A collaboration platform for creative students.
Helping ArtCenter students discover collaborators across majors, move from shared interests to a project, and keep the work visible to their wider creative community.
The case is organized around the moment a student needs help, discovers someone outside their major, checks the fit, forms a project, and returns value to the community.
Students can be surrounded by creative talent and still struggle to find the right person outside their own major.
HMWHow might we make it easier for students from different majors to talk and work together on projects?
Research signal: discovery depends on chance, existing friends, or fragmented channels.
Students wanted more exposure to other majors, new ideas, and work that could spark collaboration.
DESIGN RESPONSEExplore Work makes projects the first invitation to discover another discipline.
Students needed enough context to judge whether another person’s background, interests, and work fit the idea.
DESIGN RESPONSERich profiles, tags, portfolios, saved work, and direct messaging reduce the uncertainty before reaching out.
Students also need a structured way to find an existing group or create a new collaboration space.
DESIGN RESPONSEDiscussion supports finding groups, applying to join, creating a group, and continuing into group chat.
Collaboration grows when contributions, feedback, and activity stay visible instead of disappearing into one chat.
DESIGN RESPONSENotifications connect messages, likes, follows, and comments back to the people and work that created them.
Interviews, a persona, and a competitive scan made a recurring pattern visible: students wanted cross-major connection, but lacked a shared place to discover people, understand fit, and begin together.
Six students across creative disciplines described how difficult it was to see work beyond their major or know who to ask for a specific capability.
The persona brings together the need to find collaborators, understand their skills, and reduce the hesitation of a cold approach.
Communication platforms support conversation; portfolio platforms support visibility. Synergy connects both within one ArtCenter-specific collaboration context.
The scan translated into a focused opportunity set rather than a list of borrowed features.
The architecture connects identity, discovery, discussion, and feedback so students can move from inspiration to a working cross-major relationship without changing systems.
They want to meet students in other majors, understand their work, and learn from perspectives outside their own discipline.
ArtCenter did not have one dedicated place for cross-major discovery, communication, and group formation.
Connect students through work, profiles, conversation, and groups so a shared interest can become a collaboration.
The progression keeps the underlying flow visible: browse work and people, understand identity, join discussion, and receive feedback.
Five original sketch sheets test how discovery, profiles, groups, notifications, chat, and community posting connect. They stay visible here as separate artifacts, not one tiny board.
Sixteen individual wireframes establish hierarchy across Explore, Profile, Discussion, Groups, Chat, and Notifications. Scroll the rail to inspect the complete set.
The complete final set returns as individual screens: work, detail, comments, people, four profile states, community, notifications, chat, group lists, conversations, requests, and creation. No summary board stands in for the system.
Five feature groups work as one collaboration loop. Students can discover creative work, understand the person behind it, begin a conversation, and move into a shared group space.
Find a collaborator through work, majors, interests, and skills.
Evaluate creative fit and begin a focused conversation.
Join an existing group or create a new shared space.
Original Figma frames are sequenced here as an automatic web playback. Pause stops the sequence; Play from start or Replay restarts it.
These are native, responsive recreations of verified Figma states. The controls, lists, form fields, messages, and transitions remain editable web elements.
This is the supplied Figma prototype itself, not a screenshot or a recreated hotspot layer. Choose a starting flow, then click and drag inside the player.
Figma may request cookies or a security check inside an embed. If that appears, use “Open in Figma”; the native web demo above remains available.
This editorial reading is grounded in the repeated choices visible in the source Figma file: typography stays direct and functional, while a warm-to-cool spectrum marks identity, motion, and primary action.
The gradient begins at #FF3500, passes through coral, pink, and violet, and resolves at #639CFF. Because the interface is mostly white, black, and slate, the spectrum reads as a signal rather than a permanent backdrop.
Switzer carries the product’s identity and interface hierarchy. Inter supports primary actions and utility copy; SF Pro is reserved for iOS system chrome.
Designing Synergy strengthened my ability to translate a social problem into a cross-disciplinary communication system. The central lesson was that discovery, trust, conversation, and project structure must reinforce one another; removing only one point of friction does not create collaboration.
Majors, interests, and skills help students find peers beyond their usual circles.
Profiles and shared work give students enough information to begin a useful conversation.
Group discovery and discussion turn an initial match into a place where a project can begin.
