization with discovery
Users need both algorithmic recommendations and social proof elements to feel engaged and make informed decisions.
Want to work together? Let's connect and discuss how strategic UX design can drive your business results!
2. The event recommendations are too personalized, no space for user delight
Users wanted to discover popular events and see what others were attending, not just algorithmically personalized recommendations. They also wanted to easily identify which events they were attending from the homepage and distinguish them from other events.
"I'd like to know which events everyone else is also going for - the most popular ones - so I can make sure to attend those."
"All events look equal - I would like to see my upcoming events bright and center so I don't miss out on anything."
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BEFORE
To address this:
We reconfigured the homepage information layout to balance personalization with discovery and social proof.
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Updated visual hierarchy across the homepage to showcase Upcoming Events first.
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Reconfigured the homepage to include 'Upcoming Events', 'Popular Events', and 'Events based on your interest'.
Created clear visual separation between event categories using distinct section headers and card layouts, making it easier for users to scan and navigate between different types of events.
Transformed the dense, grid-based layout into a more scannable list format with larger event cards and more whitespace, improving readability and reducing cognitive load when browsing multiple events.
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AFTER
design system
After identifying major usability issues and implementing design changes, I created a robust design system to ensure consistency and scalability before developing the final prototype.
This system established standardized components, typography, colors, and interaction patterns that would maintain visual cohesion across all user touchpoints and enable efficient collaboration.
Ready to collaborate?
If you're looking for someone to tackle complex UX challenges or lead accessible design initiatives, let's connect and make meaningful impact together.
HI- FIDELITY SCREENS
With the design system established, I created high-fidelity screens that brought together all research insights, user feedback, and design solutions into polished, interactive interfaces ready for development and final user testing.
Attending an event
Creating an event
Final Product
Experience the prototype through the embed. For the best experience, view in the full-screen mode.