A mobile app designed to help university students to make informed financial decisions and finding activities to enjoy their time in the university.
Many international students and Irish students across universities in the country are facing increasing financial challenges that are impacting their academic progress and personal growth. These challenges are due to rising rent, living expenses, and a lack of financial knowledge, leading to poor money management and overspending. There is a pressing need for new strategies to go beyond traditional financial aid and significantly reduce economic pressures.
This project aims to utilise these strategies to empower students to make informed, cost-effective decisions about their major expenses, enabling them to fully engage in academic and social activities without enduring financial stress and to help them thrive and enjoy their university experience.
This was a group project of three people, including me. I was involved in
User research and market research
Identifying insights
Defining feature
UI and prototype design.
To create an app that would help students to make an informed financial decision while spending their money on foods, groceries and experiences.
To facilitate students to connect with each other through communities and enable them to socialise to make their time in the university enjoyable.
We interviewed international students from our university and asked them about different aspects of their spending practices and how they get to socialise in Ireland and in their home countries. The research revealed various problems and opportunities for improvements.
To facilitate students to connect with each other through communities and enable them to socialise to make their time in the university enjoyable.
Before we started designing, we identified the needs of our users to understand them better. We also conducted a series of customer interviews.
A student who wants to make the most out of her time in the university by taking part in various experiences, visiting the city and trying different foods.
I want to visit all the events, museums and try all the international cuisines that are in Limerick but I want to do it in a budget.
A student who likes to buy ameneties that are not provided by the universities and be able to sell them back when they do not need them.
I need a reliable place to buy cheap furniture for my place and be able to easily sell them when I move out of my place.
A student who wants to meet new people in the university and make a lot of friends
I want to meet people with similar interests and make friends other than my housemates and classmates
We kicked off the ideation by coming up with various ideas in the forms of features, solutions and answers for the problems that we found out during the research.
We came up with various solutions and converted them into features. After putting all the ideas into figjam, then we voted on the features to prioritize.
After ientifying the features of the app, we roughly sketched out the required screens and connected them to create flows. These sketches were very helpful to in visualizing the journey of the user through the app
When crafting the Figma file, we prioritized component adaptability to ensure seamless design process. I developed a set of reusable components that were consistently applied throughout the product.
The first step for the app is to work is to make this exclusively available for university students. For this purpose, the onboarding process consists ofsigning up with an active student email and verification for a user to create an account.
Students can get a clear idea of the events is happening around them and we believe that it would help them make informed weekend plans and experience the city better.
Another key feature is to let the students know how packed the venue is going to be. The more the attendees, better chances to meet people and better chances to have more fun.
Students can join communities and societies to find like minded people.
There is a clubs and societies website in the University of limerick. But there is no way for the students to interact as a group. This feature is an extension of the clubs and society website and enables the group interaction.
Student exclusive market place is a reliable place for students to find any items that they need during their stay in the university.
