Find your cluster.
- Role
- Product designer
- Team
- 3 designers
- Timeline
- 5 weeks
- Recognition
- Most Innovative
- Year
- 2024
Cluster is a campus app that helps students find the clubs and communities they would never stumble on otherwise. It was my first full design project, five weeks, a brand-new tool, and a team of three, and it is the project that made me fall in love with product design.
The problem
More than 800 clubs, and no way to find them.
UC Davis is home to more than 800 student clubs, but the ones that are not already big on campus are basically invisible, buried under thin advertising and impossible to find unless you happen to catch the club fair once a year. I felt it firsthand. I was a transfer student that quarter, brand new to campus and looking for my people, with no real idea where to start. Every other transfer I talked to said the exact same thing: they had no clue how many clubs existed, or how to find the niche ones they would actually love.
The build
A first real project, learned in five weeks.
I came to Davis as a communications major. The moment I found out the school offered design, I was hooked, even though I did not really know what UI, UX, or product design meant yet. I just knew it looked neat and I wanted to try. I found Design Interactive, a club with a fellowship built for total beginners, after a few other clubs turned out to have a barrier of entry my skills could not clear. Then I spent five weeks designing every screen of Cluster while teaching myself Figma from absolute zero. Every single day I showed my roommate something I had tweaked and asked what he thought. I did not want to just be good. I wanted to be great. My title was product designer, but I took the lead the whole way: if I did not step up, I was not sure anyone else would, and stepping up is something I love.
The turning point
The visit that made it click.
The moment I knew this was what I wanted to do was when we visited LinkedIn’s headquarters. I could genuinely picture myself working somewhere like that one day, the calm of it, the kindness, the way it felt to be around my design peers. I carpooled the club’s presidents on the drive there, and by the end of the program they were telling me to apply for board. I did, and I got in. Cluster taught me how much I pour into something the second I am in, and design turned out to be the perfect way to channel it.
The concept
A home where every club can be found.
Cluster gives every club a place to show up. They publish articles and events, and you can heart the ones you like, follow them, and actually attend. The Discover feed is catered to your interests, but sometimes you just want to browse by mood, so Sports, Dance, Design, and more each get their own feed. Club profiles gather a club’s articles and events in one place so you can feel what being a member is really like. And messaging makes it social: message a club you want to join, or send a friend an event you know they would love, because finding your people should feel like college, not a database.
Outcome
Most Innovative, and the reason design stuck.
Our team won Most Innovative, and honestly, I was thrilled, I am competitive to my core, and I have carried that same hunger into every project since. Looking back from 2026, there is plenty I would change: I would cut the messaging, tighten the spacing and typography, and lean on the kind of design system I now use religiously (Cluster had none, I did not know where to start yet). But I still see the effort in every screen.
There is a funny footnote, too. In 2026 a friend shipped an app called tapin that does almost exactly what Cluster set out to do, and I ended up helping him polish the UI over coffee at the CoHo, my name is even in one of its App Store screenshots. Cluster never shipped, but it is the reason I went all in on design, and the chip on my shoulder from it is one I never want to lose, because it keeps me hungry to keep learning. That same drive runs straight through Bearings, Apollo, and Strata.
