In the departmental council of the FHP, the members voted in 2019 for the realignment of the course selection system in the Design department. As part of this, we advocated for an expansion of the course catalog (VVZ) to optimize both the search for courses and enrollment in them for new students – something many of our fellow students had wished for since the beginning of their studies.
To ensure these functions, we wanted to develop a web tool that automatically pulls data from the course catalog and the communication platform Incom of the Design department. Under the guiding question of how first-year students can be helped to choose suitable courses, we started the project with user testing on the current course catalog.
Participants were given tasks (e.g., searching for courses) and were asked during the process which information was really relevant at that moment, at what point they felt overwhelmed, or how they would rate a function that was not present in the current directory. Based on the screen recordings along with the simultaneous recording from the MacBook camera and notes from the interviews, we had an extensive empirical observation catalog. Building on that, we were able to hold an equally extensive ideation workshop where we aligned prejudices, assumptions, and observations to develop and test the first prototype.
In the first stage, the goal is to get through an initial long-term test to see whether the tool is accepted at all and whether it can actually solve the problems of first-year students. Accordingly, communication should now also be adjusted to establish the tool widely among students.
An extension would provide for setting the courses marked in the course planner into a reciprocally automated relationship with the course links in incom. However, this would be an intervention in the IT network and therefore neither desired nor possible to implement. Nevertheless, it is now a unique opportunity to convince the department of our tool and to have a positive stance towards further developments in course selection within incom.