ÜConnect

Access all your peers – from anywhere within the UC system

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Introduction

College students are often limited by their immediate peers and resources. While campuses work hard to give students opportunities to connect with their peers with similar goals through classes and clubs, students should have more opportunities to build their skills outside of school-associated activities. Students can benefit from having done one or more independent projects before graduation in order to prepare them for the workforce but are often limited to their immediate peers.

Inspiration

  • Unless you already have peers at other UC campuses, the opportunities to get to know them are typically limited. For example, even students such as transfers who are now part of their respective campuses are limited by their immediate resources – the UC system is “a public land-grant research university system” and provides its students with ample opportunities, but as students in an increasingly online world we have the ability to reach for more than what is just right in front of us.
  • As designers who transferred into the UC system in our third years, we’ve had to balance adapting to new environments, class schedules, and more. A platform like this would be beneficial – being able to independently work and gain experiences with other students outside of the classroom, even outside of our own campuses can help us hone valuable, transferable skills.

Goals

  • Fostering more confidence in student populations that otherwise would not have felt empowered to make time for portfolio-building activities outside of school
  • Widening user’s networks

Research

  • We surveyed 78 students and the input we received heavily informed our design decisions while creating the features for the app. We were able to adapt common functions people used in competing apps, such as Linkedin, Instagram, and Handshake. This includes messaging features, friend lists, and recommendations for potential friends based on common interests.
  • In our user research, over 67% of students surveyed would be either entirely unlikely or very unlikely to pursue extracurriculars if they do not fit their schedules. -Our competitive audit helped us analyze competing applications and helped us identify needs that were not being met within already existing apps. From this, we decided that creating a friendlier, but focused environment for students to collaborate in was a niche that we could fill.
  • Google form survey
  • Competitive analysis

What it does

UConnect is an online platform that connects students part of the University of California higher education system with like-minded individuals to work on independent/extracurricular projects – Our focus is to foster cross-campus camaraderie and connection between students who otherwise would not have been able to find each other.

How we built it

After ideating, Melody started by drawing out low fidelity workflow models on paper, showing user behavior/user journey/scenarios. We worked in tandem with one another where Melody drew out the low fidelity models on paper showing a typical user journey through the application. While she did this, the rest of our group (Lauren, Meredith, Alexis) worked on the the high fidelity models in Figma.

Challenges we ran into

As a group of beginner Figma users, two of us using it for the first time within the week leading up to HackDavis, we were learning each step of the way for the duration of our Hack/project. When we ran into features we weren’t sure how to use, taking time to figure things out slowed down our workflow.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

For all of us, figuring out Figma along the way was a productive, fun time. Individually, here’s what we felt the best about.

  • Melody – felt very happy that we followed her models, and learning features on Figma
  • Meredith – figuring out the scrolling on Figma and figuring out user flow
  • Lauren – drawing the logo, creating/animating figures, and figuring out user flow
  • Alexis – working on the logo, and conceptualizing

What we learned

Over the course of the project, we learned how to prototype, acquired more in depth knowledge about conducting user research through surveying and reaching out to diverse groups of people within our college student demographic. In addition to this, we also workshopped prototyping and developing high fidelity models.

What's next for ÜConnect

  • We’d like to explore more in-depth user flow for interactions including reposting, commenting and uploading
  • User Flow for composing a message
  • Adapting the scale (implementing other California schools (California State schools, California Community Colleges into the app)

Built With

  • figma
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