Crew Campus

Project Background & Personal Journey

Crew Campus originated from my personal experience as an international student navigating daily campus life using multiple disconnected apps for food, transport, payments, complaints, and events. Switching between platforms often felt confusing and time-consuming.

This challenge motivated me to design a single, unified solution that simplifies student interactions with campus services. Through Crew Campus, I focused on understanding real student pain points and translating them into a clean, intuitive, and accessible dashboard.

This project reflects my growth in user-centered thinking, UX research, and UI design, while also representing my journey of designing a practical solution inspired directly by my own student life.

Research

To understand the challenges faced by students and early job seekers, I conducted research across platforms where they actively engage—such as LinkedIn groups, student communities, and career forums. This helped identify real-world behaviors, expectations, and pain points in their journey of finding opportunities and guidance.

Through this research, it became clear that users struggle with scattered information, unclear processes, and lack of structured support. Many students rely on multiple sources for job listings, application guidance, and peer advice, which creates confusion and inefficiency in their decision-making process.

I used these insights to identify key patterns in user behavior, including frequent platform switching, dependence on peer networks, and the need for step-by-step clarity. These findings formed the foundation for defining user needs and shaping the overall product direction.

The research ultimately highlighted the need for a centralized platform that not only provides opportunities but also offers guidance, clarity, and community support. These insights directly influenced the creation of personas, user flows, and the overall design strategy for Crew Campus.

User Surveys & Interviews

To understand how users plan and book their travel, I conducted a combination of surveys and interviews with frequent travelers, students, and working professionals. The goal was to identify real-world challenges in trip planning, comparison, and booking experiences across existing platforms.

Survey Overview

Key Survey Findings

User Interviews

To go deeper, I conducted 5 one-on-one interviews with users who frequently travel or plan trips.

Key Takeaways

Card Sorting & Affinity Mapping

To better understand how students organize career-related information, I conducted card sorting and affinity mapping exercises. These activities helped identify how users group opportunities, guidance, and community features, along with the challenges they face while navigating multiple platforms. By structuring these insights into clear themes, I was able to simplify the information architecture and prioritize key sections.

The findings ensured intuitive navigation, clear categorization, and a guided user flow, reducing confusion and aligning the platform structure with real user needs, behaviors, and expectations.

Meet the Users: Personas, Task Flows, Journeys

In preparation for wireframing, I explored platforms where students actively search for career opportunities—such as job portals, LinkedIn groups, and student communities. This helped me understand how users navigate through opportunities, seek guidance, and interact with peers during their career journey.

By observing real user behaviors and engaging with students, I gained insights into their challenges, expectations, and decision-making processes. This approach allowed me to uncover not just their actions, but the underlying motivations behind them, which played a crucial role in shaping the product direction.

Using these insights, I created detailed personas that represent different types of students and job seekers. These personas helped define task flows and user journeys, ensuring that the platform supports users in finding opportunities, understanding processes, and making informed decisions with ease.

In this way, I gained meaningful insights that helped me create, or rather uncover, my personas for Crew Campus.

The insights I gathered during my research helped me develop 3 personas:

Exploration & Ideation

After gathering insights from research, I moved into the exploration phase to identify how the platform could effectively address user needs. I analyzed existing job portals and student communities to understand common patterns, gaps, and opportunities for improvement. This helped me define key focus areas such as simplifying navigation, providing structured guidance, and integrating community support.

During ideation, I explored multiple approaches to organizing content and improving user flows. I sketched different layout concepts and experimented with ways to combine opportunities, preparation resources, and guidance into a single cohesive experience. The goal was to reduce confusion, minimize platform switching, and create a smooth journey from discovery to application.

I focused on designing a solution that is simple, intuitive, and goal-oriented. By prioritizing clarity and user needs, I ensured that the platform supports students at every stage—from exploring opportunities to understanding the application process and connecting with peers.

This phase helped shape the foundation of Crew Campus by translating research insights into actionable design directions, setting the stage for wireframing and prototyping.

User Interface Design

The user interface for Crew Campus was designed with a focus on clarity, simplicity, and ease of navigation. Since the platform targets students and job seekers, the goal was to create a clean and structured layout that helps users quickly find opportunities, access guidance, and move through the application process without confusion.

I used a minimal and modern design approach, ensuring that content is well-organized and visually accessible. Clear typography, consistent spacing, and intuitive icons were applied to reduce cognitive load and improve readability. The interface prioritizes important elements such as job listings, application steps, and guidance resources, making them easily discoverable.

Special attention was given to navigation and hierarchy. Key sections like Opportunities, Preparation, Guidance, and Community were clearly defined, allowing users to move seamlessly across the platform. Visual cues, buttons, and interactive elements were designed to guide users naturally through their journey.

The overall design ensures a smooth and engaging experience by combining functionality with aesthetics. By focusing on user needs and behavior, the interface supports efficient decision-making and helps users confidently progress from exploring opportunities to completing applications.