Designing Belonging: Building Stronger Communities
Through Connection
Kinnected
As the UX Designer, I led the redesign of Kinnected’s mobile experience—improving the information architecture, onboarding flow, and event-based engagement features. My work focused on helping members of multiple organizations easily discover new communities, stay connected with their current ones, and navigate a cleaner, more intuitive interface.
Brief
Kinnected is a community-building app that connects members across student, professional, and social organizations. Users struggled to stay active across multiple groups, often relying on email threads, text chains, and external apps. I led the end-to-end design overhaul addressing this.
Result
My design contributions streamlined onboarding, the welcome experience, event management, and seamless navigation between organizations, significantly im proving usability and leading to higher engagement and retention.
My Role
Lead Product Designer
UX Researcher
Product Owner
Skills
Wireframing + Prototyping
Product Strategy
User Interviews
Tools
Figma
Jira
ChatGPT
Team
Product Designer, UX Researcher
1 Founder
1 Engineer
Problem
Brief
Users often felt disconnected from their communities because existing tools required juggling multiple apps or chats to stay informed. This fragmented experience made it difficult to find events, engage with peers, or even know which group updates were relevant—especially for members who belong to several organizations.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
Current Solutions Fall Short
Current community experiences rely on a patchwork of tools—GroupMe for chats, Email for event invites, Instagram for recaps, Discord for committees, and Eventbrite for RSVPs. These fragmented platforms cause communication gaps and missed updates.
Unlike these tools, Kinnected aims to consolidate discovery, group management, and social connection into a single ecosystem where users can both find and participate in communities that reflect their interests and affiliations.
Solution Overview
Stronger Foundation
Redesigned Kinnected’s architecture and built a scalable component library for consistency across modes. The new system improved usability, reliability, and visual trust while cutting wireframing time by 30%
Smarter Onboarding
Introduced interest-based onboarding and contextual invites to help users find relevant organizations faster. This reduced drop-off and made joining groups more personalized.
Central Hub Page
Designed a dedicated space for each organization to display events, committees, members, and media—reducing clutter and increasing engagement.
Featured Final Designs
The redesigned experience allows users to see updates across multiple organizations at once or filter by group. Key features include a personalized Discover page, simplified RSVP and event creation flow, and an intuitive Hub page that centralizes all content for each community.
Understanding the Problem
Many Kinnected users are busy, community-minded individuals—students, alumni, and professionals who juggle multiple commitments across organizations, careers, and personal lives. They often need to be in two places at once.
Kinnected aims to bridge that gap by creating a safe digital space where users can stay informed, celebrate milestones, and engage with their communities—bringing the offline sense of belonging into an online experience.
What users struggled with
Disorganized Updates: Important announcements were buried across multiple chats, making it easy to miss key information.
Fragmented Tools: Members relied on several apps to manage events, messages, and posts, creating a disjointed experience.
Unclear Group Context: Users couldn’t easily tell which organization a post or event belonged to, leading to confusion and disengagement.
Business needs and goals
Increase Engagement: Encourage members to interact with their organizations more frequently through a unified experience.
Simplify Onboarding: Make it easier for users to join the right groups and start connecting immediately.
Strengthen Retention: Build trust and familiarity through consistent design and intuitive navigation that keeps users coming back.
User Interviews
I conducted 10+ user interviews with undergraduate students, alumni, and community members across multiple organizations to understand their goals, frustrations, and expectations for group-based networking.
KEY INSIGHTS
1
Users juggled multiple platforms.
Interviewees were active in several organizations, each using different tools for communication and events. This inconsistency created friction and highlighted the need for a single, unified platform available to all community groups.
2
Events and meetings anchored connection.
Users needed an organized way to keep track of both virtual and in-person commitments—helping them transition seamlessly from online committees to real-world opportunities to connect.
3
Recognition wasn’t a strong motivator.
While community mattered, users valued relevant group accomplishments over personal shoutouts, prompting us to deprioritize the kudos feature.
4
Discovery was highly valued
Participants wanted to expand beyond their existing circles by finding new groups, events, and people with shared interests, careers, or alma maters.
Design Strategy
Brief
To focus on the most impactful opportunities, I prioritized two core challenges: helping users easily manage multiple organizations and improving how updates and events are surfaced. The redesign emphasized clarity, discoverability, and connection, ensuring that users could seamlessly move between communities while feeling grounded in one unified experience.
PAIN POINT
Users want a place to see upcoming events, recent updates, join groups, and access content.
HOW MIGHT WE
How might we create a single, organized space that consolidates all organization-specific content and updates?
FEATURE
Introduced the Hub Page, a structured landing area for each group that displays events, members, photos, and subgroups—all in one view.
PAIN POINT
Users want to see details for important updates without navigating multiple chats or apps.
HOW MIGHT WE
How might help users prioritize what’s relevant across all their communities?
FEATURE
Redesigned the Information Architecture to allow filtering between multiple organizations on the home feed and transformed “Search” into a Discover experience for new people, events, and groups.
Iterations and usability
Brief
I explored multiple navigation patterns and onboarding flows to ensure users could quickly find and manage their organizations. Through iterative testing, I validated layout clarity, onboarding comprehension, and event engagement pathways.
GOALS FOR USER TESTING
1
Can users view updates across all groups without confusion?
2
Do users understand how to discover and join new groups or events?
3
Can users view updates across all groups without confusion?
KEY FINDINGS
1
BEFORE
Limited Context Across Groups
Kinnected’s earlier design wasn’t built to scale for users belonging to multiple organizations. The home feed lacked context about which group each post or event belonged to, creating confusion when navigating between communities. There was also no dedicated space to preview or learn about a group before joining, which was especially limiting for new users trying to discover organizations aligned with their interests.
USER FEEDBACK
70%
percent of users wanted the flexibility to view all updates across every organization at once—or focus on one group at a time for deeper engagement.
CHALLENGE
Balancing Depth and Clarity
We needed to help users stay informed across multiple communities without creating cognitive overload or cluttered navigation.
KEY INSIGHT
Context Builds Confidence
Users wanted both a unified view for quick updates and detailed spaces to feel connected and informed within each group.
Discover Freely. Engage Fully.
Side Drawer
Proposed a side drawer to switch between organizations, giving users clear context for which org they were viewing—but made it harder to manage notifications across multiple orgs.
After
Added tabs at the top of the feed so users could toggle between orgs within one environment—closer to the final design, but it prevented seeing all updates in a unified view.
AFTER
Unified Feed + A Hub for Every Community
The redesigned architecture introduced a scalable system allowing users to view updates from all organizations or filter by specific ones. Each group now has a Hub Page—a central space to explore events, members, and media before joining. Together, these features help users stay organized, discover new groups, and manage multiple affiliations with ease.
2
BEFORE
Generic and Limiting Onboarding
Kinnected’s original onboarding only collected basic profile information tied to Greek organizations that users were already part of. There was no mechanism to gather personal interests or community preferences, which limited the app’s ability to personalize the Discover tab. The process also included usability issues like premature error states and language that didn’t reflect all community types, leaving new users unable to explore or discover groups they hadn’t already heard of.
USER FEEDBACK
60%
of users expressed interest in discovering new communities, highlighting the need for a more inclusive and personalized onboarding experience.
CHALLENGE
Personalization Without Complexity
We needed to design a setup process that collected meaningful user data without making onboarding feel tedious or invasive.
KEY INSIGHT
Interests Drive Discovery
Capturing user interests early would allow Kinnected to tailor the Discover experience, promoting exploration and helping users find relevant groups and events faster.
Personalized From the Start.
AFTER
Inclusive and Guided Setup
We enhanced onboarding by updating copy to reflect all types of community groups, fixing error-state logic, and adding a new “Interests” section to support smarter group and event recommendations. Users now see relevant suggestions immediately on the Discover page or through gentle nudges prompting them to complete their interests—creating a more inclusive, connected first-time experience.
Key Takeaways
Validating Concepts Through User Interviews
Conducting user interviews early in the process helped us validate our assumptions and prioritize features that mattered most to our audience. Because Kinnected was an MVP, focusing on user-validated needs allowed the team to deliver the highest-value features first, accelerating our path to launch while ensuring users saw immediate value from the product.
Designing With Scalability in Mind
Although the initial design supported users in a single organization, I proactively considered how the app would evolve to support multiple groups. By designing for scalability early, we minimized future rework and ensured that new capabilities could be introduced seamlessly, allowing current users to adapt without disrupting their existing experience.