2026
Davis Design Interactive Fellowship Program
Worked with a team of designers who strive towards creating more opportunities for people to form communities through showcasing their creativity.
Overview
Goals
Understand how college students currently discover and stay motivated with hobbies.
Identify the biggest challenges students face in staying consistent with personal goals.
Explore how social support and accountability influence motivation and habit-building.
Learn what features would encourage users to share progress and inspire others.
arasha.laksmana@gmail.com
Context
Problem
College students often want to explore new hobbies and build skills, but staying consistent and finding supportive communities can be difficult. Many platforms focus more on comparison and entertainment than personal growth.
Research
Competitive Analysis & User Research
We surveyed 34 students about what keeps them motivated to pursue their hobbies. Tracking progress was a clear motivator:
About 59% rating its impact a 3 or 4 on a 5-point scale, and doing a hobby with others was even stronger, with 76.5% rating it a 4 or 5.
These results show that students want both visible progress and a supportive community, which shaped Folio's core features.
Ideation
Brainstorming Features
Feature prioritization:
High Priority: tracking hobby goals, posting updates, profile
Medium Priority: hobby tree, expand profile
Low Priority: onboarding frames
User Flow
Low-Fi Designs: Amalgamation of our individual sketches
Navigation bar
Homepage
Create goal
Update goal
Profile
Current goals
Past goals
Mid-Fi Designs
The process for the mid-fi designs allowed us to map out the features for a simple onboarding process, a personalized dashboard, goal creation and progress tracking, and a clean interface that keeps users motivated and organized.
High-Fi Designs + Demo
Finetuned layout, typography, colors, prototyping, etc.
Realistic representation of product allowed us to visualize the final product
Enabled more realistic usability testing & gathered more accurate feedback
Final Solution
Hi-Fi Designs + Demo!
Finalizing The Project
Project Takeaways
What I Learned
Learned how to conduct user research and develop an app that targets users’ needs
Explored designing and prototyping on Figma
Practiced user feedback and testing to address users’ pain points
Overall learned a lot about the UX & UI process!
Presentation Night!
We were proud to win the Best Overall award alongside my teammates for Folio after the fellowship presentation night. The award recognized our research-driven process, from surveys and competitive analysis to ideation and design, and our focus on creating a simple, supportive community that celebrates personal growth.
