The intent wasn’t to define the problem, it was to discover it. That meant stepping back, silencing assumptions that were lingering within as a senior, and letting real student life speak for itself so that the unknown can be known.
Immersing in Fresher's Lives
THE APPROACH
Ethnographic Research
Peripheral Participation : Field Studies
Active Participation : Videography, Focus Groups, Survey
Interacto
Role: UX Researcher & Designer
Research Methodology: Ethnography (peripheral & active observations of field studies followed by focus groups, validated by user surveys)
Solution: A responsive web app designed to ease the transition into campus life for college freshers. It facilitates real-time Q&A, peer & mentor interactions, and event updates, enabling students to adapt quickly, stay informed, and build a strong sense of belonging. Seniors & mentors are integrated to provide guidance & support.
FIELD STUDIES' NOTES
As themes began to emerge organically through sustained observation, social interactions and adjustment patterns stood out as dominant forces shaping the fresher experience. From evolving group dynamics to subtle shifts in tone and presence, these interactions revealed how students navigated unfamiliar environments, laying the foundation for framing the problem space ahead.
VIDEOGRAPHY
As recurring patterns began to surface across different friend groups in behaviour, attitude, and social dynamics, we shifted to a more participatory mode of observation. By spending time and informally interacting with few groups of freshers, we were able to observe more closely, uncover contextual nuances that wouldn’t have surfaced from a distance.
One friend group agreed to be recorded, allowing us to engage more closely. As we spent time with them across varied settings, both on and off campus, we observed how their behaviour and group dynamics shifted with changes in environment and social context.
FOCUS GROUPS
We then moved into a focus group session, bringing together freshers from different friend groups to explore broader aspects of their college life. This collective setting created space for richer conversations around interactions, adjustment, and identity. As the discussion unfolded, participants opened up about their experiences, challenges, and emotional transitions that offered a more layered understanding of the social landscape freshers were navigating.
Semi-structured Questionnaire: Framed for Emotional Openness
Q.1. What were the expectations that you had regarding college before coming here?
Q.2. With which students of your batch or seniors did you interact first?
Q.3. Did anyone of you, face any challenge while interacting?
Follow-up: What were those challenges and how did you overcome them?
Q.4. How did you form your current friend groups?
Follow-up 2: Do all of you feel comfortable and absolutely adjusted in your groups?
Q.5. Could you give us an idea regarding how many good connections you have made outside your main friend circles?
Follow-up: How do you all keep up with them?
Q.6. How many of you identify yourself as an introvert?
Follow-up 1: For you, what role a location plays to make you comfortable or open to interaction?
Follow-up 2: Were there any groups that never made any conscious efforts to include you?
Q.7. What challenges have you faced while adjusting in college life in respect to academics, social acceptance, peer pressure?
Follow-up 1: Were your mentioned challenges faced by you before this group was formed or after that?
Follow-up 2: Were you helped by someone (friend group or others) to overcome these challenges?
Q.8. Do you seek help from someone you don’t know in the absence of your friends?
Follow-up: Can it be considered helpful for you?
Q.9. Do you find seniors here comfortable to interact with?
Follow-up: In what situations do you rely on seniors the most? OR In what situations did you feel troubled by the seniors?
Q.10. Could you walk us through the evolution of your social interactions since joining college?
Q.11. How long did you take to adjust?
Follow-up: Were the issues that you faced here addressed by the friend group, other peers or respective authority?
Q.12. Is there anything else you’d like to share about your social experiences in college?
Priming & Familiarization
Probing Group Dynamics
grounding participants in their own expectations & first encounters
to help ease them into the conversation and recall early experiences authentically
topics carefully structured to surface emotional nuance without direct confrontation
reflective prompts to give participants space to narrate their own growth or stagnation especially in relation to confidence, comfort zones, self adjustment patterns
allowing room for personal nuances that may have been missed by structured questioning
aimed to surface specific pain points around acceptance & help-seeking behaviour
how their relationships were formed, their comfort level within friend groups and the role of
exclusion
adjustment
introversion
Challenges & Support Systems
Behavioural Evolution & Self Awareness
Open Reflection
As freshers navigated early campus life, patterns of adjustment began to surface across interviews, observations, and focus groups. While the narratives varied, many pointed toward recurring friction points:
Misalignment Between Academic Expectation and Reality: Students anticipated engaging, collaborative learning environments but often encountered slow-paced instruction and limited interaction.
Instability in Peer Relationships: Initial bonds formed quickly but lacked depth or longevity, reflecting a need for more meaningful and emotionally resilient social connections.
Disparity in Social Access: Factors like hostel allocation and pre-existing networks created uneven starting points, leaving some students isolated and others quickly integrated.
Absence of Structured Support Systems: Many participants voiced confusion around where to seek guidance—particularly in navigating emotional challenges and peer-related tensions.
Perceived Risk in Help-Seeking: Fear of judgment and social discomfort discouraged students from expressing doubts openly, indicating a lack of psychological safety in shared spaces.
AFFINITY MAPPING
When patterns across student experiences were analyzed, it became clear that their struggles were not isolated but deeply interconnected. What surfaced was a collective sense of disorientation, shaped by both systemic gaps and emotional friction points during the transition into college life.
Academic, social, and logistical issues often overlapped, amplifying stress and uncertainty.
Students lacked accessible, trusted sources of support, both formal and peer-led.
Those with prior connections adapted more smoothly; others felt left behind.
Emotional safety and clarity were missing in both college and hostel settings.
The need extended beyond information, it was about relatable, human guidance that could ease adjustment and offer reassurance.
To validate the patterns identified earlier, we conducted a user survey to test our assumptions across a wider student base which further helped to strengthen our qualitative insights with quantitative evidence, confirming their relevance across the broader student population.
Survey's Snapshot
Survey Type: Quantitative (Google Form)
Respondents: 36 first-year college students
Method: Anonymous, self-administered questionnaire
Objective: To validate highlighted theme observed during fieldwork across a broader base
Interpretations: A considerable number of students entered college without prior social ties, indicating a lack of foundational support during their adjustment phase.
The transition to college life was largely perceived as challenging, pointing to gaps in emotional preparedness, peer orientation, and accessible support mechanisms.
Many participants felt that having a pre-existing connection whether a senior, peer, or acquaintance would have eased their adjustment, reinforcing the value of social scaffolding during early transition stages.
These patterns validated earlier qualitative observations, emphasizing that emotional reassurance and social familiarity play a sustained role in shaping student confidence, not just during onboarding, but throughout the integration journey.
USER SURVEY
USER PERSONAS
IDENTIFIED PROBLEM
Some freshers step into college with built-in support of friends, seniors, or familiarity with the system while others enter the same environment burdened by hesitation, isolation, and a lack of emotional grounding. These contrasting realities revealed how uneven access to social connection can deeply shape a student’s confidence, help-seeking behaviour, and sense of belonging during the early transition phase.
Bringing the Problem into Focus
Despite shared physical spaces, college freshers encounter fragmented adjustment experiences due to the absence of structured social scaffolding. The lack of accessible, peer-driven support systems results in uneven emotional transitions, limited help-seeking behaviour, and uncertainty in navigating early college life, especially for students without pre-existing networks. This gap reveals a systemic need for scalable, trust-centred interventions that foster belonging, psychological safety, and guided social integration.
BRAINSTORMING
SITEMAP
DESIGN ITERATIONS & USABILITY IMPROVEMENTS
Guided by usability concerns and feedback, multiple interface screens were reworked to enhance clarity, accessibility, and emotional safety. These iterations reflect a shift from static layouts to refined experiences that prioritize user comfort, autonomy, and contextual relevance.
Dashboard
B. Chatrooms
C. College Hub
D. Community
E. Anonymous
F. Settings
G. Account
THE DESKTOP
What The User Finally Meets
Designing for desktop-first gave the space to organize dense, multi-layered content clearly by setting a strong foundation before translating it into tablet and mobile flows.
Color psychology is thoughtfully embedded across the interface to support emotional comfort and confident interaction.
Violet as primary suggests trust, support, and reflection by easing user hesitation in peer or anonymous spaces.
Lavender & soft neutrals are the low-arousal tones to create a calming interface which is ideal for emotionally sensitive features.
Accent purple CTAs create high contrast and distinctiveness follow the Von Restorff Effect, making them easy to spot and remember.
Overall effect: The palette balances emotional safety with clarity, encouraging both exploration and expression.
Dashboard
B. Chatrooms
C. College Hub
D. Community
E. Anonymous
F. Settings
G. Account
RESPONSIVENESS: THE TABLET & MOBILE
The responsive transition from desktop to tablet and mobile was crafted to preserve clarity, hierarchy, and ease of navigation and to ensure that the interface remains intuitive regardless of device.
Tablet layout preserves spacing and content clarity while adapting seamlessly to vertical scroll and ensuring visual continuity from desktop.
Sidebar navigation is restructured into a bottom navigation bar on mobile for better thumb accessibility, aligning with Thumb Zone Design.
Home icon is placed at the center for anchoring navigation, supporting muscle memory and repeated use.
Community and Anonymous features are grouped to the right for clustering peer and private social support together.
Chatrooms and College Hub are placed to the left for logically combining campus-related and task-focused actions.
Play
INITIAL PROTOTYPING
USER FEEDBACK
Ground Truths & Growth
LEARNINGS & REFLECTIONS
Nature of the Project
This wasn’t a studio brief or classroom assignment, it was a self-initiated project driven by empathy, not evaluation. Without academic supervision, every decision had to be self-justified and user-validated, making it a deeply personal exercise in independent UX practice.
Control Region
Conducted fieldwork within restricted campus zones, which challenged us to extract deep insights from limited physical contexts, strengthening observational precision and focus.
Designing & Redesigning with Consistency
Iterating across multiple screens while maintaining design consistency was a real test of system thinking. I learned to document UI rules early, develop reusable components, and revisit flows with a balance of logic and emotions, especially when reworking screens that didn’t initially perform well in tests.
Balancing Emotion with Interface
One of the subtler challenges was crafting an interface that supported emotionally vulnerable users without being visually heavy or intrusive. I had to constantly toggle between functional clarity and emotional subtlety which taught me the importance of tone in design systems.
ACTIONABLE NEXT STEPS
Add stronger visual anchors and storytelling cues to the homepage to better convey the app’s purpose and emotionally engage first-time users.
Refine scroll-based interactions to address usability gaps, ensuring smoother content transitions and reducing cognitive load during exploration.
Rework the Posts section to improve content discoverability and reduce visual fatigue by introducing better categorization, preview hierarchies, and subtle engagement cues for interaction.
The scattered narratives, fleeting observations, and emotional undertones we gathered weren’t just isolated moments, they were fragments of a larger picture waiting to emerge. At this stage, the focus shifted from observing to interpreting by letting patterns surface naturally, allowing meaning to take shape before moving toward definition
As Patterns Begin To Speak
Shaping the Solution Space
At the heart of this design was the intent to reduce hesitation, ease emotional friction, and create familiar entry points for connection. The goal was to design a responsive web app that not only addressed logistical barriers but also crafted interactions that felt safe, inclusive, and emotionally responsive, especially for those feeling socially out of sync.
Replaced top navigation with a fixed sidebar to support fitts’s Law as users struggled to consistently locate key sections across pages due to shifting navigation elements.
Removed the large illustration to reclaim visual real estate and refocus attention on actionable items because users often missed important functions due to visual distraction, causing aesthetic-usability tension.
Introduced categorized, scrollable cards for updates, applying progressive disclosure as the users felt overwhelmed by dense, ungrouped information, making scanning difficult.
Placed event highlights at the bottom to match content hierarchy as users prioritized peer interaction first.
Moved Anonymous Q/A to a separate page, reducing cognitive load and clutter, aligning with hick’s Law, as users previously felt overwhelmed by too many mixed actions on a single screen.
Users struggled to process multiple features at once, prompting the use of progressive disclosure via scrollable cards..
Split settings into clear categories (Privacy, Display, Assistance) to improve findability, applying the law of spatial arrangement, as users took time locating relevant controls in a flat structure.
Removed dense layout and introduced visual segmentation, increasing clarity using the law of proximity because users couldn’t easily distinguish between grouped features.
© 2023 Aakriti Srivastava
Research-forward. Design-focused. Let's build what matters.
Interacto
Role: UX Researcher & Designer
Research Methodology: Ethnography (peripheral & active observations of field studies followed by focus groups, validated by user surveys)
Solution: A responsive web app designed to ease the transition into campus life for college freshers. It facilitates real-time Q&A, peer & mentor interactions, and event updates, enabling students to adapt quickly, stay informed, and build a strong sense of belonging. Seniors & mentors are integrated to provide guidance & support.
Ethnographic Research
Peripheral Participation : Field Studies
Active Participation : Videography, Focus Groups, Survey
Immersing in Fresher's Lives
The intent wasn’t to define the problem, it was to discover it. That meant stepping back, silencing assumptions that were lingering within as a senior, and letting real student life speak for itself so that the unknown can be known.
THE APPROACH
FIELD STUDIES' NOTES
As themes began to emerge organically through sustained observation, social interactions and adjustment patterns stood out as dominant forces shaping the fresher experience. From evolving group dynamics to subtle shifts in tone and presence, these interactions revealed how students navigated unfamiliar environments, laying the foundation for framing the problem space ahead.
VIDEOGRAPHY
As recurring patterns began to surface across different friend groups in behaviour, attitude, and social dynamics, we shifted to a more participatory mode of observation. By spending time and informally interacting with few groups of freshers, we were able to observe more closely, uncover contextual nuances that wouldn’t have surfaced from a distance.
One friend group agreed to be recorded, allowing us to engage more closely. As we spent time with them across varied settings, both on and off campus, we observed how their behaviour and group dynamics shifted with changes in environment and social context.
Semi-structured Questionnaire: Framed for Emotional Openness
Q.1. What were the expectations that you had regarding college before coming here?
Q.2. With which students of your batch or seniors did you interact first?
Q.3. Did anyone of you, face any challenge while interacting?
Follow-up: What were those challenges and how did you overcome them?
Q.4. How did you form your current friend groups?
Follow-up 2: Do all of you feel comfortable and absolutely adjusted in your groups?
Q.5. Could you give us an idea regarding how many good connections you have made outside your main friend circles?
Follow-up: How do you all keep up with them?
Q.6. How many of you identify yourself as an introvert?
Follow-up 1: For you, what role a location plays to make you comfortable or open to interaction?
Follow-up 2: Were there any groups that never made any conscious efforts to include you?
Q.7. What challenges have you faced while adjusting in college life in respect to academics, social acceptance, peer pressure?
Follow-up 1: Were your mentioned challenges faced by you before this group was formed or after that?
Follow-up 2: Were you helped by someone (friend group or others) to overcome these challenges?
Q.8. Do you seek help from someone you don’t know in the absence of your friends?
Follow-up: Can it be considered helpful for you?
Q.9. Do you find seniors here comfortable to interact with?
Follow-up: In what situations do you rely on seniors the most? OR In what situations did you feel troubled by the seniors?
Q.10. Could you walk us through the evolution of your social interactions since joining college?
Q.11. How long did you take to adjust?
Follow-up: Were the issues that you faced here addressed by the friend group, other peers or respective authority?
Q.12. Is there anything else you’d like to share about your social experiences in college?
Priming & Familiarization
Probing Group Dynamics
grounding participants in their own expectations & first encounters
to help ease them into the conversation and recall early experiences authentically
topics carefully structured to surface emotional nuance without direct confrontation
reflective prompts to give participants space to narrate their own growth or stagnation especially in relation to confidence, comfort zones, self adjustment patterns
allowing room for personal nuances that may have been missed by structured questioning
aimed to surface specific pain points around acceptance & help-seeking behaviour
how their relationships were formed, their comfort level within friend groups and the role of
exclusion
adjustment
introversion
Challenges & Support Systems
Behavioural Evolution & Self Awareness
Open Reflection
FOCUS GROUPS
We then moved into a focus group session, bringing together freshers from different friend groups to explore broader aspects of their college life. This collective setting created space for richer conversations around interactions, adjustment, and identity. As the discussion unfolded, participants opened up about their experiences, challenges, and emotional transitions that offered a more layered understanding of the social landscape freshers were navigating.
As freshers navigated early campus life, patterns of adjustment began to surface across interviews, observations, and focus groups. While the narratives varied, many pointed toward recurring friction points:
Misalignment Between Academic Expectation and Reality: Students anticipated engaging, collaborative learning environments but often encountered slow-paced instruction and limited interaction.
Instability in Peer Relationships: Initial bonds formed quickly but lacked depth or longevity, reflecting a need for more meaningful and emotionally resilient social connections.
Disparity in Social Access: Factors like hostel allocation and pre-existing networks created uneven starting points, leaving some students isolated and others quickly integrated.
Absence of Structured Support Systems: Many participants voiced confusion around where to seek guidance—particularly in navigating emotional challenges and peer-related tensions.
Perceived Risk in Help-Seeking: Fear of judgment and social discomfort discouraged students from expressing doubts openly, indicating a lack of psychological safety in shared spaces.
As Patterns Begin To Speak
The scattered narratives, fleeting observations, and emotional undertones we gathered weren’t just isolated moments, they were fragments of a larger picture waiting to emerge. At this stage, the focus shifted from observing to interpreting by letting patterns surface naturally, allowing meaning to take shape before moving toward definition
AFFINITY MAPPING
When patterns across student experiences were analyzed, it became clear that their struggles were not isolated but deeply interconnected. What surfaced was a collective sense of disorientation, shaped by both systemic gaps and emotional friction points during the transition into college life.
Academic, social, and logistical issues often overlapped, amplifying stress and uncertainty.
Students lacked accessible, trusted sources of support, both formal and peer-led.
Those with prior connections adapted more smoothly; others felt left behind.
Emotional safety and clarity were missing in both college and hostel settings.
The need extended beyond information, it was about relatable, human guidance that could ease adjustment and offer reassurance.
To validate the patterns identified earlier, we conducted a user survey to test our assumptions across a wider student base which further helped to strengthen our qualitative insights with quantitative evidence, confirming their relevance across the broader student population.
Survey's Snapshot
Survey Type: Quantitative (Google Form)
Respondents: 36 first-year college students
Method: Anonymous, self-administered questionnaire
Objective: To validate highlighted theme observed during fieldwork across a broader base
Interpretations: A considerable number of students entered college without prior social ties, indicating a lack of foundational support during their adjustment phase.
The transition to college life was largely perceived as challenging, pointing to gaps in emotional preparedness, peer orientation, and accessible support mechanisms.
Many participants felt that having a pre-existing connection whether a senior, peer, or acquaintance would have eased their adjustment, reinforcing the value of social scaffolding during early transition stages.
These patterns validated earlier qualitative observations, emphasizing that emotional reassurance and social familiarity play a sustained role in shaping student confidence, not just during onboarding, but throughout the integration journey.
USER SURVEY
Bringing the Problem into Focus
Some freshers step into college with built-in support of friends, seniors, or familiarity with the system while others enter the same environment burdened by hesitation, isolation, and a lack of emotional grounding. These contrasting realities revealed how uneven access to social connection can deeply shape a student’s confidence, help-seeking behaviour, and sense of belonging during the early transition phase.
USER PERSONAS
IDENTIFIED PROBLEM
Despite shared physical spaces, college freshers encounter fragmented adjustment experiences due to the absence of structured social scaffolding. The lack of accessible, peer-driven support systems results in uneven emotional transitions, limited help-seeking behaviour, and uncertainty in navigating early college life, especially for students without pre-existing networks. This gap reveals a systemic need for scalable, trust-centred interventions that foster belonging, psychological safety, and guided social integration.
Shaping the Solution Space
At the heart of this design was the intent to reduce hesitation, ease emotional friction, and create familiar entry points for connection. The goal was to design a responsive web app that not only addressed logistical barriers but also crafted interactions that felt safe, inclusive, and emotionally responsive, especially for those feeling socially out of sync.
BRAINSTORMING
SITEMAP
DESIGN ITERATIONS & USABILITY IMPROVEMENTS
Guided by usability concerns and feedback, multiple interface screens were reworked to enhance clarity, accessibility, and emotional safety. These iterations reflect a shift from static layouts to refined experiences that prioritize user comfort, autonomy, and contextual relevance.
Replaced top navigation with a fixed sidebar to support fitts’s Law as users struggled to consistently locate key sections across pages due to shifting navigation elements.
Removed the large illustration to reclaim visual real estate and refocus attention on actionable items because users often missed important functions due to visual distraction, causing aesthetic-usability tension.
Introduced categorized, scrollable cards for updates, applying progressive disclosure as the users felt overwhelmed by dense, ungrouped information, making scanning difficult.
Placed event highlights at the bottom to match content hierarchy as users prioritized peer interaction first.
Moved Anonymous Q/A to a separate page, reducing cognitive load and clutter, aligning with hick’s Law, as users previously felt overwhelmed by too many mixed actions on a single screen.
Users struggled to process multiple features at once, prompting the use of progressive disclosure via scrollable cards..
Split settings into clear categories (Privacy, Display, Assistance) to improve findability, applying the law of spatial arrangement, as users took time locating relevant controls in a flat structure.
Removed dense layout and introduced visual segmentation, increasing clarity using the law of proximity because users couldn’t easily distinguish between grouped features.
Dashboard
B. Chatrooms
C. College Hub
D. Community
E. Anonymous
F. Settings
G. Account
What The User Finally Meets
THE DESKTOP
Designing for desktop-first gave the space to organize dense, multi-layered content clearly by setting a strong foundation before translating it into tablet and mobile flows.
Color psychology is thoughtfully embedded across the interface to support emotional comfort and confident interaction.
Violet as primary suggests trust, support, and reflection by easing user hesitation in peer or anonymous spaces.
Lavender & soft neutrals are the low-arousal tones to create a calming interface which is ideal for emotionally sensitive features.
Accent purple CTAs create high contrast and distinctiveness follow the Von Restorff Effect, making them easy to spot and remember.
Overall effect: The palette balances emotional safety with clarity, encouraging both exploration and expression.
Dashboard
B. Chatrooms
C. College Hub
D. Community
E. Anonymous
F. Settings
G. Account
RESPONSIVENESS: THE TABLET & MOBILE
The responsive transition from desktop to tablet and mobile was crafted to preserve clarity, hierarchy, and ease of navigation and to ensure that the interface remains intuitive regardless of device.
Tablet layout preserves spacing and content clarity while adapting seamlessly to vertical scroll and ensuring visual continuity from desktop.
Sidebar navigation is restructured into a bottom navigation bar on mobile for better thumb accessibility, aligning with Thumb Zone Design.
Home icon is placed at the center for anchoring navigation, supporting muscle memory and repeated use.
Community and Anonymous features are grouped to the right for clustering peer and private social support together.
Chatrooms and College Hub are placed to the left for logically combining campus-related and task-focused actions.
Play
INITIAL PROTOTYPING
Ground Truths & Growth
USER FEEDBACK
ACTIONABLE NEXT STEPS
Add stronger visual anchors and storytelling cues to the homepage to better convey the app’s purpose and emotionally engage first-time users.
Refine scroll-based interactions to address usability gaps, ensuring smoother content transitions and reducing cognitive load during exploration.
Rework the Posts section to improve content discoverability and reduce visual fatigue by introducing better categorization, preview hierarchies, and subtle engagement cues for interaction.
© 2023 Aakriti Srivastava
Research-forward. Design-focused. Let's build what matters.
© 2023 Aakriti Srivastava
Research-forward. Design-focused. Let's build what matters.
Aakriti | UX Researcher & Designer
Nature of the Project
Control Region
LEARNINGS & REFLECTIONS
This wasn’t a studio brief or classroom assignment, it was a self-initiated project driven by empathy, not evaluation. Without academic supervision, every decision had to be self-justified and user-validated, making it a deeply personal exercise in independent UX practice.
Conducted fieldwork within restricted campus zones, which challenged us to extract deep insights from limited physical contexts, strengthening observational precision and focus.
Iterating across multiple screens while maintaining design consistency was a real test of system thinking. I learned to document UI rules early, develop reusable components, and revisit flows with a balance of logic and emotions, especially when reworking screens that didn’t initially perform well in tests.
Balancing Emotion with Interface
Designing & Redesigning with Consistency
One of the subtler challenges was crafting an interface that supported emotionally vulnerable users without being visually heavy or intrusive. I had to constantly toggle between functional clarity and emotional subtlety which taught me the importance of tone in design systems.
Interacto
Role: UX Researcher & Designer
Research Methodology: Ethnography (peripheral & active observations of field studies followed by focus groups, validated by user surveys)
Solution: A responsive web app designed to ease the transition into campus life for college freshers. It facilitates real-time Q&A, peer & mentor interactions, and event updates, enabling students to adapt quickly, stay informed, and build a strong sense of belonging. Seniors & mentors are integrated to provide guidance & support.
Immersing in Fresher's Lives.
The intent wasn’t to define the problem, it was to discover it. That meant stepping back, silencing assumptions that were lingering within as a senior, and letting real student life speak for itself so that the unknown can be known.
Ethnographic Research
Active Participation : Videography, Focus Groups, Survey
Peripheral Participation : Field Studies
THE APPROACH
FIELD STUDIES' NOTES
As themes began to emerge organically through sustained observation, social interactions and adjustment patterns stood out as dominant forces shaping the fresher experience. From evolving group dynamics to subtle shifts in tone and presence, these interactions revealed how students navigated unfamiliar environments, laying the foundation for framing the problem space ahead.
VIDEOGRAPHY
As recurring patterns began to surface across different friend groups in behaviour, attitude, and social dynamics, we shifted to a more participatory mode of observation. By spending time and informally interacting with few groups of freshers, we were able to observe more closely, uncover contextual nuances that wouldn’t have surfaced from a distance.
One friend group agreed to be recorded, allowing us to engage more closely. As we spent time with them across varied settings, both on and off campus, we observed how their behaviour and group dynamics shifted with changes in environment and social context.
FOCUS GROUPS
We then moved into a focus group session, bringing together freshers from different friend groups to explore broader aspects of their college life. This collective setting created space for richer conversations around interactions, adjustment, and identity. As the discussion unfolded, participants opened up about their experiences, challenges, and emotional transitions that offered a more layered understanding of the social landscape freshers were navigating.
As freshers navigated early campus life, patterns of adjustment began to surface across interviews, observations, and focus groups. While the narratives varied, many pointed toward recurring friction points:
Misalignment Between Academic Expectation and Reality: Students anticipated engaging, collaborative learning environments but often encountered slow-paced instruction and limited interaction.
Instability in Peer Relationships: Initial bonds formed quickly but lacked depth or longevity, reflecting a need for more meaningful and emotionally resilient social connections.
Disparity in Social Access: Factors like hostel allocation and pre-existing networks created uneven starting points, leaving some students isolated and others quickly integrated.
Absence of Structured Support Systems: Many participants voiced confusion around where to seek guidance—particularly in navigating emotional challenges and peer-related tensions.
Perceived Risk in Help-Seeking: Fear of judgment and social discomfort discouraged students from expressing doubts openly, indicating a lack of psychological safety in shared spaces.
As Patterns Begin To Speak
The scattered narratives, fleeting observations, and emotional undertones we gathered weren’t just isolated moments, they were fragments of a larger picture waiting to emerge. At this stage, the focus shifted from observing to interpreting by letting patterns surface naturally, allowing meaning to take shape before moving toward definition
AFFINITY MAPPING
When patterns across student experiences were analyzed, it became clear that their struggles were not isolated but deeply interconnected. What surfaced was a collective sense of disorientation, shaped by both systemic gaps and emotional friction points during the transition into college life.
Academic, social, and logistical issues often overlapped, amplifying stress and uncertainty.
Students lacked accessible, trusted sources of support, both formal and peer-led.
Those with prior connections adapted more smoothly; others felt left behind.
Emotional safety and clarity were missing in both college and hostel settings.
The need extended beyond information, it was about relatable, human guidance that could ease adjustment and offer reassurance.
To validate the patterns identified earlier, we conducted a user survey to test our assumptions across a wider student base which further helped to strengthen our qualitative insights with quantitative evidence, confirming their relevance across the broader student population.
USER SURVEY
Survey's Snapshot
Survey Type: Quantitative (Google Form)
Respondents: 36 first-year college students
Method: Anonymous, self-administered questionnaire
Objective: To validate highlighted theme observed during fieldwork across a broader base
Interpretations: A considerable number of students entered college without prior social ties, indicating a lack of foundational support during their adjustment phase.
The transition to college life was largely perceived as challenging, pointing to gaps in emotional preparedness, peer orientation, and accessible support mechanisms.
Many participants felt that having a pre-existing connection whether a senior, peer, or acquaintance would have eased their adjustment, reinforcing the value of social scaffolding during early transition stages.
These patterns validated earlier qualitative observations, emphasizing that emotional reassurance and social familiarity play a sustained role in shaping student confidence, not just during onboarding, but throughout the integration journey.
Bringing the Problem into Focus
Some freshers step into college with built-in support of friends, seniors, or familiarity with the system while others enter the same environment burdened by hesitation, isolation, and a lack of emotional grounding. These contrasting realities revealed how uneven access to social connection can deeply shape a student’s confidence, help-seeking behaviour, and sense of belonging during the early transition phase.
USER PERSONAS
IDENTIFIED PROBLEM
Despite shared physical spaces, college freshers encounter fragmented adjustment experiences due to the absence of structured social scaffolding. The lack of accessible, peer-driven support systems results in uneven emotional transitions, limited help-seeking behaviour, and uncertainty in navigating early college life, especially for students without pre-existing networks. This gap reveals a systemic need for scalable, trust-centred interventions that foster belonging, psychological safety, and guided social integration.
Shaping the Solution Space
At the heart of this design was the intent to reduce hesitation, ease emotional friction, and create familiar entry points for connection. The goal was to design a responsive web app that not only addressed logistical barriers but also crafted interactions that felt safe, inclusive, and emotionally responsive, especially for those feeling socially out of sync.
BRAINSTORMING
SITEMAP
DESIGN ITERATIONS & USABILITY IMPROVEMENTS
Guided by usability concerns and feedback, multiple interface screens were reworked to enhance clarity, accessibility, and emotional safety. These iterations reflect a shift from static layouts to refined experiences that prioritize user comfort, autonomy, and contextual relevance.
Replaced top navigation with a fixed sidebar to support fitts’s Law as users struggled to consistently locate key sections across pages due to shifting navigation elements.
Removed the large illustration to reclaim visual real estate and refocus attention on actionable items because users often missed important functions due to visual distraction, causing aesthetic-usability tension.
Introduced categorized, scrollable cards for updates, applying progressive disclosure as the users felt overwhelmed by dense, ungrouped information, making scanning difficult.
Placed event highlights at the bottom to match content hierarchy as users prioritized peer interaction first.
Moved Anonymous Q/A to a separate page, reducing cognitive load and clutter, aligning with hick’s Law, as users previously felt overwhelmed by too many mixed actions on a single screen.
Users struggled to process multiple features at once, prompting the use of progressive disclosure via scrollable cards..
Split settings into clear categories (Privacy, Display, Assistance) to improve findability, applying the law of spatial arrangement, as users took time locating relevant controls in a flat structure.
Removed dense layout and introduced visual segmentation, increasing clarity using the law of proximity because users couldn’t easily distinguish between grouped features.
Dashboard
B. Chatrooms
C. College Hub
D. Community
E. Anonymous
F. Settings
G. Account
What The User Finally Meets
THE DESKTOP
Designing for desktop-first gave the space to organize dense, multi-layered content clearly by setting a strong foundation before translating it into tablet and mobile flows.
Color psychology is thoughtfully embedded across the interface to support emotional comfort and confident interaction.
Violet as primary suggests trust, support, and reflection by easing user hesitation in peer or anonymous spaces.
Lavender & soft neutrals are the low-arousal tones to create a calming interface which is ideal for emotionally sensitive features.
Accent purple CTAs create high contrast and distinctiveness follow the Von Restorff Effect, making them easy to spot and remember.
Overall effect: The palette balances emotional safety with clarity, encouraging both exploration and expression.
RESPONSIVENESS: THE TABLET & MOBILE
Dashboard
B. Chatrooms
C. College Hub
D. Community
E. Anonymous
F. Settings
G. Account
The responsive transition from desktop to tablet and mobile was crafted to preserve clarity, hierarchy, and ease of navigation and to ensure that the interface remains intuitive regardless of device.
Tablet layout preserves spacing and content clarity while adapting seamlessly to vertical scroll and ensuring visual continuity from desktop.
Sidebar navigation is restructured into a bottom navigation bar on mobile for better thumb accessibility, aligning with Thumb Zone Design.
Home icon is placed at the center for anchoring navigation, supporting muscle memory and repeated use.
Community and Anonymous features are grouped to the right for clustering peer and private social support together.
Chatrooms and College Hub are placed to the left for logically combining campus-related and task-focused actions.
Play
INITIAL PROTOTYPING
Ground Truths & Growth
USER FEEDBACK
Nature of the Project
Control Region
This wasn’t a studio brief or classroom assignment, it was a self-initiated project driven by empathy, not evaluation. Without academic supervision, every decision had to be self-justified and user-validated, making it a deeply personal exercise in independent UX practice.
Conducted fieldwork within restricted campus zones, which challenged us to extract deep insights from limited physical contexts, strengthening observational precision and focus.
Designing & Redesigning with Consistency
Iterating across multiple screens while maintaining design consistency was a real test of system thinking. I learned to document UI rules early, develop reusable components, and revisit flows with a balance of logic and emotions, especially when reworking screens that didn’t initially perform well in tests.
Balancing Emotion with Interface
One of the subtler challenges was crafting an interface that supported emotionally vulnerable users without being visually heavy or intrusive. I had to constantly toggle between functional clarity and emotional subtlety which taught me the importance of tone in design systems.
LEARNINGS & REFLECTIONS
© 2023 Aakriti Srivastava
Research-forward. Design-focused. Let's build what matters.
© 2023 Aakriti Srivastava
Research-forward. Design-focused. Let's build what matters.
Add stronger visual anchors and storytelling cues to the homepage to better convey the app’s purpose and emotionally engage first-time users.
Refine scroll-based interactions to address usability gaps, ensuring smoother content transitions and reducing cognitive load during exploration.
Rework the Posts section to improve content discoverability and reduce visual fatigue by introducing better categorization, preview hierarchies, and subtle engagement cues for interaction.
ACTIONABLE NEXT STEPS