Link: Connections to College

Our Project

Making friends and finding organizations that are a right fit for your personality can be hard. So, we set out to create a fun and interactive app that helps incoming and current college students connect with other students and organizations. The inspiration for our app comes from the swiping right and left feature on dating apps. As we iterated over and tested our design, we added in more features to best suit the needs of our users.

We wanted to put the users at the center of the app’s design. When the user builds their profile, they create tags and a bio which is used to recommend people and organizations for them to connect with. So while they use the Main Swiping page and the Interest Groups page, the top recommendations will appear first. This allows the user to easily find people and organizations that are more suited to their personality.

Link has three main pages: the Main Swiping page, the Interest Groups page, and the Events Calendar page. The Main Swiping page allows users to easily connect with and reach out to people and organizations. Like in dating apps, swiping right in the Main Swiping page likes the person or organization and swiping left rejects the match. The Interests Group page allows the user to view all the organizations in a grid. We created for users who might not want to swipe through lots of organizations, and instead they just want to scroll through options. The users can tap on each of the organizations, connect with them, and message them. The Events Calendar page displays all events happening on campus, giving the user a comprehensive overview of activities they can attend.

Big Points

• Link specifically addresses incoming and current university students who are seeking new friendships or organizations on campus based on their personality and interests.
  
• Link is designed specifically for university students, primarily for use on campus, but it can also be used worldwide as long as incoming freshmen and current students have a valid university email for verification.
  
• Link is a mobile app so it can be used on both IOS and Android devices.
  
• By centralizing information about campus events and organizations, Link boosts student engagement and ensures they never miss out on opportunities to participate.