University of Washington Visual Degree Planner

As current UW students at the time, and as we had discussed with our fellow students, we found that the general consensus for the current UW degree checking system to be fairly hard to use. From our few questions that we asked in our class, as well as our own research outside of class, we found that students used the degree system mostly when they were trying to register for classes or when they wanted to see their progress in their degree. Our research showed that the students found the text-heavy document hard to read and even harder to discern what classes they needed to take next.

After all this research, we knew our painpoints. Students needed actionable data quickly in order to register for their classes. They needed a quick overview of what their degree status was like, and they didn't care that much to go into the classes they had completed. Using this data, we designed a visual degree system that allowed students to visually toggle their classes and see what they had remaining for their degree. In this case, we used the Informatics degree, since we couldn't get access to the UW API. After some rudimentary testing with some students in the class, we found that students wanted to also know what was being offered that quarter, so they could easily find which classes they needed and see what was being offered. With this in mind, we added color coding and pulsing for the classes, so that students could easily see what was being offered, what was required, and what classes they could take in the major.

Two students we tested with even asked if we planned to make a version for their majors. So we've got that going for us. Unfortunately, it stops at the Informatics major.