Need
Move campus diversity and inclusion from institution-level programming into meaningful relationships among students who had limited time to connect.
Peers
Peers
How might a university help busy students form meaningful relationships without letting appearance or demographics define the first impression?
Peers is an institution-supported mobile app concept that connects students through interests rather than photos or demographic profiles. Research showed that students wanted relationships grounded in shared interests and challenging perspectives, but work, family, and academic demands limited their opportunities to connect. The resulting experience—playfully described as “Tinder, but for friends”—used interest-only profiles, mutual pairing, private chat, and campus events to help online discovery become face-to-face connection.
AT A GLANCE
- Context
Graduate StudentNew York University2017EDCT-GE 2015: User Experience Design
Solution
A school-supported app that minimizes demographic cues, matches students through interests, protects contact until mutual pairing, and promotes campus events.
Deliverable
A research-informed, iteratively tested mobile prototype spanning more than 120 screens and available through web and mobile prototype viewers.
Significance
Testing validated the concept’s appeal and directly reshaped onboarding, privacy, navigation, and institutional framing; whether the app would create lasting relationships remains untested.
Takeaway
Peers taught me to let research change the problem, not merely refine a predetermined solution. We began with a broad question about identity and diversity among younger students, then followed the evidence toward college relationships, time constraints, and shared interests. Testing also showed that an appealing concept can remain unusable when its context, privacy model, or navigation is unclear. The resulting redesign was less about visual polish than making the product’s purpose and boundaries understandable from the first screen.
Methods & Tools: User interviews · Surveys · Persona · Journey mapping · Ideation · Think Aloud testing · Adobe Photoshop · Prott · Mobile interaction design