Connected
Role
UX Design
UI/Visual Design
Branding
Tools
Sketch
Adobe Illustrator
A greater experience
on your campus
Many College and University students don’t end up making as many meaningful connections they mean to on their campus, and most students don’t know where to start. Connected is an app connecting students and empowering interdisciplinary collaboration. The app targets college campus students with three major purposes:
1. offering students the opportunity to collaborate with other students of the same or different educational and professional backgrounds
2. allowing students to easily get in contact with their current classmates or club members
3. connecting students with other students with similar interests, talents, and hobbies; on a social level
Most competitors of Connected are either event based eg: Eventbrite, Meetup; or used as more of a communication tool eg: Remind, Basecamp.
Connected focuses on individual campuses, giving it a more targeted purpose: to connect students of that particular campus. Though its chat feature is much like other apps, the app does not serve as merely a way of communication, but it links students up to other students, classes, projects, events, etc., that are related to that student based on their pre-populated information activated through their school email.
With a few taps, Connected allows for a greater experience on campus.
Connecting Students and Empowering Interdisciplinary Collaboration
App Competitors
Taking on the research of my target market, I sent out a survey as well as a card sort to college and university students in order to accurately gather information for this app.
Research
58% of students who took this survey commute to school, and 41.9% of students have long commutes. This may contribute to these students finding challenges in connecting with other students on campus.
Connected will give them the opportunity to make those connections even without spending all their time on campus.
58.1% of students who took this survey claim that they are often on their phones, and 22.6% of them claim that they are always on their phones.
Connected, adapts to students’ comfort zones of being on their phones, but serves the purpose of connecting students on campus to one another. Further more, as it is a mobile app, it will be something that students are familiar with using.
25.8% of students rarely ever meet and interact with new students on campus. Although at a lower percentage, it is the highest scoring percentage tied with “several times a month,” followed by students only meeting and interacting with new students once a month at 22.6%.
Connected will be a tool for students to meet and interact with one another on an educational, collaborative, and/or social level. Students will be able to create or find listings of events or projects, communicate with students in similar classes, and/or search for students with similar interests and hobbies.
For those students who rarely meet other students, it is an easy way of starting. For those who meet other students more often, it is a convenient and efficient way of doing so.
48.4% of students who took this survey are neutral about the difficulty of getting to know new students on campus.
For students who are able to meet people easily, Connected will enhance the experience as there are events and projects that they can easily be a part of. For those who find more difficult in meeting other students, Connected will be a convenient and simple way to start.
The highest percentage of students (87.1%) getting to know new students on campus is through their classes, followed extra-curricular activities at 25.8%.
Connected will provide an easy way of communicating with other students in classes, as all their relevant information is available on their profiles. This will also open up the opportunity for students to make connections with students in other disciplines and majors.
Collectively, more than 50% of students who took this survey do not often work with students in other disciplines, majors, and educational backgrounds.
Connected will open up the opportunity for students to connect more with others outside of what they’re used to, in academic, social, and collaborative situations.
Connected also has the potential of eliminating the “awkwardness” of talking to someone for the first time.
The highest percentage of students (54.8%) meeting others of different disciplines, majors, and educational backgrounds is through their classes, followed by events and extra-curricular activities, both at 32.3%.
Connected will provide an easy way of communicating with other students in classes, as all their relevant information is available on their profiles. Furthermore, Connected will have listings of different events as well as different projects to collaborate on that students on campus post, for the interest of others who would like to be apart of them.
Collectively, 51.7% of students who took this survey are interested or very interested in working with students that have different majors, educational backgrounds, and professional experience.
Connected will open up the opportunity for students to do that as students can either create or find listings on projects or events or simply get in touch with students in their classes.
Almost half of the students who took this survey were less familiar with the events happening on their campuses (scale of 1 and 2), and 25.8% of them were neutral about the subject.
Connected will show students the events that are specifically created by other students on that campus as well as allow students to create events for themselves that others might want to come to.
Task Flows
General Task Flow
Full Task Flow
Use Cases
Use Case #1
Susan
Age: 18
Gender: Female
Occupation: Undergraduate Student (First Year)
Interests: photography, watching movies, yoga, writing, traveling alone
Susan is a freshman in college and is taking GE classes. She hasn’t decided on a major yet and doesn’t know anyone very well. She’s a little nervous as this is her first semester and she doesn’t know what to expect. She exchanges numbers with another person in class as the professor instructs.
As she returns home, she realizes she missed something the professor said about homework so she texts her classmate but quickly sees that classmate is not reliable and does not return her text. She turns to Connected and searches for another classmate. She finds all her classmates easily because they’re connected through the pre-populated database as being in the same class. She gets the information about the homework from another classmate easily.
Susan gets her homework done confidently and with plenty of time to spare.
Use Case #2
Andrew
Age: 26
Gender: Male
Occupation: Graduate Student (Last Year)
Interests: technology, design, podcasts, video games, coffee
Andrew is a masters student with a graphic design/ux design major. He takes his career seriously and has worked hard to prepare for his career. He is about to graduate and as he is designing his final project, he quickly realizes he is not able to actually develop the application. Although he knows many designers in his department, he hasn’t made too many connections apart from that.
Andrew turns to Connected and creates a “project” where he describes the project, what it entails and the help he needs. As he waits for a response, he also searches through the pre-populated database for computer science and engineering majors to see if anyone might look like a good candidate to help him. In doing that, he already knows their year and qualifications and maybe even a little bit of their personality (through interests and hobbies) and he can contact them if he wants. Meanwhile, there are people who are writing in his “project” page telling him that they will be part of his project. He is able to view their profiles as well and quickly decides on someone and messages them.
They work together on completing his project, and the time saved on his search helps him create a better end product. Andrew is able to easily collaborate with a fellow student of a different discipline and he learns to communicate and work with what would be a team member in the working world.
Use Case #3
Val
Age: 21
Gender: Male
Occupation: Undergraduate Student (Junior Year)
Interests: concerts, fitness/sports, hiking with friends, social events
Val is a college student who has a part-time job off campus. He commutes a long way to school ever other day and he is quick to rush home/to work and does not spend a lot of time on campus. Although quite successful in his studies, he has not made many friends and often feels lonely and isolated.
He is always interested in campus events but he is never around long enough to explore the campus, up-coming events, or even hear about them. By the time he does know about an event, he doesn’t go anyway because it doesn’t fit his schedule for the day. Moreover, he hasn’t made college friends enough to talk to them casually about going to an event together.
Val turns to Connected and finds up-coming events that are good for his busy schedule. He locks it in his calendar and decides to make an effort in being part of the school community. He also searches for other students with similar interests and hobbies and eventually is able to strike up a conversation and make a few friends.
Wireframes
Low Fidelity Wireframes
High Fidelity Wireframes
Moodboard & Colors
Logo Exploration
Final Logo
After some thought and a few sketches, the decision for the Logo was a combination of different ideas to best represent the purpose and concept of Connected
Logo Mark
Logo Mark:
Two hands — representing students on campus
Hands fitting like a puzzle piece — representing connection
Pixel Squares filling the spaces —representing the use of technology as a means of connecting students
Logo Type
Logo Type:
Typeface — Heebo Medium
Letters are brought together as a representation of bring students together
Initial App Design
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Final App Design
App Prototype
