Compass

A club finder app aimed to provide a tech-driven solution to foster connection, simplify club discovery, and support personal growth.

Timeline

April 2024

Team

Partnership

Tools

Figma
Illustrator
Miro

Role

Product Designer
UX Researcher
Project Manager

Project Overview

A social app to combat college burnout.

Compass was conceptualized as part of a pitch competition, where my classmate and I developed an MVP to address growing mental health issues in college students in Canada.

We found that the lack of accessible mental health resources and community engagement are key contributors to student stress. Our pitch aimed to provide a tech-driven solution to foster connection, simplify club discovery, and support personal growth.

Design Process

Problem Space

Academic Success vs. College Burnout

University life offers countless opportunities for personal and intellectual growth, but it also comes with its fair share of challenges. From general knowledge and personal experience, it is no doubt that academic success comes with the price of a student’s quality of life––also famously known as college burnout.

UX Research

Currently, only 20% of Canadian students have been able to receive mental health services from their university. A PESTLE analysis helped us to discover a product opportunity with social, economic, and technology assumptions.

User interviews and surveying

After seeing the psychology within this space, we wanted to hear first-hand our target audience’s experiences by conducting primary research to intuitively cater the final product to their needs.

We decided to conduct interviews and surveys in order to scope out user interest. The main that the top three reasons for college burnout include but are not exclusive to: isolation, fitting in, and internal and/or external pressure.

Persona and finding insights

Statistic #1: Students are 3x more likely to discover clubs and/or events through social media (Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn).

Statistic #2: 80% of students do not use mental health resources provided on campus, expressed that they “don’t work” or are “a waste of time”.

How might we

Give college students everything they need to be involved on campus and to find clubs that easily align with their interest?

Userflow

After finding out the basic requirements of the user, the key features were identified and ideated.

Iterating with low-fidelity prototypes were of great use in identifying components for framing the design system and also to get an initial feedback from the team before we stepped into c

MVP

Final Designs

FEATURE 01: MAKING CLUBS ACCESSIBLE FOR ALL STUDENTS
The "compass" is the main function of the app to allow users to browse all of the clubs listed at their school. With a straightforward UI, we expect an easy start to the user's journey.
FEATURE 02: UPCOMING EVENTS & NOTIFICATIONS
After students are able to choose a club they're interested in, a description and the upcoming events are listed together. Users can follow clubs and get notified about updates regarding them.
FEATURE 03: INITIAL SURVEY & PERSONALIZATION
We decided that students should have a narrowed scope of clubs that interest them to avoid resistance from finding something they really like. The For You page condenses them together.

Key Takeaways

Our research allowed us to design for a wider range of users.

This project gave each of us a look behind the scenes of how business models are produced and made with a start-up idea. With more time, I would like to further iterate on our prototype's user experience with testing.

Overall, it was a very rewarding experience and I appreciated the chance to be in a small developing team. Personally, I've gained insight on how all roles of product development work and the significance behind them.

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