With user insights in mind, I brainstormed features that would address the core challenges of communication, event discovery, and task management. My primary goals were to:

• Create a Dashboard to provide students with an overview of their organizations, tasks, and upcoming events.
• Develop an Explore Tab for students to easily find and join organizations based on their interests.
• Design a Task Management System to help both students and organization leaders keep track of responsibilities in a clear, organized manner.

I also defined user personas to ensure the app catered to different user needs:

• Jasmine, 18, a Rutgers freshman on the pre-med track, who struggles with the virtual transition and wants to meet new people.
• Eric, 21, a senior in Computer Science and a club coordinator who seeks a streamlined way to coordinate meetings and share information with members.
• Jessica, 20, a junior who started college during the pandemic and finds it difficult to discover clubs and events.

These personas helped guide the flow of the app and prioritize features based on user needs.

Wireframing

With the core features outlined, I began wireframing to visualize the app's layout and navigation. The goal at this stage was to create a simple, intuitive flow that minimized confusion and made it easy for students to accomplish tasks.

Low-fidelity Wireframes

The initial wireframes were kept minimal, focusing on the overall layout, navigation structure, and placement of key elements like buttons, cards, and menus. These wireframes included:

• Dashboard: A hub where students could see their upcoming events, tasks, and important updates from organizations.
• Explore Tab: A scrollable list of organizations, categorized by interest with a search bar for easy filtering.
• Tasks Page: A simple to-do list where tasks could be sorted by organization, due date, or completion status.

Mid-fidelity Wireframes

Based on initial feedback, I refined the wireframes by adding more details and refining the layout:

• Adjusted the navigation bar to make it more accessible on mobile devices.
• Streamlined the Explore Tab by introducing filters for events and organizations, allowing users to search by keywords, date, or category.
• Improved the Tasks Page by adding color-coded tags (e.g., "In Progress" or "Completed") to help users prioritize their work.

Usability testing at this stage helped identify small improvements, such as reordering sections in the Dashboard to prioritize urgent tasks and events.

Challenge 1: Fragmented Communication and Task Management

The first challenge was addressing the fragmented communication and task management that students faced across various platforms like email, GroupMe, and Slack. This disjointed system led to missed information and confusion. To solve this, the AfterSchool app centralized all communication and task management into one platform. By offering a unified task list, event calendar, and direct messaging system, the app allowed students to stay organized and informed, significantly reducing the risk of missing important updates.

Challenge 2: Creating an Intuitive Experience for Multiple User Types

The second challenge involved creating an intuitive user experience for both students and organization coordinators, who had different needs. Students required easy access to event discovery and task management, while coordinators needed tools to assign tasks and plan events efficiently. The solution was to design separate, interconnected dashboards for each user group, ensuring that both students and coordinators could navigate the app seamlessly, with tailored features that met their distinct workflows without overcomplicating the interface.

Challenge 3: Reducing Cognitive Overload

The third challenge was reducing cognitive overload for students, who often felt overwhelmed by the volume of tasks and events they needed to manage. To address this, the app employed a minimalist design with features like color-coded task statuses, progress tracking, and reminders. These design elements helped students prioritize their responsibilities and view important information at a glance, ultimately decreasing the mental strain and making the app easier to use without adding complexity.

Challenge 4: Encouraging Engagement in a Virtual Environment

The fourth challenge was encouraging student engagement in a virtual environment, where students often felt disconnected from extracurricular activities without the in-person interactions they were accustomed to. To tackle this, the AfterSchool app introduced social features such as group messaging, event invitations, and direct communication with club coordinators, fostering a sense of community. Additionally, the “saved opportunities” function allowed students to bookmark events and organizations of interest, while notifications kept them informed and engaged with upcoming tasks and activities.

Challenge 5: Ensuring Scalability and Flexibility

The fifth challenge was ensuring that the app could scale and remain flexible enough to accommodate a wide variety of student organizations, each with its own needs and structures. The solution was to design the app with modular components that allowed for customization. Organizations could tailor their profiles, events, and task lists according to their unique requirements. At the same time, the explore feature allowed students to filter and discover organizations based on their interests, ensuring that the app was adaptable to a diverse range of users without becoming overly complex.

Outcomes

The AfterSchool app successfully met user needs through a clean, user-centered design that improved task management, event discovery, and communication for students and organization leaders. Early usability tests showed increased productivity and engagement as students could better organize their extracurricular activities in one central app. The app’s intuitive interface for task assignment and event creation also streamlined workflows for leaders. The prototype's success generated interest from university stakeholders, leading to plans for further development and potential funding to move toward an MVP phase.

Key Takeaways

• User Research Drives Success: Conducting in-depth interviews and focus groups early in the process ensured that the final design aligned with user needs, reducing the need for significant rework.
• Iterative Design is Crucial: The project benefited immensely from multiple rounds of wireframing and prototyping. Testing both low- and high-fidelity wireframes allowed me to catch usability issues early, leading to a smoother final design process.
• Balancing Features is Key: Avoiding feature bloat by prioritizing core functionality kept the app simple yet effective. It’s important to resist the temptation to over-complicate the user experience, even if additional features may seem beneficial.