A unified, research-driven app experience that simplifies how Michigan State University students access essential academic and campus services.

Project Type: All-in-One Application Redesign
Designed to unify fragmented campus services into one seamless student experience.
Role: Experience Researcher & UI Designer
Led the redesign process and contributed to user survey design, competitive analysis, user interviews, and insight-gathering.
Duration: November 2023 - January 2024
Tools: Figma

TL;DR Summary

Problem: MSU’s services were scattered across siloed apps, leading to poor discoverability and fragmented student experiences.
Approach: Consolidated key tools into one unified app. Conducted user research, analyzed student behavior, and redesigned the experience for clarity and ease of use.
Outcome: A simplified, accessible design that improves usability, boosts feature visibility, and reduces the number of separate apps needed by students.

MSU’s Existing App Ecosystem

Framing the Problem

Students currently navigate 5+ siloed apps to complete essential tasks, resulting in confusion, duplicated efforts, and low feature awareness. Our goal: consolidate key functionality into a seamless, intuitive system grounded in user needs.

User Research & Insights

PHASE 1: Research & Readings — Using techniques like Bekah Rice's approach in our design to ensure accessibility approval and that our wireframes were WCAG compliant, and Dr. Feinstien's approach in our surveys to help ensure our questions were succinct multiple-choice questions rather than long answer questions, we performed comparative analyses and Qualtrics. PHASE 2: Survey, Prototype, Implement Research — Deliver Qualtrics survey publicly among targeted audience. Begin OneMSU’s Lo/Hi-Fi wire framing process. Develop sit mappings for comparative analyses. PHASE 3: Analyze Data, Implement Feedback, and Produce Proposals — Review Qualtrics data, determine most commonly used features and adjust OneMSU’s site map, and produce proposals.

Key Insights & Design Decisions

1. Students struggled to find essential services due to scattered app experiences. 68% used the MSU app fewer than twice due to low feature visibility.
2. Students preferred task-based navigation over app-based silos—this directly informed the new, centralized homepage layout.
3. Emergency features (SafeMSU) were underused due to being in a separate app; we integrated them into the OneMSU flow to improve accessibility and awareness.

Projected Impact

This redesign lays the groundwork for higher adoption, increased feature awareness, and more successful task completion across the student body.

1. Reduced the number of apps students need to download by 60%.
2. Increased visibility of emergency services by consolidating SafeMSU into OneMSU.
3. Improved task completion flow by simplifying UI for schedules, grades, and dining by centralizing features in a single app.

Impact

We found that many students choose MSUApp and SpotOn based on the data we collected on app usage frequencies. However, it was evident to us that these students denied ever hearing about Munch at State. While most students use SpotOn for parking, Pulse for grades, and the MSU dining app for meals, Munch is still in use as a result of inadequate marketing efforts. "68% of undergrads use the MSU app, '1-2 times,'" according to 57 data points.

Design Solutions

I led the redesign of OneMSU’s interface, implementing simplified, student-friendly layouts based on insights from user surveys, interviews, and app usage data. We urge that the University continue to update its apps with features like bus tracking and a more accessible and refreshed user experience. Based on our survey results, we would want to recommend appropriate advertising tactics, such as MSU socials and dining hall table card fold advertising. This strategy will result in reduced confusion, an updated and less cumbersome look, ensuring that students use resources to their best ability, and overall high resource utilization.

Reflections & Opportunities for Growth

Collaborating on this project deepened my ability to balance user needs with institutional constraints. Engaging with a researcher and learning from diverse perspectives strengthened my decision-making and design empathy. Looking back, I would have broadened our user outreach to ensure more inclusive insights and tested more interactive prototypes to validate design assumptions early. These steps would have elevated both the impact and precision of the final solution—especially for a tool as essential as OneMSU.
zaydalghaza@gmail.com
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