UniBuddy: Making College Bureaucracy Easy for Every Student

Industry

Education / EdTech

Design Category

Capstone / Product Design

Timeline

Jan 2026 – May 2026

Team

Elaine Zhang, Iman

Impact
4 Student Archetypes
User research spanned international, first-gen, transfer, and second-generation students — revealing 3 consistent structural failure modes and a clear theory of change that shaped every design decision across two prototype iterations.
$3.75B Problem Space
Targets the $3.75B in annual unclaimed federal aid and 10–20% summer melt rate — bureaucratic drop-offs disproportionately affecting students navigating 15–25 post-acceptance tasks with no guide and no institutional knowledge safety net.

Background

The U.S. hosts 1.1 million international students annually — up 12% year over year — and roughly 56% of four-year undergraduates are first-generation. These students share a common obstacle: post-acceptance navigation requires completing 15–25 administrative tasks across 6–10 separate platforms and offices, each with its own deadline, its own login, and its own language written for compliance, not comprehension. For students whose parents attended U.S. universities, the institutional knowledge required to navigate this is invisible infrastructure — absorbed through family conversation before the first application is ever submitted. UniBuddy is a mobile-first task-completion platform built to close that gap. Developed as a Brown University capstone in EDUC 1775, it delivers plain-language, personalized, proactive guidance on the administrative steps between admission and first semester: I-20 requests, SEVIS payments, FAFSA verification, housing deposits, immunization compliance, and course registration. The platform translates the hidden curriculum into concrete, sequenced action steps — with dependency mapping, inline AI guidance, and ready-to-send email drafts — so that navigational competence is no longer determined by family background.

The U.S. hosts 1.1 million international students annually — up 12% year over year — and roughly 56% of four-year undergraduates are first-generation. These students share a common obstacle: post-acceptance navigation requires completing 15–25 administrative tasks across 6–10 separate platforms and offices, each with its own deadline, its own login, and its own language written for compliance, not comprehension. For students whose parents attended U.S. universities, the institutional knowledge required to navigate this is invisible infrastructure — absorbed through family conversation before the first application is ever submitted. UniBuddy is a mobile-first task-completion platform built to close that gap. Developed as a Brown University capstone in EDUC 1775, it delivers plain-language, personalized, proactive guidance on the administrative steps between admission and first semester: I-20 requests, SEVIS payments, FAFSA verification, housing deposits, immunization compliance, and course registration. The platform translates the hidden curriculum into concrete, sequenced action steps — with dependency mapping, inline AI guidance, and ready-to-send email drafts — so that navigational competence is no longer determined by family background.

Problem

How might we give first-generation and international students access to the same institutional knowledge that advantaged students inherit automatically — so that navigating college bureaucracy is determined by capability, not by family background?

Every existing guidance resource stops at the admission deposit. University websites are organized around administrative departments, not student journeys. The average counselor-to-student ratio is 376:1 — more than 50% above the recommended maximum. Private advisors charge $2K–$100K. The high school class of 2021 left $3.75 billion in federal Pell Grant aid unclaimed because more than 1.7 million students did not file the FAFSA. Summer melt — the drop-off between admission and matriculation — runs at 10–20% nationally and disproportionately affects the students with the fewest support structures. The cause is not student capability. It is differential access to institutional knowledge that was never communicated clearly and that no tool has ever made legible at the moment students need it most.

Solution

UniBuddy is a mobile-first task-completion platform that guides first-year students through the bureaucratic steps between admission and first semester. The focused v1 experience spans three screens: a personalized priority timeline, step-by-step process guides with inline AI, and a conversational onboarding profile.

Jump to Process

Personalized Timeline

A priority stack organized by urgency and consequence, personalized to the student's type, home country, enrolled institution, and arrival date. Each card shows its deadline, its consequence if missed, and which tasks depend on its completion — surfacing the dependency chain before students hit it.

Process Guides with Inline AI

Full walkthroughs for each administrative task: what it is, why it matters, what to gather, step-by-step instructions, and an embedded ready-to-send email draft to the right contact. The AI appears as an inline contextual block within every guide — always specific to the student's profile, never a separate chat tab that requires students to know what to ask.

Dependency Mapping

Students cannot register for courses until they clear a financial hold they may not know exists. The timeline shows task dependencies explicitly so students understand the complete sequence before hitting a blocker — one of the most consistently validated design decisions across both rounds of user testing.

Research

We conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with four students representing the primary affected populations — international, first-generation, transfer, and second-generation American — and triangulated findings with peer-reviewed research on summer melt, FAFSA completion, virtual advising, and behavioral barriers during college transition.

User Interviews

Muzi (international, RISD) arrived without understanding critique culture, nearly signed a fraudulent housing lease remotely, and spent two weeks unclear on her I-20 timeline with no one to ask. Kathryn (transfer, Cal State → RISD) was redirected between departments for every single question. Credit transfer required repeated self-advocacy that nobody told her she would need. "Need to constantly search things up for every detail — zero preparation." Akshay (first-gen, Brown): "If I didn't have the networks then I wouldn't have known what to do." Peter (second-gen, Brown) had parents who hired counselors, toured 15 schools, and provided the accountability structure that made completion possible — making visible exactly what the other three were navigating without.

Structural Failures

Three structural failure modes appeared consistently across all four interviews, regardless of student type. Bureaucratic illegibility: institutional processes written for compliance, not comprehension — producing missed deadlines, lost financial aid, visa compliance failures, and housing scams. Fragmentation across platforms: 15–25 tasks across 6–10 systems, each with its own deadline and login, with no one responsible for showing the complete picture. Support that stops at admission: every existing guidance resource — consultants, counselors, ranking sites — ends at the enrollment deposit, leaving students alone at the most complex administrative period of their college experience.

Theory of Change

IF first-generation and international students receive plain-language, personalized, proactive guidance on the administrative processes that determine whether they successfully enroll and persist — THEN they will complete key tasks correctly and on time, avoid costly and irreversible errors, and arrive at first semester with the knowledge and agency that advantaged students inherit — BECAUSE the primary driver of inequitable outcomes in post-acceptance navigation is not student capability but differential access to institutional knowledge that was never communicated clearly, and when that knowledge is made explicit and timely, students can act on it effectively — LEADING TO measurably lower summer melt rates, higher first-year retention among first-gen and international populations, and a reduction in the bureaucratic burden on ISS and financial aid offices who currently absorb the long tail of procedural questions.

Ideation

Prototyping Approach

Phase 2 included community feed, career planning, cultural orientation, growth tracking, and a Moves/Playbook framework. Every feature was cut by Phase 3. What remained: timeline, process guide, profile. The discipline to remove features users said they liked but didn't act on — guided by Muzi's direct feedback ("I don't need to see my growth chart, I need to know what to do next") — was the defining design decision.

Phase 2 → Phase 3 Scope Narrowing

Removed standalone AI chat tab → replaced with inline contextual blocks embedded in every task card and guide. Removed standalone social community feed → peer knowledge embedded as a single verified insight per process guide. Added explicit consequence lines to every task (generic urgency doesn't drive action; specific consequences do). Added transfer student as a distinct onboarding identity after both Muzi and Kathryn noted they were invisible at onboarding.

Preparation - Emphasis on readiness for critique sessions, including having clear objectives and materials prepared.

Guest Critic Involvement - External perspectives will provide fresh, professional insights.

Cards and Prompts (Guidelines) - Structured prompts or cards to guide discussions and maintain focus during critique sessions.

Choices of Critique Formats - Offering various critique styles, such as group discussions or individual feedback sessions to cater to diverse needs and preferences.

Key Iterations

Built a fully interactive mobile-first prototype demonstrating the 3-screen experience across 5 core surfaces, including a shareable email draft flow triggered from the I-20 process guide. Tested with 4 students representing all target archetypes.

Working Prototype

Phase II Development

Phase 2 focused on consolidating a feedback system that addresses the pain points of both critics and presenters during each phase of the final critique. The system includes a brainstorm aid, guided note-taking, and self-reflection components, ensuring critics provide productive feedback while giving presenters clear insights from diverse perspectives. This approach maximizes the value of feedback within the same timeframe, improving the efficiency of the critique process compared to traditional verbal methods.

User Testing

Round 1: Feature Scoping

Round 2: Prototype Testing

Phase 2 testing with all 4 archetypes surfaced a consistent pattern: students appreciated the community and career features but didn't act on them. Every user independently directed attention back to task completion. This shaped the Phase 3 scope decision.

Impact

4 Student Archetypes

User research spanned international, first-gen, transfer, and second-generation students — revealing 3 consistent structural failure modes and a clear theory of change that shaped every design decision across two prototype iterations.

$3.75B Problem Space

Targets the $3.75B in annual unclaimed federal aid and 10–20% summer melt rate — bureaucratic drop-offs disproportionately affecting students navigating 15–25 post-acceptance tasks with no guide and no institutional knowledge safety net.

Digital Format

The digital format made the feedback easier to read and more organized, but it lost some of the personal touch and engagement that came with handwriting. While it helped with clarity, the process of organizing, saving, and sending the files added a layer of complexity that wasn’t as intuitive as simply writing feedback by hand and passing it to a peer. The digital approach felt less spontaneous and more like a task, whereas handwriting allowed for more organic, immersive and personal exchanges.

Physical Format

The handwritten feedback approach offered a more personal and informal space for students to articulate their opinions, which helped foster a stronger sense of engagement and connection with the critique process. While some students found it challenging to organize their thoughts within the limited space of the paper, many still preferred the handwritten format for the intimacy it provided. Several reflected that the time and care it took to write their feedback made them more willing to participate thoughtfully in verbal critiques and engage more deeply with their peers’ projects.

Publication

Click to redirect

On February 2, 2025, Critique Notes was published as part of "Evolving Design Critique for a Changing Industry" on the RISD College Commons, contributing to research on enhancing critique structures in design education. This work was developed through the ReAssembling ID course at the Rhode Island School of Design, focusing on fostering more structured, inclusive, and engaging feedback practices.

Retrospect

Key Learnings

A few things to takeaway from this very special and extensive project driven by research, real-world insights, and supportive people...

Special thanks to...

Professor Saloni Gupta — EDUC 1775 professor and advisor who guided the capstone research and prototyping process at Brown University.

Muzi, Kathryn, Akshay, and Peter — our research participants whose candor and generosity made the insight work possible.

Iman — research and prototyping partner throughout the capstone.

A mobile platform that guides first-generation and international students through every administrative step — from acceptance letter to first week of classes.
Phase 1 Presentation — EDUC 1775, Brown University
Phase 1 Presentation — EDUC 1775, Brown University
Context
4
Student archetypes researched — international, first-gen, transfer, and second-generation backgrounds
$3.75B
Problem space: federal aid left unclaimed annually due to bureaucratic opacity
10–20%
Summer melt rate UniBuddy is designed to reduce through timely, personalized guidance
Current Context & Research — counselor ratios, private advising costs
Current Context & Research — counselor ratios, private advising costs
Background
Why post-acceptance navigation fails first-generation and international students
The U.S. hosts 1.1 million international students annually — up 12% year over year — and roughly 56% of four-year undergraduates are first-generation. These students share a common obstacle: post-acceptance navigation requires completing 15–25 administrative tasks across 6–10 separate platforms and offices, each with its own deadline, its own login, and its own language written for compliance, not comprehension. For students whose parents attended U.S. universities, the institutional knowledge required to navigate this is invisible infrastructure — absorbed through family conversation before the first application is ever submitted.
UniBuddy is a mobile-first task-completion platform built to close that gap. Developed as a Brown University capstone in EDUC 1775, it delivers plain-language, personalized, proactive guidance on the administrative steps between admission and first semester: I-20 requests, SEVIS payments, FAFSA verification, housing deposits, immunization compliance, and course registration.
Problem
How might we give first-generation and international students the same institutional knowledge that advantaged students inherit automatically?
Every existing guidance resource stops at the admission deposit. University websites are organized around administrative departments, not student journeys. The average counselor-to-student ratio is 376:1 — more than 50% above the recommended maximum. Private advisors charge $2K–$100K. The high school class of 2021 left $3.75 billion in federal Pell Grant aid unclaimed because more than 1.7 million students did not file the FAFSA. Summer melt runs at 10–20% nationally and disproportionately affects the students with the fewest support structures.
The Problem — overlapping requirements, fragmented information, inaccessible guidance
The Problem — overlapping requirements, fragmented information, inaccessible guidance
Bureaucratic Illegibility
Institutional processes are written for compliance, not comprehension. Students encounter SEVIS, FAFSA verification, I-20 requests, and immunization holds written in administrative language that assumes prior knowledge — producing missed deadlines, lost aid, and visa failures.
Fragmentation Across Systems
15–25 distinct tasks spread across 6–10 different platforms and offices, each with its own login, deadline, and contact. No one shows students the complete picture — and tasks have hidden dependencies no one explains until it is too late.
Support Ends at Admission
Every existing resource — private consultants, school counselors, ranking sites — ends at the enrollment deposit. Students are left alone at the most administratively complex period of their college experience with no guide and no warning.
Market Gap — three unmet needs no existing tool addresses
Market Gap — three unmet needs no existing tool addresses
Competitive Landscape
What exists — and where it stops
Every existing resource — college official websites, ranking sites, school counselors, foundations, and third-party nonprofits — covers part of the journey and stops at admission. None spans the post-acceptance arc. None is personalized to student type, home country, or institution. None maps the full task sequence with dependencies.
Phase 1 — Current solutions and their critical limitations
Phase 1 — Current solutions and their critical limitations
Phase 2 — Navigating College with UniBuddy
Phase 2 — Navigating College with UniBuddy
Research
Semi-structured interviews across four student archetypes
We ran two rounds of semi-structured interviews with international, first-generation, transfer, and second-generation students at Brown and RISD. Participants were recruited for variety in institutional knowledge — not for hardship. Every interviewee encountered process failures through no fault of their own.
What We Learned From Students — Akshay, Peter, Muzi, Kathryn
What We Learned From Students — Akshay, Peter, Muzi, Kathryn
"If I didn't have the networks then I wouldn't have known what to do — free YouTube resources aren't sufficient."
— Akshay, First-Generation Student, Brown University
"Need to constantly search things up for every detail. Zero preparation for what was coming after I got in."
— Kathryn, Transfer Student, Cal State → RISD
Three structural failure modes
Bureaucratic Illegibility
Processes written for compliance, not comprehension. Students encounter SEVIS, FAFSA verification, I-20 timelines, and immunization hold language that assumes prior institutional knowledge. The consequence: missed deadlines, forfeited aid, and visa failures with no recovery path.
Task Fragmentation
15–25 distinct tasks across 6–10 disconnected systems, each with its own deadline, login, and point of contact. No single resource maps the full sequence. Tasks have hidden dependencies no system communicates before the student hits them.
Support Stops at Admission
Every existing resource — private consultants, counselors, ranking sites, admitted student portals — ends at the enrollment deposit. The most administratively dense period of a student's college experience is completely unguided.
Theory of change
Theory of Change — If / Then / Because / Leading To
Theory of Change — If / Then / Because / Leading To
IF first-generation and international students receive plain-language, personalized, proactive guidance on the administrative processes that determine whether they successfully enroll and persist — THEN they will complete key tasks correctly and on time, avoid costly and irreversible errors, and arrive at first semester with the knowledge and agency that advantaged students inherit — LEADING TO measurably lower summer melt rates and higher first-year retention.
Prototyping
Two rounds of iteration, from 8 screens to 3
Phase 2 included a community feed, career planning module, cultural orientation guide, growth tracking streaks, and a Moves/Playbook framework. Every feature was cut by Phase 3. What remained: Timeline, Process Guide, Profile. The discipline to remove features users said they liked but didn't act on — guided by Muzi's direct feedback ('I don't need to see my growth chart, I need to know what to do next') — was the defining design decision of the project.
Phase 2 — Full UniBuddy feature map across six categories
Phase 2 — Full UniBuddy feature map across six categories
Removed
Standalone AI chat tab → replaced with inline contextual blocks in every guide
Social community feed → peer knowledge embedded as a single verified insight per task
Growth tracking / streaks → users wanted task completion, not habit metrics
Career planning and cultural orientation modules → out of scope for v1 urgency window
Moves/Playbook framework → abstraction that added cognitive load without clarity
Added
Explicit consequence lines on every task card — specific consequences drive action; generic urgency does not
Dependency mapping surfacing which tasks block which before students hit the blocker
Transfer student as a distinct onboarding identity — invisible in all existing tools
Inline AI blocks embedded within each process guide step, not as a separate surface
Ready-to-send email draft triggered from within I-20 and financial aid guides
Validated
Priority timeline as the primary surface — all four archetypes oriented to it first
Consequence specificity: Muzi — 'The consequence line on the I-20 card felt like clarity I never received'
Office directory with context (when to contact, what to bring) — Kathryn's most consistent frustration resolved
Personalization at onboarding: student type, home country, institution, arrival date
3-screen scope: every user navigated the reduced prototype more confidently than the expanded one
Solution
A focused three-screen mobile experience
UniBuddy is a task-focused mobile app that meets students where they are: on their phone, under time pressure, trying to figure out what to do next. Three core features address the three root failures we found.
01
Personalized Priority Timeline
An urgency-ranked task stack personalized to the student's type (international, transfer, first-gen), enrolled institution, home country, and arrival date. Each card shows its deadline, its consequence if missed, and which tasks it depends on — surfacing the hidden dependency chain before students hit it.
02
Process Guides with Inline AI
Step-by-step walkthroughs for every administrative task: what it is, why it matters, what to gather, each instruction, and a ready-to-send email draft. The AI appears as a contextual block within every guide — always specific to the student's profile, never a separate tab requiring students to already know what to ask.
03
Dependency Mapping
Students cannot register for courses until they clear a financial hold they may not know exists. UniBuddy surfaces these task dependencies explicitly before students hit them. The most consistently validated design decision across both rounds of usability testing.
Financial Modeling
Market sizing and revenue architecture
The addressable market is well-defined and large: 1.1 million international students and an estimated 7 million first-generation undergraduates enrolled in U.S. colleges annually. The problem UniBuddy solves costs institutions in the form of summer melt and first-year attrition. It costs students in the form of lost aid, visa failures, and administrative delays.
Total Addressable Market
International students (U.S.)
Primary segment. Highest regulatory complexity, highest consequences of navigation failure.
1.1M / yr
First-generation undergraduates
Largest segment. Structural access gap to institutional knowledge.
~7M enrolled
Transfer students
High-need secondary segment: credit transfer, new-institution navigation, aid re-verification.
~800K / yr
TAM (SaaS, $8/mo per student)
Conservative estimate at 5% penetration of international + first-gen population.
~$750M / yr
Unclaimed Pell Grant aid (2021)
Scale of financial harm from navigation failure — not a revenue figure, a problem-size signal.
$3.75B
Business model
B2C (Direct)
$8/month per student, billed at enrollment
Free tier: Timeline view only, up to 5 tasks
Paid tier: Full process guides, inline AI, dependency mapping, email drafts
Conversion trigger: student hits a blocked task on free tier
B2B (Institutional)
$12–25 per enrolled student per year, licensed to universities
Target: ISS offices, Dean of Students, first-gen support programs
Value proposition: reduce procedural burden on advising staff, improve first-year retention
Pilot entry: 3-month free pilot with one TRIO or ISS office per institution
Cost Structure (Year 1)
Engineering (2 FTE): ~$280K
Design + research (1 FTE): ~$110K
AI inference (OpenAI API, ~$0.08/guide viewed): variable
Infrastructure (Vercel + Supabase): ~$2K/mo at 10K users
Compliance (FERPA, PDPA, GDPR review): ~$15K legal
Unit economics
LTV (B2C, avg 8-month engagement)
Student churn is structural: platform need ends after first semester. High conversion from free tier offsets short LTV.
$64
LTV (B2B, institutional license, 3 yr)
Renewal driven by retention improvement data. Longer LTV with institutional contract.
$36–75 / student
CAC (B2C, via student social + campus orgs)
Peer referral and campus organization partnerships keep CAC low. Target LTV:CAC ratio ≥ 8:1.
~$4–8
CAC (B2B, via TRIO + ISS conference circuit)
High upfront CAC amortized over enrollment × license fee × renewal years.
~$200–500 / institution
Gross margin (SaaS at scale)
After AI inference and infrastructure costs. Scales favorably as per-student AI usage normalizes.
~72%
Deployment
Technical architecture and go-to-market
Technical stack
Frontend
React Native (Expo) — single codebase for iOS and Android
Expo Router for navigation — file-based, matches web conventions
Zustand for local state (task completion, onboarding profile)
React Query for server state and cache invalidation
Backend
Supabase (PostgreSQL + Row-Level Security) — student data isolation
Edge Functions (Deno) for AI inference calls and email draft generation
OpenAI GPT-4o mini — cost-optimized for short contextual completions
Resend for transactional email (office contact drafts sent to student email)
Data + Compliance
FERPA: no transmission of academic records; only student-entered data
PDPA + GDPR: consent-first onboarding, data stored in region of institution
Task database: institution-specific task sets maintained by UniBuddy ops team
AI prompts: templated and audited; no student PII passed to model
Rollout phases
Phase 1
Closed pilot (Summer 2026)
50–100 students from Brown + RISD admitted student portals
International and first-gen students recruited via DSP and ISSO
Manual task database for 2 institutions only
Qualitative exit interviews at end of first semester
Success metric: >80% task completion rate on Timeline
Phase 2
Institutional pilot (Fall 2026)
3–5 universities via TRIO / ISS office partnerships
Institutional admin dashboard: completion rates by task, cohort, archetype
Task database expands to cover 10 institutions
B2B sales motion begins: retention data presented to Dean of Students offices
Success metric: measurable reduction in ISS walk-in volume for procedural questions
Phase 3
Public launch (Spring 2027)
App Store + Google Play public release
B2C growth via campus ambassador program + admitted student Facebook groups
Task database API: institutions can self-serve add tasks
AI personalization layer trained on anonymized task completion patterns
Success metric: 10K MAU, <$6 CAC blended
Impact
4
Student archetypes researched — international, first-gen, transfer, and second-generation backgrounds
$3.75B
Federal aid left unclaimed annually — the cost of bureaucratic navigation failure
10–20%
Summer melt rate UniBuddy is designed to reduce
User testing feedback
User Testing — four student archetypes, two rounds
User Testing — four student archetypes, two rounds
First-generation and second-generation student feedback
First-generation and second-generation student feedback
International and transfer student feedback
International and transfer student feedback
"The consequence line on the I-20 card felt like clarity I never received."
— Muzi, International Student, RISD — Round 2 prototype testing
"The office directory with context — when to contact, what to bring — is exactly what I needed and couldn't find anywhere."
— Kathryn, Transfer Student — named credit transfer self-advocacy as the single most consequential unmet need
Retrospect
Key learnings
Consequence > Urgency
Generic urgency labels produced no behavioral response in testing. Specific consequence lines — 'Missing this deadline makes you ineligible for on-campus housing' — produced immediate comprehension and action.
Feature Removal as Design
Every feature cut in Phase 3 improved prototype performance. Users navigated the 3-screen version more confidently than the 8-screen version. Comprehensiveness is not the same as clarity.
Scoping for Trust, Not Scale
The most important technical architecture decision for v1 is accuracy. A task database maintained by UniBuddy ops (not user-generated) sacrifices coverage for trustworthiness. Students navigating visa deadlines need information that is correct.
The Credit Transfer Gap
Kathryn's feedback surfaced a critical gap no existing tool addresses: credit transfer self-advocacy. Students cannot know which credits will transfer, whom to contact, or when — and the window to act is narrow. Clearest expansion direction for v2.
Credits
Professor Saloni Gupta
EDUC 1775 professor and advisor — guided the capstone research and prototyping process at Brown University.
Muzi, Kathryn, Akshay, Peter
Research participants whose candor and generosity made the insight work possible across two rounds of interviews and testing.
Iman
Research and prototyping partner throughout the capstone — shared responsibility for interview methodology, synthesis, and prototype development.