Overview

Quokka is a university-only connection app I built as part of a 100-hour university project. The idea came from my exchange in the US, where I used a similar app called Fizz. When using this app, I felt it was missing something crucial: clubs and events. So I decided to build my own version. One that actually brings students together in person.

Problem

People are lonelier now more than ever before. How is it that in a time of countless social media apps designed to connect us, we have become this lonely? While social media does connect us, it doesn't bring us together. It makes it too easy to stay comfortable, where checking up on a friend is now a quick message rather than going out for a drink or a game of mini golf.

Universities are a great opportunity to make lifelong friends. They create activities, host events, run clubs - they bring people together. But more often than not, students don't know what's happening. The fundamental problem isn't availability, it's awareness.

Research

According to the State of the Nation Report: Social Connection in 2023, 1 in 3 Australians feel lonely, with 37% of them between the ages of 18 and 34. That same age range makes up the largest student population at Australian universities.

To understand whether this was playing out on my own campus, I sent out an 8-question Google Form. When asked how connected they felt to their university community, half of all respondents felt neutral or disconnected. 30% didn't know what clubs existed, and 40% said it was hard to find events that interested them. When asked what would help most, 50% wanted a complete club directory, while 40% each said an easier way to join clubs and a better way to find people in their course.

Alongside the survey, I found two distinct competitor types: event and club tools like Rubric, and anonymous forums like r/monash and university confession pages. I also had firsthand experience with Fizz during my US exchange. While using it to promote clubs, I kept seeing posts like "What clubs are there to join here?" Those posts made the gap obvious — students wanted this information, they just had nowhere reliable to find it.

Process

After the research, I started by looking at what wasn't working for my competitors and how I could turn those gaps into strengths for Quokka.

Rubric had no real reason for students to open it regularly. Without a continual, engaging reason to be on the app, students weren't going to stumble across events or clubs — instead they'd only visit when they already knew what they were looking for, which defeated the purpose.

Fizz was essentially just a Reddit community, but the team seemed more focused on building out their marketplace than on actually enhancing university life.

Anonymous confession portals had a clunky process and a real limitation. Because they were tied to Facebook, you couldn't reply to comments without revealing your identity, which killed the kind of open conversation that makes these communities work.

From those gaps, I developed two core principles: anonymous engagement, and events for students, by students. Students weren't just passive consumers — they wanted to organise things themselves, not just attend whatever the university put on. From there, the five core features mapped out naturally.

Solution

The solution takes what competitors were doing separately and brings it all into one app. Quokka has five main features:

Posts — The social and engagement layer. Memes, uni life, questions, informal events. It's what keeps people coming back and makes discovery feel natural rather than forced.

Clubs — A full directory of every club, all in one place rather than scattered across Facebook groups and email lists.

Events — Built on top of Clubs, this makes university and student-run events more visible. Whether official or informal, it all lives here.

Messages — One-on-one connection. Once students find their people, this gives them somewhere to continue those conversations privately.

Profile — Similar to most social apps, but with one key difference: Quokka lets you create a pseudonym. Personality without the pressure of identity — a deliberate decision to lower the anxiety barrier without removing the sense of community.

Outcome

All five features made it in and the core concept held together. Informal user testing surfaced two things: the clubs page was missing a page title, leaving users uncertain about what it was, and the profile section felt visually disconnected from the rest of the app.

Beyond the fixes, testing confirmed the concept resonated. Users understood the value of combining posts, clubs and events without needing it explained, which was the real thing I wanted to validate.

Reflection

Alongside the UX goals I'd challenged myself to push Figma prototyping as far as it could go — variables, styles, design tokens, Figma Make as a thinking tool, and I think I got there. If I were to go back, I'd focus on the Events and Clubs interaction which still doesn't feel cohesive, and I'd revisit the colour scheme. Colour is something I find genuinely difficult and I know I didn't quite land it.

Quokka started as a feature idea stemming from another app, but building it made me reflect on my own university experience. What began as a solution to a visibility problem became something I genuinely believe in — students aren't disengaged, they're just misengaged. That's a thought I'll carry into whatever I work on next.

Why Quokka?

Thinking of a name is my least favourite part of building something from scratch. There are so many options and so many ways to overthink it.

I wanted the name to reflect sociability while being easy to digest and remember. Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit are all easy to say and they stick. I wanted that.

Quokka stemmed from that idea, but it also came from the animal. If you don't know what a Quokka is, you should search them up. They're an incredibly cute and social little creature native to Western Australia, and they're always smiling. When I found out they're also considered one of the most social animals on the planet, it ticked every box. And so that's what it became.

Below is a picture of a Quokka because you shouldn't leave without seeing one

Image: James Itliong/Unsplash