Intro:
CampCon is an all-in-one social and community platform built for university students. Designed to centralize campus life, it brings together social interaction, academic resources, and peer-to-peer commerce into a single, trusted space. CampCon enables students to share moments through a curated timeline, discover campus events, access course and registration resources, and buy or sell items and services within their school community. By focusing on a shared academic environment, the platform keeps content relevant, local, and meaningful.
CampCon is built to scale across universities while preserving the sense of community that defines student life making it not just a social app, but the digital home for campus communities
The problem:
University students depend on digital platforms to stay connected and informed, but most existing tools are not built for campus life. General social apps are noisy and unfocused, while important information like course details, registration guides, events, and peer updates are scattered across group chats and unofficial pages.
There is no single platform where students can reliably connect with their school community, access relevant academic resources, or safely engage in peer-to-peer activities such as buying, selling, or finding services.
Students need a centralized, trusted space designed specifically for university communities, where social interaction and practical campus needs come together.
Kick-off:
The primary goal of CampCon was to create a centralized digital community tailored specifically to university life, combining social connection with tools that support students both academically and socially:
Create a relevant social space where students can share updates and engage with content rooted in everyday campus experiences.
Provide structured academic resources, including course information, registration guides, and school-specific tips, to help students navigate university systems with less friction.
Highlight campus events and activities in a dedicated space, making it easier for students to discover, attend, and stay engaged with what’s happening around them.
Enable safe peer-to-peer exchange through a student-focused marketplace for products and services.
Design Process:
I started of with 2 weeks of research, 2 weeks of definition and ideation, 4 weeks of design and iterations and 2 week of validation and refinement. Total of 8 weeks.
Research:
Due to the community-driven nature of the product, I used a combination of qualitative and observational research approaches. This was what I did:
I first identified key questions like:
How do students currently share information
How do students buy/sell items campus.
How do students find events on campus
I carried out interviews and conversations with 15 students across different levels and departments to learn how they currently get school information, interact socially, and buy or sell items on campus.
I leveraged firsthand experience as a university student to identify real-life pain points and usage patterns.
I reviewed popular social and marketplace platforms to understand common interaction patterns and identify opportunities to improve them for a university context.
Key findings:
01. Students want a platform that feels built for their school, not a general social netwo.
02. Buying and selling on campus already happens, but mostly in unstructured and unsafe ways.
03. Academic resources and registration information are often scattered across group chats and unofficial pages, making them hard to find.
04. Campus events are poorly discovered. Many students only hear about events after they’ve already happened, usually through late WhatsApp forwards or random social posts.
Implementation:
Based on the research findings and student feedback, I designed the product around a core goal: creating a centralized platform that combines social interaction, campus utility, and student commerce in a way that feels familiar and easy to use.
To address the issue of fragmented campus communication, CampCon introduced a curated campus timeline that allows students to share updates, experiences, and discussions within a university-focused environment. Separate feed tabs such as For You, Friends, Campus, and Events were designed to help users quickly navigate between personalized content, social connections, and campus-wide activity without overwhelming the experience.
To improve access to academic and administrative information, a dedicated Resources section was created. This allows students to search, filter, read, and download school-related materials such as registration guides, course information, and campus tips from one centralized location.
For student commerce, I designed a Marketplace to intentionally feel lightweight and conversational rather than transactional. Instead of building a complex checkout system, buying and selling flows were simplified through in-app messaging, allowing users to communicate naturally, negotiate terms, and arrange meetups directly within the platform. Trust and safety measures such as seller confirmations and a confirmation code system were introduced to improve accountability during exchanges.
To solve the issue of event discovery, CampCon introduced a dedicated Events tab designed specifically for event discovery. By separating events from the main timeline, students can easily browse upcoming activities, access event details, and stay informed about what is happening around campus.
To reduce onboarding friction, the authentication flow was kept intentionally minimal. School-specific information is collected after sign-up through an optional modal, allowing non-student users to skip the process while still enabling personalized campus experiences for students.
Marketplace:
Campus buying and selling already happens heavily between students, but most of it takes place through scattered WhatsApp groups, Instagram pages, or word of mouth. These interactions are often unstructured, difficult to trust, and disconnected from students’ everyday campus experience.
To solve this, I introduced a dedicated Marketplace that allows students to buy, sell, and offer services within their university community. The feature was designed to support both goods (books, gadgets, hostel items, fashion, etc.) and services (tutoring, errands, repairs, photography, and more), making it flexible enough to reflect the realities of student life on campus.
Rather than building a complex e-commerce system, the experience was intentionally simplified around one familiar behavior: chatting. Once a user discovers a product or service, they can immediately message the seller from the product page through in-app DMs to negotiate details, agree on pricing, and arrange delivery or pickup. This approach mirrors how students already interact informally while keeping conversations centralized within the platform.
To reduce friction during early adoption, payments occur outside the app. However, trust and accountability were still important considerations in the design. Sellers are required to confirm orders before delivery, and a confirmation code system was introduced to verify successful handoff between both parties. Buyers receive a unique code that must be shared with the seller upon receiving the item or service, helping reduce false delivery claims and improving transaction reliability.
Launch and Results:
Lessons:
The early launch showed that students responded most strongly to features that solved immediate campus needs, rather than simply giving them another place to socialize.
Campus content drove engagement, with students actively sharing updates, discussions, and everyday experiences.
Marketplace activity validated the need for structured student-to-student commerce, particularly for products and services.
Events gave students another reason to return, especially when information was easier to discover than through scattered group chats.
School-specific context made the experience feel more relevant than a general-purpose social platform.
The launch also revealed areas that needed further iteration, particularly around building network density, improving content discovery, and encouraging more consistent activity from new users.
What we improved:
The launch also exposed new problems:
01. Network density:
A social product becomes more valuable as more of a student's community joins. Early adoption showed the importance of building critical mass within individual campuses.
02. Content discovery
As more content was created, helping users quickly find the things relevant to them became increasingly important.
03. Activation
Getting users through signup wasn't enough. We needed stronger reasons for new users to immediately interact, post, discover, or connect.
Conclusion:
CampCon's early-access launch validated the foundation of a campus-first social platform: Students don't necessarily need another social network. They need a digital space that understands their campus.
The product is now live, with the next phase focused on increasing campus adoption, improving engagement, continued iteration, user testing, and expanding the experience to other university communities.
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