Shipped
500K+ Users
Breaking Solitude: Designing Connection on Campus
How I created a digital safe space for 500,000+ college students across the United States so that they could discover more events, expand their circles, and feel less alone.
DURATION
Feb 2024-September 2025
ROLE
Lead + Founding UI/ UX Designer
TOOLS
Figma, FigJam, Cursor, AI, Linear
TEAM
James + Garrett + Dimitri + Mitchell (Growth), Cameron + Tanner (SWE), David (CEO) + Me
PROBLEM
When a campus full of events still feels empty.
Students had events everywhere but zero visibility and zero belonging.
Most campus events stay hidden inside exclusive circles, leaving new students feeling isolated even when campus is active.
Sixty five percent of students report loneliness. Hosts need safety and control, while guests need visibility and belonging.
44%
of students report symptoms of depression (Healthy Minds Study, 2022).
65%
of college students report feeling lonely (Active Minds, 2024)
“Loneliness is a clear factor in the well‑being of college students”
— Alison Malmon, (Active Minds)
Most campus events are invisible unless you're already inside the right circles.
WHY THIS MATTERS
No visibility unless you’re personally invited
Not open to the public
No way to request access
Why hosts restrict access: safety, liability, and campus discipline:
PROCESS
Understanding how belonging breaks down on campus
Research and AI synthesis revealed a clear mismatch. Students discovered events socially, while the app showed none of that.
INTERVIEW INSIGHTS
Event Invisibility
Events felt hidden unless someone shared them.
“I always find out about events only after they happen.”
Social Gatekeeping
Access stayed locked inside certain groups.
“If you're not in Greek life, you're out of the loop.”
Discovery Happens Socially
Students discovered events socially, not through apps.
“Group chats are the only way I know about events.”
Host Safety Concerns
Hosts restricted access for liability.
“If someone gets hurt, it’s on me.”
I grouped 120 interview notes into four clusters using AI-assisted grouping in Cursor and manual synthesis in FigJam.
Affinity Map: The four themes that shaped the product direction
From interviews, I identified two opposing needs. Hosts prioritized safety and control. Guests sought visibility and belonging. This tension became the core design challenge.
Turning insights into product direction
Research showed the real issue was invisibility. Students needed visibility. Hosts needed safety. The product supported neither side.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Students relied on friends and group chats to discover events, but the app showed none of that. Hosts needed tight safety controls. Guests needed visibility and belonging. DoorList supported neither side, creating confusion, loneliness, and hidden events.
GOAL 1
Enable early discovery
Let students see events before they're full or forgotten
GOAL 2
Surface social context
Show who else is going and how events connect to friends
GOAL 3
Preserve host control
Give hosts tools to manage visibility and guest lists safely
HOW MIGHT WE
How might we help students see events earlier?
How might we surface events in a social context instead of a public feed?
How might we give guests more visibility without increasing host risk?
PRODUCT PRINCIPLES
Safety is non-negotiable
Hosts need full transparency and control.
Visibility creates belonging
Students can’t join what they can’t see.
Social proximity drives trust
Students trust events when they see friends.
Learning from apps students already trust: I analyzed apps students use daily to understand real discovery behavior and mental models they already rely on.
Friends influence decisions. I used this mental model to design “friends going” and social-first event visibility.
Students check where friends are. This pattern inspired friend-centered discovery instead of a public feed.
Relevance drives engagement. I used this pattern to inform personalized suggestions powered by social signals.
ITERATION
Wireframing the shift from utility to social connection
I designed a discovery page to surface more events, added friends directly into event pages, and encouraged RSVPs to unlock friend visibility. These wireframes transformed Doorlist from a simple utility into a social app — where curiosity about friends kept users coming back.
“If We Open Discovery, Admins Will Drop Off.”
The CEO worried that showing public events would push our hosts away. I assured him we could start small — testing only public events to prove connection could be safe.
Event Discovery is blocked
Only Public Events
The First Discovery Page Failed — But Proved the Desire Was Real.
When we opened Discovery, it failed there was no public events, no traction, no way to push hosts to share. Yet it became our most-tapped tab, proof that students wanted to look even when there was nothing to see.
12x more taps than any other tab
Pivot: People Don’t Want Public Visibility — They Want Social Proximity.
Because I was able to prove demand, the CEO felt safe opening the next iteration — this time, making events centered around friends instead of the public.
Aug 2024
Nov 2024
Public Events Only
Your Friends' Events
Added a friends row for immediate access to your circle’s events.
Seeing your friends’ events made the feed feel personal, not public.
Refining Discovery Until Friendship Became the Core Experience
Every redesign centered more around friends — until connection wasn’t just a feature, it was the foundation of DoorList.
↑
1.2x
Retention
↑
45%
Time Spent
↑
60%
Event Clicks
Making the feed the heartbeat of social connection
By making the home feed central, Doorlist became the place to check events, not just manage them. Users with 5+ friends were 4× more likely to return, proving that curiosity and connection made the app sticky.
The Final Iteration
Live
Providing value in the feed, even when you’re not invited
Before, uninvited users couldn’t see private events, or later, could only see them with no way to act. By opening events to requests, users gained a path to signal interest, preview friends attending, and stay engaged — while hosts retained total control.
Guests earned agency by requesting +1s, fueling organic app growth
Before:
❌ No way to request +1s: Guests depended entirely on admins.
❌ Exclusive barrier: Only close to the host or group = access.
❌ Friction: No organic way for friends to join together.
Now:
Moved the +1 button into a primary CTA — which led to a 3× increase in guest requests.
Turning safety into trust with clear +1 and attendance controls
Admins could now approve or revoke +1s, see exactly who joined the list, and track entries with time-stamped attendance — clear proof their needs were at the center of every design decision.
Turning Doorlist into the college connection hub
By shifting the app from utility to social loops, I created stickiness that drove growth and retention. When I started, Doorlist had 45,000 users and poor retention. Today, it has over 500,000 users, with projections to reach a million next year.
4x
Higher retention for users with 3+ friends, proving social connection drove stickiness.
40%
More successful invites; smart suggestions removed the need to search or type.
3.4x
Lift in 7-day retention by adding friend visibility and a personalized feed users actually cared about.
6x
User growth by turning invite flows into a peer-to-peer growth machine
REFLECTIONS
This project taught me that safety and connection don’t have to conflict. By designing with empathy, I learned how structure and openness can coexist — how giving admins control can actually make students feel more free to connect. Doorlist showed me that design can protect people while still helping them find each other. It reminded me that thoughtful boundaries don’t limit connection; they make it possible.
REACH OUT!
If you're building for education, care, or real-life complexity, reach out: naoboru@sas.upenn.edu — I’d love to collaborate.