Case 02
Designing a cross-platform student loyalty and community app.
Social & Rewards Platform
Project Overview
A UK startup set out to launch an ambitious cross-platform app that combined student discounts with community features, events, blogs, and accommodation listings. The vision was to become a one-stop hub for student life, competing with existing platforms in both loyalty and social spaces.
Problem Statement
How could we create a platform that gave students easy access to discounts while also supporting community features, without overwhelming them with complexity or losing focus on the core value?
My Role
As the UX/UI Designer, I collaborated with the Head of Design to map early user flows and wireframes for onboarding, discount redemption, and community features across both web and mobile. Once validated, I developed a lean design system and produced high-fidelity designs that guided development. I partnered closely with engineers to ensure the product remained consistent and usable across platforms, while adapting to evolving client requirements. This role challenged me to balance usability with ambitious scope, and taught me valuable lessons about aligning user needs with client expectations.
Understanding Existing Solutions
Delivering an effortless onboarding experience for students was the foundational priority in the design of this project. Existing solutions in the space show significant friction, with research indicating that students frequently abandon sign-up due to lengthy and complex verification flows—especially when documentation and email credentials aren’t instantly available. Many university students, particularly those in their first weeks after acceptance, do not have access to institutional email, leaving them underserved and excluded from core platform benefits. Studies into progressive onboarding and digital verification highlight that upfront complexity reduces engagement, and users expect to preview value before investing effort in profile completion.
"How can we create a sign-up and verification process for a student discount platform that accommodates both existing students and recent acceptances, providing fast, inclusive access for all user types, while maintaining security and data quality needed for genuine student offers?"
Actionable Next Steps
01 Split Onboarding Pathway
Designed two entry flows; one for students with university email and another for recent acceptances leveraging UCAS credentials, reflecting the journey of real users who face delayed email provisioning but possess verified acceptance codes.
02 Progressive Information Requests
Allowed non essential profile information (name, year, university, gender, subject, birthdate) to be skipped at onboarding, enabling immediate discount browsing and reducing drop-off rates. Critical data is only required before first redemption, encouraging trust and exploration before commitment.
03 Transparent Value Preview
Ensured students with partial credentials could see platform features immediately, establishing trust and demonstrating value upfront as recommended by research on progressive onboarding.
04 Guided Freshers Access
Enabled recent university acceptances to validate using their UCAS number, collecting essential data while recognizing the lack of a student email. This approach ensures early access and supports a smooth transition to full verification once institutional credentials are available.
Building the Digital Campus Beyond Onboarding
Building beyond onboarding, our focus shifted to transforming Student Saviour into a full-featured digital campus, connecting discounts, community, accommodation, events, and student life content in a single, accessible experience. We aimed to balance immediate value with deeper engagement, always mindful of the ambitious scope set by the client.
Discount Platform
I prioritised rapid access to savings through a mobile-first interface, informed by research into leading discount platforms. I structured the wireframes around familiar, high-value categories identified through competitive benchmarking, ensuring students could instantly scan and find what mattered most. To reduce clutter and avoid cognitive overload, I used progressive disclosure and visual hierarchy to keep navigation simple and redemption quick. My design decisions consistently laddered back to the goal: fast, frictionless savings rather than unnecessary features. I validated the core flows through internal walkthroughs and heuristic evaluation, identifying friction points early and refining before user testing.
Explore Feed & Events
A card-based feed was chosen for clarity and mobile usability, making discounts, group posts, and events easy to scan. We intentionally minimised steps for creating and joining events, knowing students are most likely to interact with accessible, visually organised event and content feeds. This encourages frequent campus engagement and smooth daily use.
Accommodation & Student Life
Accommodation boards used clear, list-driven layouts for effortless posting and browsing, based on what students expect from classified-style services. Blog and lifestyle areas follow accessibility standards in text and navigation, prioritising readability and ease for all experience levels.
Constraints & Prioritisation
Due to limited research time, decisions were grounded in core usability and accessibility standards, with each feature prototyped internally to validate clarity. Trade-offs prioritised essential student flows and kept non-critical features lean for the product launch.
Outcome
79k students signed up in the first 30 days.
Strong early adoption across web and mobile platforms.
Clear demand for discounts, despite scope spread across too many features.
Key Learnings
This experience taught me to champion clear prioritisation, stakeholder alignment, and user-centered design, ensuring that future projects remain focused, adaptable, and positioned for success, regardless of whatever external pressures were thrown at me.