Mobile App Design & User Research
A unified digital platform designed to cultivate community and collaboration across Rutgers University, empowering students to connect and belong.
Rutgers University currently lacks a unified, digital community hub that effectively fosters deep student engagement and meaningful collaboration across the university system. This absence impedes students' ability to easily build social and academic bridges and establish safe, inclusive spaces, thereby restricting open communication and the exchange of diverse perspectives crucial for a cohesive campus environment.
A digital hub designed to cultivate community and collaboration across Rutgers University.
To understand the barriers to student engagement at Rutgers, I conducted interviews with eight undergraduate and graduate students across different schools and majors. Participants represented a range of experiences: commuter students, on-campus residents, transfer students, and international students.
Each interview focused on:
To evaluate how other institutions and platforms address student engagement, I examined Rutgers Engage, Handshake, Discord communities, and CampusGroups.
Most of these tools focus on event management or club logistics rather than cultivating long-term connections and inclusivity.
Crucially, there was no cohesive digital environment that merges academics, social belonging, and inclusivity under one roof.
A review of campus engagement research revealed that:
These findings aligned closely with themes from my interviews, confirming the need for a centralized, inclusive engagement platform designed for all types of Rutgers students.
From my research, four major themes emerged about the emotional and social challenges students face:
Key Themes
The Commuter Student
"I want to join clubs, but by the time I hear about them, it's too late or I'm already home."
The First-Year Student
"I signed up for so many clubs, but I can't even remember which ones emailed me back."
The Graduate Student
"I wish there was one place where students could collaborate across programs and disciplines."
My goal was to design a digital platform that helps Rutgers students connect, collaborate, and engage more meaningfully. Initial brainstorming focused on unifying fragmented systems into a single hub. Early concepts like peer matchmaking and AI-driven recommendations were explored, but interviews showed students prioritized clarity, not another social network.
I shifted focus toward three essential engagement pathways to simplify the design:
Feedback highlighted the importance of organization, visual discovery, and quick interaction, leading to a minimalist structure.
Two key flows emerged, prioritizing ease of navigation and minimal friction:
Peer critiques led to refinement; for instance, the "Scarlet AI" assistant evolved from a chatbot into a smart search companion that personalizes discovery without dominating the interface. This helped establish the final foundation for Campus Connect, making finding belonging as seamless as checking your calendar.
The main goal was to create a centralized experience where the home screen acted as the nucleus—a single point for discovering clubs and events. I balanced information density with clarity in early wireframes, ensuring students could reach their goals in three taps or fewer.
I developed a visual language that felt authentically Rutgers—professional yet welcoming.
This design was approachable for first-year students while maintaining polish for Rutgers' brand identity.
The Campus Connect brand is built around inclusivity and discovery. The app's companion feature, Scarlet AI, provides a friendly, conversational tone and contextual suggestions, reinforcing a sense of connection and support.
The design reflects modularity and flexibility, with each section (events, clubs, calendar, favorites) following a consistent, scalable structure. This organization creates a sense of rhythm and familiarity across screens, mirroring a living campus that is structured yet open to exploration.
The final design of Campus Connect delivers a simple yet powerful way for Rutgers students to discover, attend, and share events that matter to them. With a clean visual language, interactive map, and integrated calendar, the app brings community and connection into one cohesive experience.
The final design of Campus Connect delivers a simple yet powerful way for Rutgers students to discover, attend, and share events that matter to them. With a clean visual language, interactive map, and integrated calendar, the app brings community and connection into one cohesive experience.