Hero pattern · #3 priority
Friends Discovery
Today the flagship Make Connections surface shows one card at a time. No stack, no swipe, no momentum. This pattern replaces it with a scrollable feed where every card carries a richer story (bio, shared topics, mutuals, proof-of-life, admit stage) and the student can browse without leaving the screen.
Before
Make Connections
Recommended friend for you
Hayden Peck
Hi! I'm Hayden and I'm from Toledo, Ohio! I plan to major in Biology 🐤 I love the outdoors and alwa...
Students interested in Lenoir-Rhyne University
With Environmental Science major
Aaron Dorbu
4 topics in common
M'kya Delts
1 topic in common
Annik Wedd
2 topics in common
With similar interests
Zanoree Flemming
Madison Lindsay
Alex Briggs
Current state · 01_friends-recommended (above + below fold)
After
People for you
Ryan A.
YouClass of 2030 · Cincinnati, OH
That's you in the room. Wave at someone to start a thread.
Towson · Class of 2030
Maya R.
Plants taking over my apartment, sneakerhead, way too many film cameras.
“anyone else doing the early-arrival housing thing? i need a roommate that does the dishes”, 2d ago
Towson · Class of 2028 · Student ambassador
Sofia Vargas
Sophomore. Resident advisor in Glen. Happy to answer anything about move-in or first-year housing.
“reminder for incoming first-years: housing reply is due Friday at 5. DM me if your portal is weird.”, 1d ago
Also going to Towson
5 studentsStack of cards, school switcher, Wave + proof-of-life
Honest-degrade variant. When a school doesn't have enough fresh peers, the feed says so: “Showing fewer peers, and saying so. We'd rather show fewer than show stale.” No padding with stale profiles.
Design decisions
- A feed, not a single card. Multiple cards on screen let the student browse. ZeeMee gets a signal-rich scroll surface to learn who each student pauses on.
- Photography leads.Each card opens with a full-width portrait and a gradient-overlaid identity strip. That puts the mood board's “real students, real voices” energy on every row.
- Proof-of-life on the card. The “🔥 Posted 2d ago” badge plus a one-line excerpt from the actual last post separates real people from marketing avatars. Stale profiles fall out of the ranking.
- Wave is the ice-breaker. One tap. Sends a templated intro. The audit named the dual-CTA card (Follow / Say hi) as visually heavy and emotionally hedged. Wave commits to a single low-stakes action.
- Status and ambassadors are honest.An admit-stage pill confirms cohort context. The verified ambassador badge keeps the trust line clean (“not admissions, just remembers being on this side of the screen”).
- One adaptive filter row.A single row carries the current school as a context pill (only when the student has 2+ schools) followed by intent chips — Shared interests, Potential roommates, Verified ambassadors. WHERE and WHO no longer compete: tap the school pill to switch cohorts; tap an intent chip to refine within. Single-school students never see chrome they don't need.