It is often the case that both students and advisors do not know all the requirements that are needed to satisfy major requirements from the top of their heads. The multiple websites or PDFs people need to consult for degree requirements are challenging to navigate, which can lead students to make errors in tracking their degree and major.

This website presents a method for Wellesley Undergraduates to plan and track their major and distribution requirements. Our tool provides Wellesley students with a clear, centralized view of their progress through pie charts and other graphical displays. Additionally, we hope this product will reduce confusion around major and distribution requirements, thereby reducing stress around choosing the right classes to stay on track for graduation.

While designing this website, we focused on creating an intuitive product that did not require tutorials to use. We prioritized simplicity, memorability, and an intuitive flow that consolidates all of a student’s degree information in one place.

It was clear from our user tests that our tool fulfilled its intended purpose and is desired by the student body at Wellesley.

Wellesley College students currently plan and/or track degree requirements utilizing PDF printouts, Google Sheets, and Workday’s APR Tracker.

The reason we need to make a change is because the current degree planning and tracking methods are difficult to maneuver, organize, and centralize, which severely complicates the Wellesley College student experience by adding cognitive overload and confusion.

Therefore, we will create a solution that enables Wellesley College Students to effectively centralize, organize, and track their four-year/three-year degree plan.

Both the design and concept of our course planner have changed over the iteration cycle of the design process. The K-script and sketch of the website are slightly different from the final product. We eliminated some features, like the "AI suggestion" to enhance and fine tune key features that were truly needed for the planner to work for users. Aside from fine tuning features, we also changed some aspects of the planner after conducting two rounds of usability testing. We gained insight from Wellesley students on how to improve our site and what to remove from it.

As described by the table below in iteration decisions, users in our first usability test were confused about various parts of the planner. They had trouble finding their major, pointed out spelling mistakes, and pointed out errors in course distributions. We took note of these issues and fixed them for our second round of usability tests.

After fixing key issues there were still some issues that remained during our second round of user testing. Although we integrated a "Done" button and added a "Progress Saved" when users entered classes, there was still visible hesitance from the users about what to do when they had finished their task.

We also found new issues. If users made a mistake entering their start year, and went back to change the year after entering classes, the entire program with their progress reset. There was confusion about where to enter classes and if it was mandatory to use the program, however, we think this confusion came from the complexity of the tasks we were conducting rather than the actual program itself.

Overall, our test’s participants, on average, rated the tool a 4.69/5 on being really easy to use. All eight participants also stated they would recommend this planner to other Wellesley students.