SeungMin's site

Context

BU Spark! Project

January 2026 - May 2026

Contribution

Lead UI/UX Designer

Collaborators

Ibrahim Alburi - Technical Teammate

Abdul Hamdi - Technical Teammate

Tools

Figma

Adobe Illustrator

Neary shows you real-time activities happening near you on campus, filtered by your interests. See what's happening, find students nearby who share them, and never miss out!

[1] Problem

Lack of student companionship

First-year and international students face a disproportionate challenge when arriving at a new institution — they lack an existing social network, may carry cultural or language barriers, and are dropped into a large, unfamiliar campus with little scaffolding for organic connection. The challenge isn't just loneliness; it's the activation energy required to find people and events when you don't already know where to look.

Our constraints were real: we lost half our team early in the project, which compressed our scope and forced stricter prioritization. We had to build something meaningfully useful without overextending our reduced capacity.

60%

of students report lack of companionship

61%

of 18-25 year olds feel "serious loneliness"

37,737+

of student who attend Boston University face this issue

[2] Discovery Phase

Creating a customer profile

We identified two main audiences: New incoming Freshmen and Transfer students. Both audiences require support in settling the community as they are new to the campus.

[3] Research and Insights

User interviews

We conducted structured user interviews using a script, observing participants while they interacted with the app. Two rounds of interviews were tied to our two MVP milestones.

MVP 1 Feedback

MVP 2 Feedback

[4] Process & Design Development

Design Decisions

Our goal is to help students on campus get familiar with campus community by providing nearby ongoing activities that can be filtered based on interests and popularities for students to be proactive.

Branding

Nearygle - Mascot and logo inspired by golden eagle as we want our app to be easy and recognizable. Eagles are known to be very aware of their surroundings

[5] Scope and structure

Low-fidelity frames

We started designing the skeleton of our product with three main changes: Discover, Profile, and Saved pages.

[6] Final Solution

Final Output

Designed to type in your personal interests when signing in for AI to filter out and show events based on your interests on the map.

Designed in detail to view the attendees of the event the user registers

Designed to save your event you see on the map. Different icons differentiates the type of events on the map.

Allowing user to user interaction of friends you see on the map while having the ability to host your public or private event.

Demo Day

At the end of the Spark! Innovation Program, our team presented Sanvia on Demo Day to the Boston University Faculty for Computing & Data Sciences with a presentation and on-display Eposters.

E-Poster

[7] Outcomes & Reflections

Group Reflection

What worked well was the feedback loop between interviews and iteration. Each round of user testing gave us a clear, actionable signal — and because we responded to it directly in the next build, users could see their feedback reflected. That builds trust in the process.

What didn't work as smoothly was the early team disruption. Losing half the team created a rough start and forced scope decisions we hadn't planned for. In hindsight, earlier alignment on a leaner MVP would have cushioned that more.

The most durable lesson was about the value of design-first development. Having a visual reference before writing any code kept the product consistent and gave everyone a shared target. Without that, especially on a reduced team, it's easy for features to drift in style and feel. Design is not a nice-to-have at the start — it's the mechanism by which a team maintains coherence when bandwidth is tight.