UX/UI. Digital Prototyping. Sustainable Design.
UX/UI Designer and Researcher
Eric Verdes
Pedro Arruda
Vj Vanderlipe
Kai Barker
Sep 2024 - Dec 2024
Figma
INFO 3450 - Human-Computer Interaction Design
Room Vision is an interactive design solution that combines modular furniture with a digital platform tailored for busy college students. Designed with functionality, personalization, and sustainability in mind, the system includes an AR-enhanced mobile app with AI-driven suggestions and a collaborative community feed. Room Vision empowers students to personalize their living spaces efficiently—even with limited time and space—without compromising on comfort or aesthetics.
How might we help college students personalize small living spaces in a way that balances aesthetics, comfort, and practical constraints—despite time pressures and space limitations?
Inspired by the real needs of student life, we tackled the everyday problem of functional, comfortable design inspiration in limited campus housing. Room Vision addresses this by providing a flexible system of eco-friendly modular furniture paired with a digital interface that not only guides users through their room design journey but also serves as a source of inspiration—helping students discover, explore, and implement creative design decisions that suit their space and lifestyle.
The goal wasn’t just to provide furniture—it was to create a system where digital tools enhance the physical environment. We envisioned a smart assistant for student living: an app that uses augmented reality to visualize layouts, artificial intelligence to suggest personalized styles, and community engagement to promote shared design ideas.
We conducted contextual interviews to understand how students live, decorate, and adapt their spaces in real-world conditions. This method allowed us to observe their habits, constraints, and design behaviors within the context of their daily routines.
Students need flexible, multi-use furniture to make the most of small, shared spaces.
Busy schedules limit time for room design, making ease and speed essential.
Sustainability is a key value, with students actively seeking eco-friendly products and practices.
Inspiration is common, but implementation is hard—students often browse Pinterest but struggle to turn ideas into reality.
We created a persona to gain a deeper understanding of our audience’s experiences, goals, and challenges. By exploring her daily routines, motivations, and frustrations, we were able to empathize with her needs and design more effectively around her lifestyle.
Create a solution for college students living in small spaces by helping them easily visualize, customize, and adapt their rooms using modular furniture, AR tools, and AI-driven suggestions. So that they feel empowered to create a space that supports their well-being, reflects their identity, and adapts to their academic and personal routines.
Ideation helped us address student needs by generating thoughtful solutions across four categories: website tools, mobile apps, digital interfaces, and physical products. Through collaborative sketching and discussion, we evaluated these concepts and aligned them with our persona’s goals.
We chose to design an app because busy college students need a quick, flexible way to personalize their spaces. The app offers on-the-go inspiration, tailored suggestions, and community support to help them adapt their rooms to fit their routines and well-being.
The first step in the design process was to create a low-fidelity paper prototype modeled after an iPhone to simulate a realistic mobile app experience. Using simple materials like paper, pens, post-its, and transparent sheets, I designed layered screens to represent app interactions.
The mid-fidelity prototype marked a key step in refining our concept, helping us apply best practices in user interface design and better visualize the final product. Built in Figma, this prototype allowed us to simulate real app navigation, offering a more interactive and structured experience than the paper version. It helped us test layout, flow, and usability in a realistic format, ensuring that each feature—from AR scanning to AI suggestions—was intuitive, functional, and aligned with users’ expectations.
Unclear Iconography: Users struggled with icons like “Feed” and “Add User,” indicating the need for more intuitive visual cues.
Visual Engagement Gaps: The app’s current design lacks visual appeal, limiting user satisfaction and long-term engagement.
Restricted Personalization: Users couldn’t scan their own rooms, reducing the ability to create tailored and immersive design experiences.
Interaction Flow Confusion: Navigation issues slowed task completion, showing a need for clearer, more streamlined user journeys.
Our high-fidelity prototype brought Room Vision to life, combining AR, AI suggestions, and community features into a cohesive experience. It helped us test real tasks and refine navigation, visuals, and interaction flow based on user feedback.
Room Vision is your all-in-one small-space design companion app—empowering students to visualize, personalize, and optimize their living environments through modular furniture, AR planning, and AI-driven suggestions. It keeps aesthetics, comfort, and functionality in sync, ensuring a seamless, adaptive experience from idea to implementation.
Uses AR scanning to visualize furniture layouts in real spaces, helping students optimize comfort and flow in seconds.
Generates AI-powered design suggestions based on user inputs and preferences, simplifying decision-making with tailored layouts.
Features a collaborative Feed where users discover, save, and apply room designs while exchanging ideas through comments and messages.
Users can scan their room and preview modular layouts in real time, helping them make design choices that suit both space and lifestyle—all without moving a single piece of furniture.
The built-in AI chat offers tailored design prompts like “beach vibes” or “cozy study,” giving users style guidance that adapts to their needs, mood, and aesthetic goals in seconds.
Through the community feed, users can view shared setups, leave comments, and message peers—making room design inspiring, social, and collaborative.
This project helped me develop a strong understanding of the UX design process and how each step contributes to creating impactful solutions. From conducting contextual interviews and building personas to developing low-, mid-, and high-fidelity prototypes—both on paper and in Figma—and running usability tests, I learned that cohesive design stems from a thoughtful, iterative process rooted in user needs. I came to understand that success in UX requires a structured approach that prioritizes user insight, ideation, and continuous refinement. Prototyping, in particular, helped reveal design gaps and guided improvements toward a more effective final product.