CollegeSmarts began as a social media advertising tool targeting college students. The mission was to provide tips and advice and answer students' questions about college. I created the customized Tumblr page, designed the logo and the tip template and wrote or edited a majority of the tips. On Jan. 1, 2014, we had about 1,300 followers.

After positive feedback from students, we began marketing CollegeSmarts on other social networks. By May 2015, we had more than 18,000 followers. We went from answering one to two student questions per month to answering 300 to 400 questions per month. After such a significant increase, we expanded the product again in February 2015 by creating an app and website.

I designed the CollegeSmarts Android app to emphasize user-friendly functionality. We wanted an app that employed navigation styles and behaviors users were most familiar with. I kept the UI very simple with left, right and up swipe gestures to browse tips, questions and comments. This created an almost hypnotic or relaxing scrolling motion aimed to keep users in the app and browsing content longer.

I did the majority of the front-end development for the CollegeSmarts website, which is responsive and cross-browser compatible. The app and website uphold brand consistency and utilize similar interface designs.

CollegeSmarts was born on social media and remained very active in social communities on Tumblr and Instagram even after the website and app were developed. We posted meltiple times a day across Tumblr, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Our posts received an average of 10,000 notes (likes and shares) per month on Tumblr. On Instagram CollegeSmarts posts got an average of 200 likes.