Pusula - A Social Navigation App for University Students
Overview
How do you navigate a vast, diverse university campus when accessibility is a challenge? At Cyprus International University (CIU), students faced difficulties exploring the expansive campus and connecting with others.
To address this, I created Pusula (Turkish for "compass")—a mobile app designed to help students discover, navigate, and connect. Pusula enables users to locate campus facilities, seek assistance from offline human guides, and connect with peers who share similar interests, making campus life more accessible and inclusive.
Project scope
Problem
The campus's hidden resources and opportunities remain underutilized due to poor accessibility and a lack of a user-friendly system for discovery. My study also reveals that other universities' students experienced comparable or worse outcomes.
Solution
Offers clear, simple navigation with an offline option for ease of use anytime
Allows users to quickly locate specific classrooms, offices, or campus points of interest.
Connects students with experienced peers for personalized, department-specific guidance.
Encourages exploration by letting users pin and discover hidden gems across the campus.
Enables students to connect with communities and clubs relevant to their departments and interests.
Provides visual aids for better orientation, enhancing the user’s spatial understanding of the campus.
This approach helped understand the why
Conducted interviews and surveys with students, faculty, and visitors to identify pain points and needs.
Conducted interviews and surveys with students, faculty, and visitors to identify pain points and needs.
Analyzed existing campus navigation tools (CIU Mobile App, EMU Billboard, NEU Signage) to evaluate their effectiveness.
Imagine having over 25 links in a menu. Card sorting helped me understands students priorities when they interact with the menu.
Approach & Insights
Time Wasted: Over 50% of users spent 15-30 minutes finding classrooms or offices.
Feature Demand: Clear maps, building photos, search functions, and personal guide options were highly sought-after by users.
Hidden Resources: Many were unaware of facilities like the museum and gym.
How did I turn this insights into solutions?
Create an offline campus navigation network to make navigation simple and available to all. Better yet, anyone can pin and share new locations for others to find.
Give both new and returning students the resources they need to participate, mingle, and form connections with one another through common interests.
Provide a user-friendly directory and navigation system to make it simple for students and staff to learn about the extensive array of campus amenities and resources.