Loyola New Orleans
USC App
My Role
Product Designer, Project Lead
Team
+
Greer Jines
Loyola University's University Sports Complex serves students, faculty, and the surrounding community as an established health club and sports event center in the heart of uptown New Orleans.
Club usage at Loyola suffers because members can't easily find information, locate the facility, or feel a sense of community. The University Sports Complex (USC) app solves this by centralizing key information, improving discoverability, and fostering connection, helping students, faculty, and neighborhood members get more out of their gym.
Problem
People want to use the USC, but they don't know where to start
Members want to use the gym but struggle to find basic information, navigate the facility, and feel unmotivated to get involved.
Scattered communication, a confusing layout, being on the 5th floor of a parking garage, and limited awareness of what the USC offers all get in the way.
Outside of the parking garage that houses the USC on its 5th and 6th floors.
"Closed" sign on the USC doors.
Goal
Centralize gym information, clarify availability, and connect members to athletics and events so everyone can get the most out of the USC.
The Research
Interviewing students and USC workers
To begin, we spoke with a mix of students, USC workers, athletes, and non-athletes to understand how people currently find information about the gym and what holds them back from using it more.
Loyola students walking to class.
Key Findings
No one had a reliable way to find basic USC information, regardless of gym familiarity.
Pool information was the most requested — especially by non-student members.
Most members were unaware that USC offered exercise classes or personal training.
Non-athletes had no clear way to discover Wolf Pack athletics or intramural sports events.
Meet Jeremy, our guiding user persona
Jeremy
20 years old, Biology Pre-Med Major
Lives at Cabra Hall, on the Law Campus
Living on Loyola’s secondary campus, Jeremy finds commuting and exercising at USC a hassle and, like most students, doesn’t know anything about Loyola’s sports.
Jeremy’s feelings about the gym
Annoyed due to large gym crowds
He commutes to the gym only to find the weight room closed or at capacity.
Lacking confidence for exploring the gym facility
Without guidance, he's worried he'll wander into an off-limits area.
Curious but unmotivated about school athletics
Never attends sports because he doesn't know enough to feel comfortable going.
Upset when he commutes, but can't enter when forgetting his student ID
He misplaces his ID a lot, so he can’t always get into the gym.
Iteration
Going from research to design
Meeting twice weekly and using our research and persona to guide us, our team worked to draw out wireframes and finally build out our prototype for testing.
Our proposed solution included a USC event calendar, interactive facility map, and dynamic gym information and notifications.
Sorted sticky notes from research and interviews + Wireframes
User Testing with Prototypes
App users desired a more personalized experience
Users showed that they didn’t want to see information about every event, exercise classes, or all 22 sports teams. It was too much for things they weren’t always interested in.
So we created a personalized weekly calendar, easily modified by starring favorite events and classes, to only see what you actually care about.
After testing we allowed users to select favorites, so they only see what matters to them.
The Final App
We presented our final app to our professors and peers and received feedback of “I didn’t know that we had that!” or “We have [insert sport here]???”.
Activities offered across the University Sports Complex.
Stay updated on USC events
A home weekly schedule mirrors Loyola's weekly sports newsletter (“This Week in the Wolf Pack”) with a broader monthly view available, giving users a personalized overview of upcoming games, events, and USC updates for their favorites.
Leave your ID at home
With your Campus Wide ID or USC member ID, use your phone as your gym pass.
Find all USC answers in one place
Still lookin'?
:)
© Ella Balhoff 2026