Student App: from A to Z
The app, called "Thing" was designed to help incoming students at a digital school begin their first year with ease.
Contrary to other student apps, Thing engage with student before their first day.
Thanks to a timeline and a badge system, the app helps students feel more in control of their experience
The style is inspired by the Neo-Brutalist. This style aligns with the preferences of the target audience, which is familiar with apps like TikTok. Finally, thanks to a bold and simple aesthetic, it emphasises functionality while maintaining a fresh and modern look, which it’s perfect for a digital school
Context
- YEAR 2022-2023
- PROJECT FOR Digital Campus - the school where I’ve got my UX Design specialisation
- IN COLLABORATION WITH some good music
- WHAT I'VE DONE FOR THIS PROJECT: From empathy map to user testing and persona, from user flow to workshops crazy 8 and 6 to 1 and storyboard, from zoning to prototype and user testing.
- TOOLS: Figma FigJam
Challenge
My challenge was understanding the needs of the target audience without getting biased by my own.
At first there was the Hypothesis...
Although I was a student myself at the time, I knew that designing an app based on my personal frustrations and preferences would be biased.
Through the empathy map exercise, I was able to gain insights into the thoughts, feelings, words, and actions that students might experience before starting a new school year.
Based on these insights, I formulated my initial hypothesis and I proceeded to testing them with user interviews. I used the interview protocol in the image above for interviewing 10 students.
User Flow and Zoning
I looked for repetitions on the answers of the users and with those I created a persona. It followed a design studio workshop with my fellow students which allowed the idea of a timeline and of badge system to come up.
At this point I was ready to move on with an user flow and with a zoning.
UI Kit
For the UI kit, I took on the challenge of creating responsive components, starting from the atoms and moving up to molecules and organisms.
Workshops, Mockups and Prototyping
With my fellow students I partecipated to ideation workshops such as the Crazy 8 and 6 to 1 in order to generate design options. These exercises done with 4 people and a piece of paper proved to be extremely useful for boasting the design process.
Conclusion
The process of creating Thing was truly rewarding. With this student app, I fully explored the value of each step, from conducting user interviews to testing my prototype.
This allowed me to deliver a functional, user-tested solution that I'm proud of.