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Contribution

100%

100%

Research

100%

UI Design

Product

Team:

3 Designers

Role:

Research Lead,
Product Designer

Timeline:

3 Weeks, Nov 2024

Background

ClassFinder aims to address a common problem for students seeking courses outside their home university: the need for a streamlined, centralized platform to find, compare, and transfer external courses. With ClassFinder, students can find classes across universities, compare costs, check compatibility with their schedules, and plan their academic paths more effectively.


As the Research Lead, I drove the research strategy, directed the user interviews, synthesized insights, and led usability testing to ensure design decisions were grounded in real user needs and experiences. I also was responsible for the design flow, as well as designed parts of the product UI.


Note: This project was completed for the UX Immersive Bootcamp at General Assembly and is not affiliated with ClassFindr.

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Design a unified platform where students could find and plan courses from other universities, empowering students to personalize their academic journey beyond their home institution.

The Challenge

Research

Goal:

Uncover why students do (or don’t) seek courses from other institutions.

Identify pain points in the current process, especially related to credit transfer.

Our initial step was secondary research, where we investigated student information systems (SIS) to understand the broader landscape. We studied competitors and comparator platforms like NerdWallet and Berkeley Time, exploring features we could adapt or enhance. This exploration helped us identify gaps in existing tools and provided us with a baseline understanding of what students might find useful.

Interviews

We conducted ten in-depth interviews with students aged 21 to 26. Participants were sourced with a screening survey, ensuring interviewees were either current students or recent graduates, or had recently experienced the process of credit transfer or course planning at other institutions.

Key Insights

From the Interviews, we determined that students mainly struggled with finding compatible external courses. Often, they had difficulty knowing where to start and assessing which courses were transferable, relevant, or affordable. The process was further complicated by limited resources for course comparison and schedule integration.

To synthesize our findings, we used affinity mapping to draw out common themes and challenges across the interview data. This analysis helped us form a clear picture of our typical user, which informed the creation of our main persona: Betty.

As a student pursuing higher education, I need a better way to discover and plan courses beyond my home institution because information about external options is not easily accessible.

Problem Statement

Ideation

Feature Prioritization

We identified and prioritized several features for the ClassFinder’s Minimal Viable Product (MVP) prototype:

A Course Catalog to explore available classes.

A Class Comparison tool to view and weigh options side-by-side.

A Schedule Planner for potential and current courses.

And one unique and lovable feature: A Recommendation System to suggest relevant classes based on student needs.

We used a feature prioritization matrix to keep our focus on essential user needs, saving important but secondary features like a credit tracker and advisor communication for future development.

Mid Fidelity WireFrames

Our user flow was mapped out based on Betty’s journey:

Access the dashboard for an overview of progress, recommended courses, and current schedule.

Navigate to the course catalog to search for classes that meet her academic and budgetary needs.

Compare courses to make an informed choice.

Add classes to her schedule to visualize compatibility.

Our team developed sketches independently, then collaborated to refine our concepts into a cohesive mid-fidelity prototype. This version emphasized functionality and ease of navigation, with a dashboard to surface key information at a glance, a robust course catalog with filtering options, and a comparison tool for evaluating courses.

Usability Testing

To refine the prototype, we conducted usability tests with five students, asking them to:

Review the dashboard to understand its layout.

Find and view their class schedule.

Search for specific courses.

Select classes to compare based on key attributes like price and schedule.


During testing, three main issues surfaced:

Understanding Progress: Students found the progress tracker confusing, so we reworked the copywriting.

Course Recommendations: Students wanted clarity on whether recommendations came from an algorithm or an advisor, so we included labels to distinguish between the two.

Widget Clickability: Key widgets on the dashboard were not intuitive, so we added a visual indicator that the widget was expandable.

High Fidelity WireGrames

Our final prototype incorporated a cohesive color palette, sans-serif typography, and a consistent grid system to create a modern, accessible interface. For our final branding we created:

Color Palette: A balanced mix of primary and secondary tones for readability and user guidance

Typography: DM Sans for headers and subheads

Grid System: Organized structure to support intuitive navigation

Component System: For uniform design amongst the team and pages.

A snapshot of the components created.

Final Design

From the results of the interviews, an essential next step would be improving the account registration and membership flows due to the importance of “feeling like a regular”.

It was really awesome to work on a project for a local business that contributes to the. I look forward to Versus’ continued community :)

Final User Flow: Betty’s Scenario

To illustrate our design’s usability, we demonstrated Betty’s journey:

Dashboard: Betty checks her credit progress and navigates to her schedule.

Schedule Planner: Sees an open time slot on Tuesday and searches for courses in the Course Catalog.

Filtering & Comparison: Betty filters by Child Development courses within her budget, adding suitable classes to the comparison page.

Decision: After comparing credits, time, and costs, she selects the course best for her needs and adds it to her schedule.

A walkthrough of Betty going through our final product!

ClassFindr:

Creating a Multi-campus Class Scheduler that Sparks Joy