The Problem
Limited access to convenient, safe, and affordable transportation can prevent college students from easily attending social activities, making it harder to connect with peers and feel part of their campus community.
Scope of work
Conceptualization • Research • Interface Design • User Testing • Design System Development
tools used
Figma • OpenAI (AI image generation)
How might we design an affordable shared mobility experience that helps college students feel connected, included, and part of a community?
My Approach
Lean UX methodology
To guide the project, I followed a Lean UX approach focused on quickly learning from users, testing ideas, and iterating based on feedback.
I started by benchmarking existing ridesharing apps and autonomous robotaxi services to understand common ride-booking patterns, navigation structures, and trust-building features.
Before assuming a solution, I began conducting user interviews with college students living both on and off campus to better understand how they currently navigate transportation during social outings. These conversations helped uncover behaviors, frustrations, and motivations around mobility, safety, and social connection.
After gathering insights, I synthesized my research into key themes and findings that informed my design direction. These insights helped shape user archetypes and identify the most important opportunities to address.
Using these findings, I mapped user journeys to visualize how students plan, coordinate, and experience transportation during nights out. From there, I began sketching concepts to explore potential solutions and test ideas quickly.
This iterative process allowed me to continuously refine the experience while keeping real user needs at the center of the design.
The Discovery
Connection is missing from transportation
My research revealed that transportation for students is often transactional and isolating. While ride-share services effectively move people from point A to point B, they rarely address the social experience. Many students expressed a desire to feel more connected and safe while traveling, especially during nights out.
This insight revealed an opportunity to rethink mobility, not just as transportation, but as a shared social experience.
Primary User
The Core Problem
Limited access to convenient, safe, and affordable transportation can prevent college students from easily attending social activities, making it harder to connect with peers and feel part of their campus community.
Feature Prioritization
College students often rely on transportation services that focus solely on getting them from point A to point B. However, these experiences are frequently isolating and transactional, especially during social outings when students are seeking connection and shared experiences. There is an opportunity to reimagine mobility as a way to foster social interaction and community.
From this prioritization matrix, I identified the core features for the minimum viable product (MVP):
Carpool Matching
Rider Filters
Split Fare Automatically
Verified Student Profiles
Smart Pickup Points
Storyboard
It’s Maya’s first weekend in the dorms her freshman year. She and her roommate want to go out and socialize, but they feel disconnected from the rest of the students.
Maya opens the Collectiv app, a campus ridesharing autonomous vehicle platform. She instantly sees where everyone is heading tonight through a live heat map generated from the AV fleet.”
She books a ride and enables the carpool feature, selecting filters for the types of students she’d like to ride with.
The vehicle arrives at dorm entrance and Maya and her roommate board.
Maya uses the app to unlock the car, a safety feature enabled in the app.
They arrive at their first stop to pick up Leo & Alex.
The students play some trivia to break the ice.
The AV drops them off at the bar.
At the end of the night, they reconnect on the app and hop in a ride home together, turning the trip back into an impromptu karaoke session.
The app splits the fare automatically, so everyone pays their share, no awkward Venmo requests required.
Step One
To get started, students sign up or log into the Collectiv app.
Step Two
Students can quickly plan transportation by searching a destination, discovering trending spots around campus, or joining available carpools.
The home screen also highlights popular events and locations, like game nights, to encourage ride sharing and make it easy to book or join a ride with other students heading the same way.
