College Sauce
IN THIS PROJECT I WAS TASKED TO
design an event finder app to streamline how students find & build communities
College Sauce is an app that helps students discover events, create their own, and connect with classmates through group chats. They approached us to redesign the platform to improve usability and engagement.
TIMELINE
10 weeks
SOFTWARE
Figma, Illustrator
ROLE
Design Lead
AREAS OF DESIGN
UX Design, UX Research, Branding
TEAM
Sophia Levin
Edrick Wong Liang
Xouxa Latendresse
Subha Eranki
Pavani Balaji
Client
Sarah Boggs
(CEO & Founder of College Sauce)
BACKGROUND
Breaking down the user experience gaps
The current design is unintuitive, and low participation in group chats and limited user-generated events lead to manual uploads. We aim to boost engagement, encourage event creation, and make the platform a more dynamic space for student connections.
CLIENT STANDUPS
The team realized they needed to refocus on their original vision: a truly map-centric experience where campus life comes alive through community participation. This meant:
Rebuilding around the map: Making the interactive campus map the starting point for everything—finding events, creating meetups, and joining conversations.
Making content creation rewarding: Designing a simple, engaging process for students to add their own events directly to the map.
Bringing class chats to life: Creating reasons for students to engage, with location-based chat features that connect to real spaces on campus.
OUR CORE NEED
Given that College Sauce’s unclear navigation and inactive group chats hinder engagement…
How might we improve event discovery and interaction so that students can easily connect and participate?
ROLE + TIMELINE
As a Design Lead for this project, I helped produce the overall design system to keep consistency throughout the app. The main screens I worked on were the User Profile, Club Profile, Scrapbook, and Groupchat screens.
In addition to design, in my role included spearheading weekly design meetings to generate ideas, cultivating a collaborative and creative environment as well as communicating with the client to ensure the and application designs are meeting their goals.
PROJECT TIMELINE
RESEARCH
USER SURVEY
Getting to know our user
Our team conducted a large-scale user survey and one-on-one user interviews with college students across disciplines to better understand students' needs.
USER INTERVIEWS
Following our survey analysis, we conducted one-on-one interviews with selected students to gain a deeper understanding of their pain points. With these insights in mind, we created How Might We… notes to identify opportunities for improvement.
Key findings
Extracurricular Involvement: Most students consider themselves somewhat involved in extracurricular activities (23 participants).
Event Preferences: Students are most interested in live performances, social events (e.g., parties), and events related to their hobbies and interests.
Event Discovery Features: Students want to easily identify popular events and use filters to sort through options. Personalized recommendations, nearby event suggestions, and social connection features were also highly requested.
Search Methods: Date-based searches and event-type filters were the preferred methods for finding events.
Connecting with Other Students: The majority (37 participants) communicate via text messaging or social media.
USER INTERVIEWS
IDEATION
AFFINITY MAPPING
Getting to know our user
Our team conducted a large-scale user survey and one-on-one user interviews with college students across disciplines to better understand our target users' needs. With these insights in mind, we created How Might We… notes to identify opportunities for improvement.
DESIGNING
In order to design a map-first experience to streamline event discovery, creation, and engagement, we started brainstorming with the main pain points our client expressed.
01
How might we make event creation more enticing to encourage user-generated content?
02
How might we incentivize class chat participation to foster real-time connections?
WIREFRAMING
After gathering insights from our user research, we moved into the wireframing phase to begin visualizing solutions for College Sauce's redesign.
MOODBOARDING
Exploring Design Decisions
During Week 2 of our redesign process, our team immersed ourselves in creative exploration through moodboarding and dot voting to establish the visual and functional direction for College Sauce's transformation.
Each team member gathered inspiration to help visualize the map-centric experience we wanted to create for college students. This exploratory phase helped us identify design elements that would make the app feel both professional and engaging.
The dot voting revealed strong team alignment around:
Clean, uncluttered map interfaces with clear visual hierarchy
Vibrant color-coding for different event categories
Prominent, simplified event creation buttons
Social proof indicators showing event popularity
Little guy/mascot for brand recognition
✳ These early moodboarding exercises laid the foundation for the more detailed design work to come, ensuring that our solutions would not only address College Sauce's functional challenges but would also create an engaging visual experience that students would want to use daily.
DESIGN SYSTEM
We developed an interface design system based on our research insights and client input. User interviews revealed that many found the original branding uninspired and outdated. To address this, we introduced a bright, fresh, and inspiring color palette that enhances engagement and visual appeal.
PROTOTYPING
Bringing College Sauce to life
After refining our design concepts and information architecture, we moved into high-fidelity prototyping to create a tangible, interactive version of our vision for College Sauce.
Explore Map
See eveything in a glance and with customizable widgets
My Map & My Schedule
Groupchats
User + Club Profile
Scrapbook
A visual log of past attended events with integrated photo sharing albums, replacing the need to coordinate separate shared albums
REFLECTION
Special thanks to Cal Poly Iter8
If you made it this far – thanks for reading! Thank you again to my lovely team at Cal Poly Iter8. Here’s what I learned as a first-time design lead:
01
Clear Vision & Strong Systems
Leading a team meant ensuring alignment from the start. Establishing a solid design system kept our work cohesive and streamlined collaboration.
02
Advocating for Design Decisions
Communicating directly with the client taught me how to push back when needed—balancing feasibility, timelines, and quality while maintaining a positive relationship.
