Classfindr
Breaking Down Academic Barriers: A Case Study on Simplifying Cross-Institution Course Planning
Deliverables
3 Product Designers
Nov 2024
Context
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.
My Contributions
Notes
The Challenge
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.
Research
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.
The Question:
Why do students take courses at other universities?
What are the challenges students face when transferring credits from external courses?
Current process to take cross-campus courses without Classfindr.
Milestones
Interviews:
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
Recently experienced the process of credit transfer or course planning at other institutions.
Key Insights
Students mainly struggled with finding compatible external courses at all, or simply did not know the option was available to them.
Limited resources for course comparison and schedule integration.
Students had resource constraints such as costs, location, and transferability.
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.
Solutioning
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.
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.
Ideation
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.
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.
Final Designs
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.
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.
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.