Course Project

SCAD Degree Planner

SCAD Degree
Planner

Information revamp and aesthetic update of our Degree Planner, now enhanced with AI functionality.

Index

Overview

Research

Design Process

Final Design

Conclusion

The Current SCAD degree planner is facing various issues that hinder students with their academic journey. These issue include inaccurate course information, limited customization options, and a lack of integration with real-time academic data.

My Roles

Duration

My Roles



Duration

Methods

Prototyping, UI Design, Interaction Design, Motion Design

10 Weeks

Challenge

The overall usability of the SCAD Degree Planner leaves much to be desired. While it shows promise in certain areas, there are several key issues that hinder the user experience.

Research

Competitive Analysis

Based on our competitive analysis, we identified key areas where our competitors were lacking and discovered opportunities to differentiate our product design and strategy.

Survey Insights

Surveyed the student body to acquire valuable insights and make informed decisions. We found students did not regularly rely on the SCAD Degree planner in it's current state.

Interview Insights

Personas & Storyboards

I constructed personas & storyboards to better understand the challenges and pain points of our stakeholders.

Sarah King represents our understanding of dedicated students seeking to enhance their academic journey through a more efficient degree planner.

Jess is a Success Advisor at SCAD, dedicated to understanding and addressing the needs of students.

Storyboards post redesign

Design Process

Wireframes

Survey and interview insights indicated that a SCAD Degree Planner redesign necessitated three key improvements. The current design faces issues with lack of customization, inconsistent aesthetics, and insufficient user guidance.

Plans page

(Course Sequencing)

Worksheets page

(Student Information & Completion)

Worksheets page

(Student Information & Completion)

What-if page w/ AI integration

Our starting point for the what-if page was a minor redesign, maintaining its original functionality. Straightforward with a simple tool to check course options. However, we saw an opportunity to elevate this program's design to truly empower students with the integration of AI.

User Testing

Worksheets page

We found some displayed information wasn't relevant and moved it to a dropdown menu. We improved the visibility of class completion status and icons, and added a clear key to help students understand class status indicators.

What-if(AI integration) page

During usability testing, students found the AI interface unclear. We revised the design to better indicate conversational input and added suggestions to encourage student interaction.

Final Design

Outcome

The redesign significantly improved both user experience and overall product performance.

Using insights from our primary and secondary research, we identified and resolved critical pain points, enhancing the Degree Planner's functionality and interaction design.

Worksheets page

Our worksheets page features an elevated and highly communicative design.

Plans page

Upon selecting  a class students now have convenient access to relevant course information.

What-if (AI integration) page

With the integration of AI, students can now confidently acquire a greater depth of knowledge and flexibly tailor their degree plan to their needs.

Conclusion

During this project, my primary responsibility was to lead the UX design initiatives. As well as leveraging robust interaction design techniques. To ensure that the redesign and concept fully met the requirements and effectively fulfill the needs of students.

About 3 months post redesign the servicer who SCAD uses updated the design of the SCAD Degree Planner. Their redesign was very validating to our design thinking and research decisions. Their redesign follows very similar design solutions we had also delivered. Here are some examples.