0 -> 1: The making of Rondivoo

When you see a gap, you fill it. Learn how I became the founding designer of an app launching at USC.

College is supposed to be about creating lifelong friends and memories that will last a lifetime. Unfortunately, however, the pandemic has affected all of us. As a result, many students have not experienced campus life at all. And we hope they continue to act cautiously as we go back in person.

As students come back, we want to ensure that they can still experience college in its entirety. Rondivoo is an events promotion and discovery app that aims to boost real-life social engagement across campuses.

I've had the opportunity to be the founding designer at a student-led startup, Rondivoo, that's building for the student population. I helped lead the end-to-end design process, from initial product validation to the developer hand of the app's first version. However, my growing team of designers and I continue to build upon this version. I also have contributed to Rondivoo's first brand guide and design system (still under construction).

Many college campuses have students rely on website directories to discover fantastic clubs and fun activities around campus. Yet even then, those directories are hardly up-to-date or immersive.

How might we make it convenient for students to find and attend on-campus organizations and events?

How might we personalize each student's experience to make finding the right opportunity for themselves easier and faster?

According to the Pew Research Center, Generation Z reports high rates of anxiety and depression among their peers. Students need an outlet from the added pressures and stress of being full-time college students. Unfortunately, a network of colleagues and peers is missing for many.

Our goal for Rondivoo is to increase social engagement across college campuses by creating an eventful product that allows students to discover and attend campus activities.

We want to be the go-to platform for all college students from the first day of Freshman year to walking the stage at graduation.

Before we started building or planning a product that may or may not see the light of day, we wanted to reassure ourselves that our time is invested wisely. So, we conducted a product concept validity test with more than 25 students at USC with a mock app. Our solution is only verbal up to this point.

We will continue to build upon this idea as our concept has been validated. We will conduct another test for product optimization through a live prototype.

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I interviewed three students from USC who have been enrolled for at least one year. Topics we discussed were:

Their school-life balance

social goals

strategies for meeting people

feelings about an app for campus life

I used this empathy map to reflect an aggregation of all three students. Empathy maps and personas are at the heart of design thinking. It helps us at Rondivoo advocate on behalf of the student.

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We developed an information architecture model to help define every path users can take through Rondivoo. We used this model to represent our infrastructure, features, and hierarchy. For example, we first organized pages by patterns like onboarding or settings pages.

I would like to access my IA design via a tree test when we get funding. This additional test would allow us to bring more insights to help improve our user experience and findability if that is an issue.

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Having mapped out all pages and synthesizing our research findings, it's time to put pen on paper... well, low-fidelity UI kits work too.

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A design system is complex. Because we are an early-stage startup, we don't believe investing time in creating a full-scale design system benefits the company. But I made a simple system for myself and new designers, so we don't have to keep "reinventing the wheel."

After creating an initial prototype of Rondivoo, we knew Gen Z is less interested in consuming static, wordy content. Due to the tremendous success of TikTok and companies like Instagram and YouTube embracing the short-form range, we decided that is the direction we should be heading.

Hosting any video requires more effort to build and is more costly to host. However, this is a business-to-user tradeoff we were willing to bet on. Short-form content can be accessed quickly, requiring less effort from idea to post for creators. With significant updates like this, the rest of the app must follow suit.

Here is how the Events page has transformed:

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I was also responsible for creating Rondivoo's Brand Guide. This guide was created to ensure Rondivoo is communicated correctly internally and to our audience. You'll be able to correctly identify when, where, and how to use our visual identity, tone, and voice.

Rondivoo will launch at the University of Southern California in the fall of 2022. As we launch, we will conduct student interviews and continue improving upon Rondivoo.

We want to see what percentage of the student population has immediate buy-in and 1-day, 7-day, and 28-day retention metrics.