pier
Role
Product Designer
Scope
2 months | may '25
Tools
Figma
Project Type
Mobile
tl;dr
A fragmented student event experience.
Pier is a mobile app designed to solve a fragmented event landscape at universities. As a student balancing coursework and social life, discovering relevant opportunities can be a challenge as they can be scattered across platforms.
This project explores how a centralized and categorized platform can help students stay informed and engaged, while giving student organizations a direct channel to reach their audience. By simplifying event discovery, the app transforms how students connect with their campus community without relying on social media.
goals
Help university students efficiently discover and attend events to enhance their campus experience.
Deliver a single core user flow that outlines the event discovery process to limit the scope.
Gather research under time pressure to validate the core problem and to guide design priorities.
The Problem
The lack of a centralized, student-focused event hub costs both students and clubs valuable connections, engagement, and opportunities.
Competitive Analysis
I proceeded to do a competitive analysis to compile shortcomings, main features and common UX patterns among current solutions. These insights helped me to prioritize design decisions by revealing what worked across platforms and what fell short.
Existing platforms are too generic, fragmented, and don’t provide effective methods to remind or RSVP.
User Survey
To validate that these shortcomings reflected real student needs, I surveyed three users within the two main user groups: students and club executives.
Students struggle to discover happenings outside their immediate networks, while clubs lack visibility into demand.
While campus has no shortage of opportunities, students aren’t discovering them until it's too late or missing them entirely. Students crave consolidated information, while club organizers face limited reach beyond followers and no way to forecast demand.
These insights shaped my decision to prioritize the student discovery problem, which affected a larger audience and aligns with a core friction point I experience.
Disclaimer: for a full-scale project, I would conduct more comprehensive research with a larger sample size to validate the problem further.
Feature Prioritization
Based on my research findings, I developed core user stories to capture the different ways students interact with campus events. This helped me to identify features that could serve multiple motivations, ensuring that the final design would feel relevant across different needs.
“As a new student at Laurier, I want to see all events happening this month, so I can understand what opportunities exist to connect with others.”
“As a student who avoids social media, I want to discover campus events without using those platforms, so I can participate in university life while maintaining my digital boundaries.”
“As a driven student with a busy schedule, I want to stay aware of events I care about, so I can grow my network and make the most of campus life.”
Early Ideation
With these stories and scope decisions, I started sketching. My early explorations revealed what students actually needed to see and do.
My early explorations revealed that robust filtering and search was essential but didn't belong on the main feed. As a result I was able to refine the user flow into three core steps.
1. Open app > personalized explore page.
2. Filter, search or sort by interest, faculty, or date.
3. Tap event or opportunity for details > RSVP, save or add to calendar.
This separation of concerns became foundational to the final design, ensuring students could browse efficiently or dive deep depending on their intent.
the solution
Empower students to easily get involved on campus.
I designed Pier, which serves as a central dock for students to connect with their peers through on campus opportunities. Pier provides students with a single destination where they can browse, filter, and plan to attend events that match their interests.
Balancing simplicity and detail.
The final approach balances the amount of information the user sees at each stage. I constrained myself to a simple colour palette and minimal component for clarity & simplicity. As a result, typography and hierarchy illustrate the importance of each element.
The discovery feed stays concise and depth is provided through the event details page. Including a full filter pane proved unnecessary and inconsistent with UX patterns identified with competitors.
