A mobile-first redesign of the StudyHub, addressing the anxiety, friction, and cognitive overload students experience every day. Currently being developed for further testing.
Canvas is essential but exhausting. Every professor organizes it differently. Deadlines hide in announcements. The mobile app crashes. Through research with 32 students across three universities, a clear picture emerged: the problem isn't features, it's friction. This redesign strips back the complexity to focus on what students actually need — a clear view of what's due, what's new, and what matters most.
32 students, 3 universities, 4 weeks.
Students reported checking Canvas an average of 4 times daily, with peak usage on Sunday evenings and before assignment deadlines. The consistent finding: they don't want more features, they want less to manage.
Sarah is a junior CS major juggling 5 courses, a part-time internship, and campus activities. She checks Canvas 15 to 20 times daily, including before bed. She's not disorganized — the tool is.
Maintain her GPA without the constant background anxiety that something important has slipped through. She wants a tool that works with her, not one she has to manage.
Every professor organizes Canvas differently. She spends 10 to 15 minutes per course each week just hunting for new content. She missed two assignment deadlines this semester because they were posted in Announcements instead of Assignments. The mobile app crashes when uploading files.
One unified view of everything due across all courses. Notifications that only fire when something actually matters. A mobile experience that works reliably.
A day in Canvas — and where the friction lives.
Less anxiety. More focus.
The goal was not to add features. It was to reduce the moments that spike anxiety throughout a student's day.
Repeated anxiety spikes throughout the day
Calm, consistent baseline throughout the day
What the testing showed.
Three phases to roll it out.
- Unified dashboard
- Smart notifications
- Mobile parity
- Testing with 100 students
- AI task prioritization
- Deadline prediction
- Assignment Q&A bot
- Study path suggestions
- Institution-wide rollout
- Professor onboarding
- Performance tuning
- Ongoing iteration
Five screens. One job each.
Still in the works. Feedback welcome.
StudyHub is an ongoing project. The early testing results are encouraging but there is more to learn. The next step is gathering more feedback from students across different majors and course loads to see what holds up and what needs rethinking.