My Role: Social Interaction Designer

I focused specifically on designing social features, communication flows, and community mechanisms. I led the team in prototyping social interactions, design notification systems, create moderation tools, and ensure the product facilitates meaningful connections while preventing harmful behaviors.

The Goal: To combat social loafing, which is the phenomenon where individuals contribute less effort in a group setting, by embedding accountability and transparency into student collaboration.

FairShare was designed as a student-centered platform that replaces fragmented tool ecosystems (like Discord and Google Docs) with a single, structured interface. Grounded in Social-Behavioral Theory, the platform uses visual dashboards and clear role assignments to ensure workload is distributed fairly and progress is visible to all members

The Design Evolution: From Sketches to Refinement

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

The initial design phase began with low-fidelity sketches focused on the core user flows identified during our focus groups and affinity diagramming sessions. These early wireframes prioritized layout over aesthetics to map out:

Role Assignment: How students would choose specific project identities.

Contribution Tracking: Initial concepts for making group work visible.

Communication Dashboards: Organizing messages and task status into a centralized hub.

Medium Fidelity FigJam

I developed the sketches into refined, interactive medium-fidelity wireframes in FigJam. Key Features:

Contribution Dashboards: Using visual "participation thermometers" to display real-time group availability.

Role Identity Selectors: Integrated menus allowing students to adopt roles like "Planner," "Editor," or "Researcher".

Progress Indicators: Real-time task and milestone tracking to build trust among group members.

Smart Availability: An upgraded "When2Meet" style interface that allows users to compare schedules and vote on meeting times directly.

The transition to high-fidelity wireframes focused on moving beyond functional structure and into the psychological feel of the app. I anchored the design system with a modern blue for primary actions, but the true impact lies in the bright and bubbly color palette used to give each group member their own individuality. By utilizing a gradient of blues, oranges, and reds, the UI provides instant, non-verbal feedback on group health. A vibrant individual color-coded palette helps afford participation status and equity. These high-fidelity details combined with clean typography and consistent spacing transformed the interface into a reliable tool that students felt they could trust to hold their peers accountable and protect their own grades.

Final Thoughts