Pusula - A Social Navigation App for University Students

Pusula project Mockup

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

  • UX Research
  • Visual design
  • Problem

    Navigating Cyprus International University's (CIU) vast and complex campus can be overwhelming for students, especially newcomers. With numerous classrooms, offices, and lesser-known facilities, students often struggle to find their way, leading to wasted time and frustration.

    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

    Interactive Map

    Offers clear, simple navigation with an offline option for ease of use anytime

    Search Functionality

    Allows users to quickly locate specific classrooms, offices, or campus points of interest.

    Personal Guide

    Connects students with experienced peers for personalized, department-specific guidance.

    Campus Discovery

    Encourages exploration by letting users pin and discover hidden gems across the campus.

    Forums & Clubs

    Enables students to connect with communities and clubs relevant to their departments and interests.

    Building Photos

    Provides visual aids for better orientation, enhancing the user’s spatial understanding of the campus.

    This approach helped understand the why

    Interview and Contextual Inquiry

    Conducted interviews and surveys with students, faculty, and visitors to identify pain points and needs.

    Survey

    Conducted interviews and surveys with students, faculty, and visitors to identify pain points and needs.

    UX auditing

    Analyzed existing campus navigation tools (CIU Mobile App, EMU Billboard, NEU Signage) to evaluate their effectiveness.

    Card sorting

    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?

    To start of we wanted to keep the whole launch very lean as it was first MDP launch. We started of by creating landing page for gold to educate them, secondly we introduced all the transactional flows which included buy & sell flow

    To start of we wanted to keep the whole launch very lean as it was first MDP launch. We started of by creating landing page for gold to educate them, secondly we introduced all the transactional flows which included buy & sell flow

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