Politecnico di Torino is one of the few italian universities having an internal Information Technology department, and this allows creating and maintaining a set of customized products and solutions. The goal of this thesis is to experiment a novel development methodology, whereby the development process of a student-facing set of functionalities (bundled in the official mobile app) is conducted in an open framework, for the first time. The new version of the official Student App is being developed as an open source project, with a user centered approach in design and development. Students are involved throughout the lifecycle of the product, both as product designers and developers, and in testing of the various prototypes.