UI / UX Design
PeerHub: A Student Collaboration Platform
Designing a community platform that helps students discover communities, connect with peers, and engage with campus activities.
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
4 Months
Deliverables
Mobile App & Web Platform
Inductry
Product Manager, Engineers, Founders
Project Overview
PeerHub is a community platform designed to help students connect with peers, explore communities, discover opportunities, and participate in campus activities.
The goal was to create a space where students could engage with like-minded people, access relevant resources, and stay connected with events and opportunities within their network.
As the core product designer, I was responsible for designing the entire product experience from scratch across mobile, web, and admin platforms.
This involved defining the information architecture, designing user flows, and creating a scalable interface that could support multiple types of interactions within the platform.
My Role & Responsibilities
• Conduct UX research and usability testing
• Define information architecture and user flows
• Design mobile and web interfaces
• Design admin dashboards for platform management
• Build reusable UI components and patterns
• Collaborate closely with product and engineering teams
The Problem
Students often rely on fragmented channels to discover opportunities, events, and communities.
These include:
• social media groups
• WhatsApp communities
• university forums
• external websites
Because information is scattered across multiple platforms, students struggle to stay updated or find relevant communities that align with their interests.
Some of the key challenges included:
• discovering relevant communities and opportunities
• navigating between different types of content
• staying informed about events and discussions
• managing engagement across multiple platforms
This created friction in the overall experience and limited meaningful collaboration among students.
Understanding the Users
Before designing the platform, I explored how students typically interact with communities and opportunities online.
Through exploratory research and behavioral analysis, a few patterns emerged.
Students wanted a space where they could:
• discover communities based on interests
• explore upcoming events and discussions
• connect with peers from different colleges
• access curated opportunities in one place
These insights helped define the core experience the platform needed to support.
Key Insights
The research revealed three major insights that shaped the platform design.
Discovery is the entry point
Students first interact with the platform by exploring communities, events, or opportunities.
The platform needed to prioritize content discovery and exploration.
Communities drive engagement
Students are more likely to stay engaged when they feel part of a group with shared interests.
The experience needed to make joining and interacting within communities seamless.
Opportunities need better visibility
Students often miss opportunities simply because they are not easily discoverable.
The platform needed a structured way to surface relevant opportunities.
Product Vision
The goal was to design a platform where students could:
Discover communities and opportunities easily
Connect with peers through discussions and shared interests
Collaborate through events and knowledge sharing
This vision guided the design decisions throughout the product.
Designing the Experience
Since the product was built from scratch, the first step was defining the overall platform structure.
I started by mapping the core experiences the platform needed to support.
These included:
• community discovery
• discussions and content sharing
• event participation
• opportunity exploration
• user profile and networking
Based on these flows, I designed the platform architecture and navigation structure.
Design Decisions
While designing the platform from scratch, several important product decisions had to be made to ensure the experience remained simple and scalable.
1. Making the Feed the Central Experience
Since students primarily interact with platforms through content and discussions, the feed was designed as the central entry point of the platform.
This allows users to quickly discover updates, conversations, and opportunities without navigating through multiple sections.
Why this matters
A feed-based experience encourages engagement and helps users stay connected with community activity.
2. Structuring the Platform Around Communities
Instead of organizing the platform around features, the experience was structured around communities.
Communities became the primary space where students could interact, share content, and participate in discussions.
Why this matters
Communities create stronger engagement because users interact with people who share similar interests.
Core Features
The platform experience was built around several key features.
Clubs Feed
The feed serves as the central hub where students can join the clubs and explore discussions, updates, and shared content from their communities.
The goal was to create a familiar social interaction model while keeping the experience focused on collaboration.
What Was Not Working in the Existing Experience
Before starting the redesign, I evaluated the existing GoPropify platform to identify usability gaps and friction points in the property discovery experience.
Several patterns emerged that were limiting how effectively users could explore listings and evaluate projects.
Some of the most noticeable issues included:
Cluttered property listings
Property cards displayed too much information without clear visual hierarchy, making it harder for users to quickly scan listings.
Limited search flexibility
Users could search by basic filters, but the experience did not allow them to easily narrow down results based on multiple property preferences.
Fragmented information structure
Important details such as pricing, amenities, and project highlights were scattered across different sections of the page.
Low discoverability of relevant projects
Because listings lacked strong prioritization and filtering, users often had to browse multiple pages before finding suitable properties.
These observations helped define the key areas that the redesign needed to address.
Events
Events allow students to stay informed about workshops, meetups, and discussions happening within their network.
The event experience was designed to help users quickly explore and participate in relevant activities.
Admin Platform
Along with the student-facing platform, an admin system was designed to help manage platform activity.
Admins could:
• moderate communities
• manage events and opportunities
• monitor platform engagement
The admin dashboard provided a structured view of platform activity and management tools.
Impact
Designing PeerHub from scratch helped establish a structured and engaging platform where students could easily discover communities, events, and opportunities within a single ecosystem.
By simplifying the information architecture and prioritizing content discovery, the platform made it easier for users to navigate between discussions, communities, and opportunities without friction.
The improved structure also encouraged stronger participation within communities and increased interaction with platform features.
As a result, the redesigned experience led to measurable improvements in engagement, discoverability, and feature adoption across the platform.
Additional Impact
• Simplified discovery of communities, events, and opportunities
• Reduced friction in navigating between platform features
• Created a scalable product structure for future platform growth
• Improved engagement across student-led discussions and collaborations
Reflection
Designing PeerHub from scratch provided valuable experience in building a product ecosystem that supports multiple types of interactions.
The project strengthened my ability to:
• design scalable platform structures
• simplify complex user journeys
• balance social interaction with structured information discovery
It also reinforced the importance of designing systems that grow with the needs of the community.
