UniPath
Empowering students to find academic and extracurricular opportunities that match their professional goals.
Role
Lead UX Researcher & UI Designer
Awarded 2nd Place for Best Overall Design
Solution Preview
Context
The Challenge
For the Davis 2024 Designathon, our team was challenged to create a product that promotes career and educational development while integrating seamlessly into daily life.
Research
Exploring the Problem Space
Our team immediately gravitated toward the idea of career advancement specifically by fostering stronger connections between students and industry professionals.
How Might We:
Create more direct pathways for students to connect with mentors in the industry?
To better understand this landscape, I conducted a competitive analysis of existing platforms, all of which support mentorship or career-related discussion.
ADPList
Key Insights
As lead researcher, I evaluated the following mentorship platforms and noted similarities in their structure.
🔎 Connection to Mentors: through search and filter functions
🌐 Access to Industry Professionals: based on field or area of interest
💬 Discussion Forums/Scheduling Tools: to facilitate career guidance
While these tools are valuable, they mostly exist outside a student’s day-to-day academic experience. As a team, we asked ourselves if these platforms already connect students to mentors then …
How Might We:
Improve student career and academic development through a lens that's closer to their everyday experiences?
Shifting Focus: Beyond Mentorship
After reflecting with both our team and a Designathon mentor, we recognized a pattern:
Most mentor platforms focused on professional connections but overlooked the role of academic and campus experiences in shaping a student’s career path.
This realization prompted a strategic pivot. Instead of building yet another mentor-matching tool, we began exploring …
How Might We:
🏫 Leverage existing campus resources, such as clubs & courses
💡 Help students make informed decisions about their campus involvement
🗣️ Empower peer-to-peer insights by providing honest feedback
Gathering Student Perspectives
After conducting a competitive analysis, we surveyed 39 students to understand how they discover course and club opportunities.
38% Social Media
21% Word of Mouth
15% In Class Presentations
13% Personal Research
13% Other Networks
Adapting to New Insights: A Refocused Research Phase
Recognizing the lack of a centralized source for club and course information, my next step was to analyze existing platforms addressing this gap. These tools range from purely informational to those focused on student feedback.
Recognizing the lack of a centralized source for club and course information, my next step was to analyze existing platforms addressing this gap. These tools range from purely informational to those focused on student feedback.
UCD General Catalog
RateMyProfessor
Clubly
Key Insights
During the second phase of research, I documented the core functionalities of each platform.
General Catalogue: Offers multiple filters including Subject, College, Course Type, Department, and General Education, helping students narrow down courses effectively.
RateMyProfessor: Features a general search, quantitative rating summaries, and filtered reviews; widely recognized as a popular and trusted resource.
Clubly: Provides unified club information including social links and contact details, serving as a useful informational tool.
Despite their strengths, none of these platforms offer a unified solution that combines clear course and club recommendations with authentic feedback to guide students’ on-campus experiences
Ideation
Discussing Features
As a team we sketched with the following in mind …
Search first homepage: Simple entry point prompting users to search by need
Unified info cards: Club/course cards combine all key details in one place
Student focused filters: Ratings, tags, and filters help surface relevant experiences
Highlighting student voices: Encourages anonymous reviews to promoted transparency & shared insight
Sketching It Out
Design System
Components
A clean, user-friendly interface paired with the Poppins sans-serif typeface to reflect a modern and approachable feel. We chose purple as the primary color for its strong association with creativity and ambition.
Final Product
Search
The homepage highlights a main call-to-action that invites users to search for a specific club or course, or explore personalized recommendations by entering their major or career interests.
Club & Course Pages
Each course or club page includes the average rating, social links, top tags, career paths, and peer reviews to support informed student decisions.
Write A Review
We value student insight. Anonymous reviews include role, date, and a headline, promoting transparency and helping others make informed choices.
Conclusion
Personal Reflection
My first Designathon pushed me out of my comfort zone. Leading research under a tight timeline—and pivoting halfway, was challenging, but collaborating with a strong, motivated team made the experience worthwhile. Seeing our solution so well received reinforced my confidence and love for user-centered design.
What's Next
We’re in the early development phase, collaborating with a product manager and developers to bring UniPath to campus.