Role: UX Designer & Researcher (Primary)
Team: 1 Designer (Me), 2 Research Contributors
Deliverables: Research & Strategy, User Experience Design, Product Design, Branding Design, Prototyping
About NavU
NavU is an app I designed to support students with diverse mobility, vision, and cognitive needs as they navigate their campuses. The app was created as a result of interviews with UW Campus accessibility professionals along with a range of college students to understand their needs.
With NavU, campus navigation becomes smoother, safer, and more inclusive, empowering students to focus their education.
Overview
The Project aims to eliminate the physical and social barriers of navigating a college campus, tackling challenges like inaccessible routes, mobility-specific scheduling hurdles, and the isolation often felt by students with disabilities.
Process
Phase 1:
Discover
Interview disability accommodations-related staff
Survey student population with varying accessibility needs
Brainstorm ideas for campus accessibility
Interview
During the discovery phase, we were able to interview two experts in disability resources at UW-Madison and gain valuable insights to the experience of students with disabilities along with that of the staff that support them.
Ruben Mota
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Coordinator
“There are a lot of barriers reported to the disability centers by students when it should be the other way around.” (Mota, 2024)
As the ADA Coordinator, Mota is the expert on campus when it comes to what regulations the school is- and isn’t- following. He explained that although there are strict ADA regulations on new buildings built on campus, the lack of accessibility support in older buildings is generally allowed to be left alone. Not to mention when the City of Madison blocks sidewalk routes around campus or dangerous conditions due to extreme weather, students are not alerted in anyway. This means students with disabilities can face challenges on the way to the buildings on campus and then face additional challenges upon entering those buildings. There is a problem with campus accessibility, he says, and it needs to be fixed.
Gwynette Hall
Accessible Learning Technology Manager
“Many students with disabilities decline their enrollment after taking a tour and seeing our campus.” (Hall, 2024)
Hall works in UW-Madison’s McBurney Disability Resource Center, an office committed to creating accessible and inclusive educational experiences. In her interview, she described how she helps students with disabilities create class schedules that allow them to get from class to class in time while navigating the hilly and at times icy Madison campus. She expressed that a map of campus that shows how long it takes to get from one spot to another based on ones mobility would help incoming students feel more comfortable. Additionally, she mentioned that an alert system that told students when construction reroutes or elevator breakages interfered with their commute to campus would be revolutionary for many students.
Survey
We conducted an online survey with 10 users that fall into our target demographic: students at UW Madison that commute to and from campus.
“ I was on crutches during winter when the side walks were extremely icy. I was constantly terrified of slipping and I can imagine people in similar situations feel the same. ”
“If the school could play a more involved role in helping student navigate these difficult times it would take away a lot of the stress.”
“I never knew when I’d show up to campus and an elevator I needed to use would be closed. I had to search the building for other working elevators. If there are none, I am able to do some stairs very slowly, painfully, and exhaustively.”
“UW-Madison, do better.”
Brainstorm
With my professor and 2 peers, we brainstormed a variety of campus navigation problems and possible solutions. We researched the widely agreed upon stressors that college students deal with while navigating campus and what they are asking of their campus leaders.
ADA resources specify the three needs of disabled communities when it comes to the use of any process or product:
Indepencence
Privacy
Ease of use
Phase 2:
Define
User personas
Journey maps
Problem-driven goals
User Personas & Journey Maps
Using the data collected from our survey and interviews, I created 3 user personas and journey maps for their experiences navigating campus, all three users being UW-Madison students with varying accessibility needs.
See all three user personas and journey maps on Figma
Problem-Driven Goals
Navigation
Provide students with a personalized, accessibility-aware campus map and notification system that dynamically adapts to real-time blockages and alerts them to disruptions affecting their regular routes.
Communication
Enable peer-to-peer communication through a platform where students can share real-time accessibility tips and route strategies, fostering a supportive community built on lived experience.
Schedule Generation
Help students build personalized class schedules that account for travel time, mobility needs, and campus layout, ensuring timely and low-stress transitions between classes.
Phase 3:
Ideate
Choose key features
Create task flows
Design lo-fi wireframes
Features
Based off the pain points generated through surveys and journey mapping, these are the three key features of the app to help solve those paint points.
Navigation
The navigation feature of the app is specifically customized to the users needs based off their selections in accessibility support survey during onboarding. Routes are adjusted to these needs along with current bloackges in their routes to ensure the easiest and safest journey around campus.
Communication
The communication feature of the app will allow students to connect with other students across campus that experience similar challenges in navigating campus. They can join or create message groups in which conversations about how they experience campus with their specific disabilities will create supportive communities.
Schedule Generation
The schedule generation feature of the app will assist students wile creating their class schedule for the semester by giving helpful insights into which schedules would be most accessible for them in regards to campus navigation. Additionally, these schedules will be saved in the app and can be adjusted.
Taskflows
With the three key features of the app chosen, I created task flows to guide my design choices before moving into prototyping that would make these features usable and intuitive.
See all three Taskflows Figma
Lo-Fi Wireframes
Phase 4:
Design
Key Screens
Hi-Fi Prototype
Key Screens
Hi-Fi Prototype
As the final step in the design process, I took the wireframes and UI designs to create a functional app in Figma using their prototyping software.
Use the hi-fi prototype on Figma
Impact
How do users feel this platform assists their campus navigation?
Core Impact
Post-prototype testing with 5 students indicated:
Increased confidence navigating campus
Users felt more prepared knowing about elevator outages, construction reroutes, and icy paths before leaving for class.Stronger sense of independence
Participants valued being able to plan routes and schedules without relying on staff, friends, or last-minute accommodations.Reduced navigation-related stress
Real-time alerts and accessibility-aware routing helped users feel more in control during unpredictable conditions.Positive response to peer communication
Students appreciated learning from others with similar needs, describing the feature as validating and community-building rather than isolating.
Why this matters:
By prioritizing independence, privacy, and ease of use, NavU reframes campus navigation from a barrier into a support system—helping students attend class confidently, consistently, and on their own terms.
Project Takeaways
Accessibility is about predictability, not just compliance.
Students felt most supported when the app reduced uncertainty around routes, timing, and building access.Personalization is essential for inclusion.
Accessibility needs vary widely; allowing users to define their own preferences made the experience feel respectful and empowering.Design choices carry emotional weight.
Clear language, calm visuals, and straightforward flows directly influenced how safe and supported users felt using the product.If I revisited this project:
I would add more usability testing after task flows and lo-fi wireframes to validate accessibility assumptions and interaction decisions before moving into high-fidelity prototyping.
Development & Implimentation
Scoped for feasibility
NavU is designed to integrate with existing campus systems, maps, construction alerts, accessibility data, and scheduling tools, reducing technical risk while preserving institutional data integrity.Built for cross-functional collaboration
In a production environment, this product would require close alignment between accessibility services, facilities, IT, and student stakeholders. I would frame design decisions around shared goals like student retention, class attendance, and equitable access.Designed for incremental rollout
Core navigation and alert features could launch first, followed by peer communication and schedule optimization, allowing teams to validate impact before expanding functionality.