Future Histories

Future Histories

Design work for an award-winning student app that helps college students find free food on their campuses.

Overview

Overview

Freebites is an award winning app that helps university students find free food on their campuses before it’s thrown away. I’m currently a designer for this amazing student-run app and worked on updating the design system and the Freebites Garden. I collaborated with other designers and developers to improve the visual identity of the app.

Role: UX Researcher, UX Designer, UI Designer, Web Designer, Marketing Analyst

Collaborator: Leah Stewart

Timeline: June 2025-August 2025

Tools: Figma, Hotjar, Drupal, Hubspot, Google Sheets


My Role

Head of Design

Web Designer


Team

Design Team(6 Designers)

Editing Team

Future Histories Chair

Timeline

Leadership:

June 2021 - May 2025

Designer:

September 2021 - May 2024

Tools

Adobe InDesign

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Illustrator


The Challenge

The project introduced a unique challenge of creating an intuitive, gamified “achievements” system that encouraged user engagement with the app. The achievements pages and badges themselves would need to uphold our current visual branding and menu styles while also elevating the current design system. 

The Challenge

The project introduced a unique challenge of creating an intuitive, gamified “achievements” system that encouraged user engagement with the app. The achievements pages and badges themselves would need to uphold our current visual branding and menu styles while also elevating the present design system. 

The Challenge

The project introduced a unique challenge of creating an intuitive, gamified “achievements” system that encouraged user engagement with the app. The achievements pages and badges themselves would need to uphold our current visual branding and menu styles while also elevating the current design system. 

Problem Discovery

Upon completing a competitive analysis between Interlochen and other institutions in the market, I found the following issues:

The Solution

Embracing the playful and organic theme in the app, I developed the Freebites Garden where “Bite Buddies” grow out of the ground based on how many times a user interacts with each achievement’s challenge through liking, commenting and posting a certain amount of times. Once a "level bar" for a prompt is filled, users achieve a new Buddy!

Demo

Demo

Sketches for Screens and Badges

After developing the new user flow, I went onto creating a design system with assets that are eye-catching and align more with Interlochen's creative, educational brand identity.

Design Phases

Designing Bite Buddies

Designing Bite Buddies

For the Freebites Badges, I needed them to not only be adorable enough for users to want them, but also to elevate Freebites’ current branding style. I completed four badges called Bite Buddies for the final launch – Freebie, Yapper, Influencer, and Bestie, all of which have their own personalities and infectious Gen-Z humored  mottos. Utilizing clean, round shape building and adding some depth in value, I pushed the branding style to stay true to Freebites’ playful palettes while making the design system more intentional as well. 

Earning a Bite Buddy 🏅

My fellow designers and I discussed how we could introduce the new Garden to app users. I created a pop-up with a slide that first promotes the feature and their first Bite Buddy, Freebie, and then instructs users how to engage with it. For the first slide, I challenged myself to create a motion graphic of Freebie popping out of the dirt to really surprise users. 

My fellow designers and I discussed how we could introduce the new Garden to app users.

I created a pop-up with a slide that first promotes the feature and their first Bite Buddy, Freebie, and then instructs users how to engage with it. For the first slide, I challenged myself to create a motion graphic of Freebie popping out of the dirt to really surprise users. 

The Pop-Up 🍿

My fellow designers and I discussed how we could introduce the new Garden to app users. I created a pop-up with a slide that first promotes the feature and their first Bite Buddy, Freebie, and then instructs users how to engage with it. For the first slide, I challenged myself to create a motion graphic of Freebie popping out of the dirt to really surprise users. 

Badge Design

For the Freebites Badges, I needed them to not only be adorable enough for users to want them, but also to elevate Freebites’ current branding style. I completed four badges called Bite Buddies for the final launch – Freebie, Yapper, Influencer, and Bestie, all of which have their own personalities and infectious Gen-Z humored  mottos. Utilizing clean, round shape building and adding some depth in value, I pushed the branding style to stay true to Freebites’ playful palettes while making the design system more intentional as well. 

What's Next?

What's Next?

Updating Freebites' Design System

Updating Freebites' Design System

The Freebites Founder and Design Lead really enjoyed my Bite Buddies graphics and I'll be tasked with updating the design systems for my next projects. It's been rewarding to utilize Freebites' current branding colors and elevating it with the Garden pages. I look forward to update it.

Other Projects

Resume available upon request (´。• ◡ •。`)

Resume available upon request (´。• ◡ •。`)

Resume available upon request (´。• ◡ •。`)