SOLE UX DESIGNER
6 months
PERSONAL INITIATIVE
overview
Our college shifted to a new ERP app: Juno Campus. However, this move marked a significant change in how students managed their academic life.
Conversations with peers revealed repeated friction in navigating the application, tracking pending work, and understanding what actions were required at any given moment.
This project focuses on redesigning the assignment submission experience within Juno Campus - aiming to reduce confusion, improve visibility of critical information, and make task completion more enjoyable for students.
// research synthesis
limited motivation to engage
I started with circulating a google form on 3 different Whatsapp groups used by students from different departments. After collecting sufficient responses (43) from the form, I conducted voice call interviews with 15 students to gather deeper insights.
I used affinity mapping to uncover key themes. Assignment submission emerged as a major friction point - students had to switch to the website instead of submitting seamlessly within the app. This break in flow led to procrastination and missed deadlines.
The website experience further compounded the issue, described as overly “administrative” and demotivating. Students lacked a clear hook or incentive to engage with the assignment submission process.
user journey
I mapped the user journey for Raghav - a student who frequently misses his assignments.
// Key insight:
Raghav needs a way to find due assignments on time, prepare from relevant coursework before he submits assignment, review what he did wrong, and obtain positive feedback from the task for future submissions.
// problem framing
how might we
Design a student management experience with a feedback loop that increases student motivation on submitting academic deliverables?
peer-to-peer feedback loops
I brought initial concepts to campus and conducted impromptu feedback sessions. The most valuable insight came from watching students' immediate reactions.
Initial designs included leaderboards and peer comparison. Feedback sessions revealed this was counterproductive.
I'm already stressed about grades. I don't need another way to compare myself. to my classmates.
-Dhananjay (Student)
leaderboards concept
// the feedback loop
more clarity, less anxiety
Leader boards turned stress into disengagement. Students didn’t need another scoreboard; they needed reassurance.
I pivoted to a feedback loop where students competed with their own progress, quietly.
// trigger
nudging them to start
Students receive gamified notifications reminding them of what they might be missing out on if they fail to submit the assignment.
// prepare
remove the excuse to not start
The biggest friction point was students feeling unprepared. So the assignment page links directly to the professor's notes. No more hunting in WhatsApp groups. In a real ERP system, this can be brought to reality from the teacher's end.
// evaluate, reflect & reward
make the outcome feel good even when it isn't
After submission, students see exactly which questions they got wrong - and the correct answer. Then a celebration screen: confetti, streak tracker, coins earned. Even a low score gives you coins. The old portal just showed a number. This gives students a reason to come back.
A small penalty (-25% of reward) awarded for missed deadlines & the total minimum score was capped to 0, preventing overt negative feedback.
// Synthesis
making them want to come back
The profile page shows weekly coins and accuracy trends - are you improving? The data is personal. It's you vs. last week. That's the synthesis step closing the loop and setting up the next trigger.
User Testing
*Actual image from the final user testing session.
testing strategy
The study involved 20 college students from various semesters and departments, all of whom were frequent users of the current campus portal. Participants were asked to submit an assignment & rate the easiness, satisfaction & motivating factor.
100% task success rate
87 system usability scale
4.7 average satisfaction rating
my learnings
Leaderboards felt like an obvious move - gamification, competition, motivation. But students pushed back immediately, and that pushback was data. The learning here wasn't just "leaderboards are bad" - it was that the same psychological mechanism that motivates some people (social comparison) actively demotivates others, especially in an academic context where anxiety is already high. Good design means knowing which lever to pull for which audience.