Designing Low - Pressure Social Connections for College Women.
Quilly
ROLE
UX/UI Designer (team of 4)
Platform
ios (Mobile- first)
YEAR
2024 Fall
BACKGROUND
College is often described as the place where lifelong friendships form — but today’s reality looks different.
Research shows that:
70% of Gen Z report feeling lonely
45% of college students experience social anxiety
Despite being more connected online than any generation before, many students struggle to build real, reliable friendships on campus. Social platforms built around likes and followers often intensify comparison and isolation rather than ease it.
The PROBLEM
Through early conversations with students, one theme became clear: making friends in college is emotionally heavy and socially risky. Students shared that:
Traditional social apps built around likes and followers don’t help.
They amplify comparison, not connection. They reward popularity, not vulnerability.
And they make reaching out feel high-stakes, when it should feel casual and warm.
Loneliness is widespread — but it’s often treated like a personal failure.
01.
Asking someone to hang out feels intimidating
02.
Group chats rarely turn into real plans
03.
Safety is a constant concern
The CHALLENGE
How can we help college women build meaningful connections without the pressure and performative nature of existing social platforms?
High-level goals that defined the design:
Make reaching out feel easy and low-stakesSupport genuine, real-world connection
THE SOLUTION
Build meaningful connections with Quilly
Quilly is a social platform designed to make forming friendships on campus feel easier, safer, and more natural — especially when reaching out feels emotionally heavy.
Instead of feeds and followers, Quilly focuses on small, low-pressure moments that lower the barrier to connection and gently guide students toward real-world interaction.
HOUSES
Think Hogwarts blended with sororities. Students are sorted into Houses based on personality and social preferences, forming smaller, like-minded communities.
SHOUTOUTS
Quick, casual prompts like “Anyone want to grab coffee?” or “Library study break?” that lower the pressure of direct invites and make reaching out feel effortless.
HANGOUTS
Lightly structured events with themes and co-hosting that help turn “we should hang out sometime” into real plans — without needing to be the planner friend.
SHOUTOUTS
Designing for Low-Stakes Reach-Outs
Students wanted to connect, but fear of rejection or awkwardness often stopped them from acting. Instead of designing for perfect plans or long conversations, we focused on enabling small signals of interest—ways to test the waters without emotional commitment. Shoutouts were designed to feel casual and time-bound, helping reaching out feel lightweight rather than vulnerable.
HANGOUTS
Adding Structure Without Social Performance
Planning felt draining for many students—not because they didn’t want to socialize, but because coordination and expectations felt heavy. We introduced structure where it reduced friction, and flexibility where it mattered. Themes, time boundaries, and optional co-hosting helped plans feel intentional without becoming performative. The goal was to support follow-through without turning socializing into another task to manage.
SAFETY
Designing Safety as a Baseline, Not an Afterthought
Because Quilly encourages in-person interaction, safety needed to be immediately accessible without introducing fear. Safety actions were designed to be one tap away and visually calm, so support is always present without disrupting the experience or tone of the app.
RESEARCH & UNDERSTANDING.
Quilly was designed in an early-stage startup environment, where the focus was rapid discovery rather than formal research. The team built shared understanding through student interviews, secondary research on Gen Z loneliness, and reviews of adjacent social and wellness products.
Academic vs Social Friends
High Effort to Reach Out
Drifting Connections
STUDENT INTERVIEWS
We spoke with college students to understand how friendships form — and quietly fade — after the first weeks of college. Conversations focused on social comfort, initiation, and participation.
A few themes surfaced consistently.
These conversations revealed that the challenge wasn’t a lack of desire for connection — it was the emotional friction involved in starting and sustaining it.
SECONDARY RESEARCH
TSecondary research reinforced what we heard in interviews: despite being highly connected digitally, young adults have fewer low-effort, informal opportunities for in-person interaction.
A Harvard Graduate School of Education article notes that modern social structures and digital-first communication have reduced everyday moments for connection, making it harder for Gen Z students to build and sustain relationships that feel stable and supportive.
“Young people are spending more time online and less time in face-to-face social interactions, which reduces opportunities to build the kinds of relationships that protect against loneliness.”
MY CONCLUSIONS
Initiating connection on campus requires too much effort, making meaningful social interaction easy to avoid—even when students want it.
This led me to ask:
HMW reduce the emotional effort required to reach out?
HMW create low-stakes pathways to real-world connection?
These questions guided how we prioritized features for Quilly.
I mapped early product ideas based on the effort required from users and their potential impact on helping students feel connected.
This exercise helped us focus on features that could deliver meaningful social outcomes without demanding high emotional or logistical investment.
[Visual: Effort vs. Impact matrix]
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The most promising ideas clustered around high impact, low effort interactions—small, time-bound actions that make reaching out feel safe, casual, and achievable.
This framework became a filter for deciding what Quilly should build first.
DESIGN.
Quilly was designed in an early-stage startup environment, where the focus was rapid discovery rather than formal research. The team built shared understanding through student interviews, secondary research on Gen Z loneliness, and reviews of adjacent social and wellness products.
Designing a tone that feels safe and human
Quilly addresses a socially vulnerable space, visual and verbal tone mattered as much as functionality. We intentionally used doodles, rounded components, muted lilacs, and hand-drawn accents help the interface feel warm and non-judgmental.
Microcopy was written to sound supportive rather than directive—encouraging action without pressure.
This consistent tone helps reduce the emotional effort required to participate, making connection feel approachable instead of intimidating.
CONCLUSION
About the project
Quilly was designed and built in a fast-moving startup environment, where decisions had to balance speed, empathy, and real-world constraints. Working as part of a 4–5 person design team, I focused on shaping the core mobile experience during the product’s beta phase—iterating quickly as new insights surfaced and features evolved.
Because Quilly tackles a socially vulnerable problem space, this project reinforced how much interaction design, tone, and microcopy influence whether users feel safe enough to participate. Small choices—how a prompt is worded, how visible a safety action is, how much structure an event provides—can meaningfully change behavior.
Key Learnings
Designing for emotional friction requires as much intention as designing for usability
Low-effort interactions can unlock high-impact real-world outcomes
Visual tone and copy are critical tools when building trust and reducing anxiety
Speed and iteration don’t have to come at the cost of thoughtfulness
This project strengthened my ability to design UI that supports sensitive, real-world behaviors while collaborating closely with founders and engineers under tight timelines.
What's next
If Quilly continues to evolve, I’d be excited to explore:
How long-term engagement changes once students form stable social circles
How safety features could adapt dynamically based on context and time of day
How Houses might evolve to support deeper identity-based or interest-based communities
What success metrics look like beyond retention—such as confidence, consistency, and follow-through
Most of all, this project pushed me to think beyond screens and flows—to design experiences that make human connection feel easier, safer, and more approachable.
