An app to help students discover, register, and attend campus easily in a personal and efficient way. Currently in development as a personal side project.
Role– Product Designer, Co-Creator (team of 3)
Date– 11/2018 - 02/2019
Biggest Challenge– conducting thorough market research
Biggest Takeaway– how thoughtful and user-centric the UI design process is
The idea for Pepper came from personal experience. As a college student, I noticed so many events going around campus each day, but I never knew where to look for more information. Sometimes I’d be lucky enough to stumble across a Facebook event invite, or hear about it from a friend, but there existed no consolidated platform for me to seek out events I’d be interested in.
After interviewing peers, I found that this problem was widespread; and paralleled a complaint that registering for campus events was a messy and convoluted process.
I proceeded to hash out quick wireframes via whiteboard and paper with a few key product goals in mind:
-users should have a personalized feed of events catered to their interests.
-the platform should still encourage contact with friends, especially seeing what friends are interested in and inviting friends to attend events with you.
-the platform should ease communication between host and attendee, allowing for question/answer exchanges, more publicity for host organizations and post-event feedback/metrics.
After I was confident I had integrated enough user research in my thought process, I began wire-framing the app on Sketch, now focusing more on developing more consistency with brand & identity design decisions.
I wanted to make sure:
-the design felt minimal: students are busy and finding, registering, and attending campus events should be a simple and easy process
-the design felt fun and social: attending events are an inherently social process, we want to go with our friends. The app should reflect that value
The fundamental goal of Pepper is to make the event discovery/marketing, registration/management, and attendance/hosting process easier for both attendee and host.
Understanding the student perspective and orking closely with event hosts and campus organizations allows us to create a comprehensive platform built to serve our community.
The result is a parallel structure between attendee and host, ensuring the two exist in harmony and transparency, a win-win.
Looking forward, we have started building out the backend of the app and have established relationships with notable organizations across campus. Our strategy is to onboard small organizations’ events and members while working with a key organizer on 1 large event (target date in March), which would create the large marketing push needed to spread Pepper around campus.
Next, we’d begin reaching out to other college campuses, and researching a broader event experience outside of USC.