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MSU Majors Event App

UX/Graphic Designer

Role

4 UX/Graphic Designers

Team

Figma, Sketching, Adobe Illustrator, Word

Tools

One Semester

Timeline

Overview

The MSU Event Board App is a human-centered UX project focused on improving how Michigan State University students discover, navigate, and engage with campus events—especially those related to STEM majors. This project originated from a series of interviews with MSU students, alumni, and professors, where my project team investigated campus culture, community challenges, and barriers that prevent students from participating in academic and social opportunities.

Problem

MSU students—particularly in STEM—struggle to:

Find events related to their academic department
Connect with peers and build community
Learn about academic/career opportunities
Navigate campus to locate event spaces
Engage socially due to a lack of clear, centralized event information

The lack of visibility and organization around events leads to fewer networking opportunities, missed resources, and weaker student engagement.

Solution

We thought of the question: How might we advertise events more effectively and make them more appealing for undergraduate students, so they have more opportunities to meet peers, engage with their community, and discover academic and career-supportive events within their department? This guiding question shaped the entire design approach. To solve issues of low event awareness and limited student connection, we created a centralized and intuitive event platform tailored to MSU students. The MSU Event Board App makes it easy to discover events, connect with peers, and access personalized opportunities.

Process/Implementation

Research

Our project began with interviews conducted with MSU students, alumni, and professors. We wanted to understand how students currently learn about events, what barriers prevent them from participating, and how campus culture influences social and academic engagement. Through affinity mapping, we synthesized interview insights into themes:

Lack of event visibility and poor advertising
Difficulty meeting peers within the same major or department
Confusion navigating campus buildings and event locations
Missed opportunities for academic growth and networking
Desire for more supportive and accessible community spaces

Ideation & Concept Development

Using our research insights, we brainstormed core features that would address students’ needs:

A centralized map of events across campus
A feed view to browse personalized opportunities
Event detail pages with time, location, description, and sharing options
Direct messaging to ask organizers questions and connect with peers
Favorites and profile management, allowing users to save events or create posts

We sketched early user flows and low-fidelity wireframes to visualize how students would move through the app—from onboarding to event discovery to communication.

User Task Flows

We created detailed task flows to test the logic and simplicity of our design:

First-time onboarding: account creation using MSU email verification, selecting major/college, and customizing interests
Event discovery: navigating the map filters, exploring posts in the feed, viewing event details
Communication flow: messaging organizers or sharing event links
Profile flow: checking favorites, making new posts, viewing archived events

These flows ensured that the app remained intuitive, consistent, and supportive of student needs.

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

Next, we translated our task flows into quick sketches. These helped us:

Test layout ideas
Determine hierarchy of information
Explore multiple navigation options
Visualize how our map, feed, and messaging screens would connect

Feedback from classmates and instructors helped us refine icon clarity, labeling, and user expectations early on.

Mid-Fidelity Designs

We then developed structured mid-fi wireframes in Figma:

Introduced consistent spacing, card layouts, and iconography
Tested the tab-bar navigation system
Added interaction notes to test the flow
These mid-fi designs helped us ensure usability before adding branding and visual polish.

Style Guide Development

To maintain consistency, we created a style guide that included:

Typography: Bebas Neue for titles; Figtree for headers and body text
Iconography: Phosphor icon set (regular/flat)
Color System: green secondary palette inspired by MSU, grayscale primary palette
Buttons: clear distinction between primary and secondary actions

This guide helped unify our design across screens and improve readability.

High-Fidelity Prototype

Finally, we created a full hi-fi prototype that incorporated:

Interactive map view with event pins
A clean event feed for browsing
Direct messaging UI
Event detail screens with sharing and saving options
A full onboarding sequence
A personalized profile page

We conducted informal usability tests with peers, which revealed improvements for icon clarity, simplifying navigation, and strengthening the hierarchy on event detail pages.

Hi-Fi Flow

What I Learned

Through this project, I learned how to apply human-centered design methods—from interviews and affinity mapping to building user flows and prototypes. I strengthened my skills in structuring intuitive navigation, developing consistent visual systems, and iterating based on user feedback. Working with my team also taught me how to communicate design decisions clearly and collaborate effectively throughout the UX process.

Next Steps

Future improvements include refining event filters, enhancing accessibility, and expanding social features like following users or RSVPs. We also plan to build organizer tools for posting events and conduct broader usability testing. Long-term, the goal is to partner with MSU departments to integrate real event data and move toward a functional beta version.