3. Contents
overview
expected features
aesthetics & functionality
users
pricing
advertising
customer retention
the future & engagement
survey
results
website
1
executive summary
what the app will do
initial UI mockups
who will use it
price of the app
how it will be promoted
why people will continue to use it
upgrades & user engagement
understanding our users
end of semester implementation
schedulebuilder.ca
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4. Every semester, 30,000 U of C students use PeopleSoft to search, plan and
schedule their courses. However, PeopleSoft is an outdated system that is
difficult to use and offers a poor user experience. Furthermore, all the
information needed by students to efficiently plan their course schedules
(required courses, course descriptions, professor ratings, recommended
courses, etc.) are scattered throughout various websites. All of these factors
force the course scheduling process to become a lengthy arduous affair, but
it doesn’t have to be.
The goal of Schedule Builder is to make course planning and scheduling
easy and intuitive. The app will provide all the resources and data needed for
students to plan their semesters effectively. This includes course details,
course descriptions, prerequisites and prof ratings. One of the major
features of the app is automatic schedule generation. A student will be able
to generate all possible semester schedules based on a set of selected
courses.
To assess the market validity of our app, we have identified multiple potential
revenue streams, such as in-app purchases, advertising and tuition royalties.
While the first iteration of the app will be targeted towards U of C students,
this model has global scalability as the majority of post-secondary
institutions have similar scheduling challenges.
Overview
Fadi
Boros
Tiffany
Wun
2
Sasha
Ivanov
Martin
Kusch
Jorge
Gomez
Nikita
Ryzhenkov
5. Schedule Builder will be a tab-based app, where each tab contains a set of
functionality that helps students explore courses and plan their schedules.
Features
The Featured tab will contain carefully curated lists of courses that can help
students explore the thousands of courses that U of C has to offer. The
names and descriptions of courses can sometimes be vague about the
course content. Therefore, the curated lists will provide accurate and
descriptive names that highlight the true nature of those courses. For
example: “Easy A’s”, “Learn Software”, “Lab Work”, etc.
Featured
The Courses tab will be a simple list view of all the courses offered at the U
of C. Each course will be categorized by faculty so the user can browse the
list more efficiently. The user will also be able to search the entire list by
course name or topic and receive real time results. They can tap on any
course to see more details such as: course description, the prof teaching
the course, etc.
Courses
The Schedules tab allows the user to generate a course schedule based on
a set of selected courses. By using a scheduling algorithm, the tool will be
able to quickly inform the user whether the selected courses will fit together
in one semester or not. If so, it will show the user details about the schedule,
allow the user to edit it and save the schedule for later viewing.
Schedules
The Favorites tab will simply show a list of all the courses that the user has
favorited in the past.
Favorites
The Me tab contains user settings such as: school, major, concentration and
minor. This data is used in the Featured tab for course recommendations.
Me
3
6. 3
Aesthetics & Functionality
Some schools may have a logo that is too light to maintain legible text in the
app. To address this issue, a simple dark grey theme will be applied
throughout the application to maintain a balanced contrast between text
and the white app background.
After the initial welcome page, the app will ask for the student’s university
login information to authenticate their enrolment. The user is then guided
through an optional setup process. This setup will be used to build curated
suggestions for students based on their current university program. In order
to respect the user’s privacy, the setup is completely optional however,
specific suggestions may not be available when these steps are skipped.
Setup
Upon the first launch of the app, the user will be welcomed with the option
to select the university they are attending to load their school’s appropriate
courses. The entire experience is curated to the university’s official colours
and will guide the overall theme of the app. While this document is based on
the University of Calgary experience, other example schemes can be seen
below.
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7. The setup mirrors many of the standard iOS setup screens each Apple
owner performs after updating their device. This guarantees a familiar
experience for every student who uses the app. Some setup steps will be
unnecessary at launch, such as the Authenticate Enrolment screen.
Authenticate Enrolment Request Setup Pick Major
Pick Minor Pick a semester to start with Final Setup Screen
5
8. Once the setup is complete, the user is brought into a familiar tab view
interface with the Featured tab selected. This
section of the app was inspired by the clean
structure of the iOS App Store. It will suggest
courses for students based on the program they
are currently enrolled in making the course
discovery process an easier experience than it ever
has been in the past.
Along the left side of the navigation bar, there is a
Term button. This button will be used to switch
between semesters, reflecting the set of associated
courses in the app. In the upper right hand corner a
search field is also available. It will have the ability to
search for course numbers, course names,
professors and descriptions. Both buttons are
along the navigation bar because it is important for the user to have quick
access to these functions while browsing the app at any given time.
Featured
CoursesThe Courses tab is a
simple place to find all
of the courses offered in
a particular semester.
Like the Featured tab,
the top navigation bar
also contains both a
Term and Search button
that perform the same
functions as specified
above. A student first
selects a subject, then a
c o u r s e n u m b e r t o
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Courses
9. continue to a specific course page.
The red disclosure arrows to the
right of the text informs the user
that there is more content when the
list item is tapped. Course numbers
are shown when possible because
many students recognize classes by
t h e i r c o u r s e n u m b e r w h e n
searching for a prerequisite.
Once a course is selected, either in
the Featured or Courses section of
the app, the student is brought to
that course’s page. This page
includes a description of the course,
prerequisites, lecture/tutorial times,
and professor ratings. The heart on
the right side of the navigation bar
allows students to favourite a
specific course for building their
schedule. By default, the heart is
unfilled however, will be filled in
when tapped indicating the course
has been favorited. Specific lectures
may also be favorited with the
corresponding heart icon to the
right of the lecture.
To avoid confusion between
interactive and non-interactive
elements, each interactive element
on this page is highlighted in the
school’s official colour. This
distinction can be found throughout
the entire app, however is especially
important on the course page due
to the high density of information.
Once the user picks their favourite
courses, they can use these
Favorites to build a schedule. This
ability can be found under the
Schedules tab in the centre of the
bottom tab bar. This tab contains
previously made schedules and the
option to create a new schedule.
Schedules
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10. Each schedule on the page displays the schedule’s title on the top of the
window and the courses that are used in the schedule appear just below.
Full course names and numbers are listed as a subtitle as there is insufficient
space in the visualization for display. Along the left side of the schedule box
are the start and end times of the schedule. Finally, rounded rectangles with
course numbers represent the actual schedule data in a browsable format.
Tapping on the schedule shows a more detailed screen and opens the edit
view to adjust the schedule and browse schedule details. Tapping the plus
button in the upper right corner of the screen reveals the New Schedule
Screen. This screen slides in from the bottom of the screen on top of the tab
interface. From here, students have the option to build a new schedule from
scratch at the top of the list or pick an automatically suggested schedule
based on courses the student has favorited. Once a schedule template is
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11. selected, favorited courses will appear along the bottom two thirds of the
screen. Tapping a course will expand the menu to reveal lecture and tutorial
options with their respective professors. The schedule at the top of the
screen updates as the student selects various courses. Icons next to the
lecture and tutorials also show the course’s status. When the course is not
selected and is available, an empty grey icon is visible. When a specific
lecture or tutorial is tapped on, the icon turns green with a check mark in the
centre. If a course does not fit into the current schedule, the icon turns red
with an x to indicate it conflicts with another selected course. Once all
classes are selected, the Save button may be tapped and the user is
returned to the Schedules tab with their new schedule.
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12. The Favorites tab displays a list of favorited
courses and lectures. Tapping a course will
bring the user to the course page. Favorites
can be removed by tapping the Edit button
in the upper right corner of the screen or by
swiping on the course to reveal a delete
icon. This remove process is consistent
with other apps across iOS. The Term
button is also present on this screen to
switch between semesters. This button
may be removed as students may want to
use favorites across semesters.
Favorites
The Me tab is essentially a settings section
where the user can switch the school they
are enrolled in, their major, concentration,
or minor. Each option in the list brings the
student back to the appropriate setup
page to change their major. Switching
schools will reset the entire app to its initial
setup state. This is necessary because
favorited courses will not be applicable at a
new school as classes vary between
institutions. A warning popup will appear
twice to confirm the user wants to reset the
app. The app can also be reset by tapping
the Clear All Data button at the bottom of
the screen.
Me
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13. Our primary demographic is university students, who will use this app to
discover and schedule courses. In the first version of Schedule Builder,
users are limited to those within the University of Calgary. There are 30,000
students at the U of C, which is still a viable user base to draw from. As
every student has to go through PeopleSoft to register their courses, they
understand the inconvenience of user-unfriendly software for an important
academic task. We hope that our app can provide users with a tool to make
course discovery and scheduling easier than it has been in the past. In
future iterations of Schedule Builder, we would like to attract additional
university students from other schools by enabling them to see course
information specific to their school.
Users
University Students
A secondary group of users in the future may be university administrators.
As the university population adopts Schedule Builder, administrators will see
the benefit of a user-friendly app and will become interested in integrating
this new solution into the registration process. This would allow the current
PeopleSoft web application to be replaced with a more effective solution for
students and administrators.
University Administrators
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14. Pricing
We explored various business models and decided on the Tuition Royalty
model described below.
Pros
• Cheap for student
• Student keeps app forever
1. Pay for the App
Students pay a one time fee and keep the app forever.
Students already have enough school fees to pay. While our app is helpful,
students may not be able to afford the app or will just deal with a worse
experience using free systems. New students will buy the app each
semester, however existing students who have purchased the app only pay
once throughout their school career.
Cons
• Price may deter student
• Max one payment per user
Pros
• Free for student
• Student keeps app forever
2. Advertisements
The app is free to download and ads are placed throughout the app.
This business model seems perfect for students because it’s free. However,
even the best placed ads feel intrusive and tend to ruin the overall app
experience. An option to pay once to remove ads is a potential solution to
this problem. That being said, mobile ads do not pay as well as other
business models since one view typically only returns a fraction of a cent.
Cons
• Ads are annoying
• Ads have minimal profit
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15. Pros
• Reoccurring revenue
• Free to try the app
3. In-App Purchases
The app is free to download and students pay to unlock features.
In-App purchases allow the student to try the app out (maybe for one
semester or a schedule) and then pay to unlock more features. However,
this approach does not change the fact that students do not have the
money to pay for schedule building in the first place. This approach may be
misleading as the app appears “free” initially.
Cons
• Expensive for student
• Could be seen as greedy
Pros
• Reoccurring revenue
• App appears free
• Charge more per user
4. Tuition Royalty (Our Model)
The app is free to download, the cost is embedded in student tuition.
The tuition royalty deal is perfect for this app because the cost of the app is
simply embedded in the student’s tuition. A dollar spent in the App Store
could be perceived as expensive. Five dollars of extra tuition, for example,
will not. The method ensures that our company has a quarterly cash flow
while making the app accessible to all students at an institution.
The only challenge of this model is negotiating an agreement with the
university itself. Tuition fees are already high and are regulated by the
government. Therefore, the exact cost the university would pay is still to be
determined. That being said, even if each of U of C’s 30,000 students
allocated 20¢ of their tuition into the app next Fall semester, the business
would make $6,000. The Winter semester has the potential to double that
number to $12,000, and the Spring and Summer combined could triple it to
$18,000/year. This number also has growth potential as other schools join.
Embedded tuition costs will vary amongst institutions.
Cons
• requires university
partnership
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16. To accelerate the adoption rate of our app we have
identified several promotion strategies. One
potential strategy is to show U of C admin and the
SU executives how intuitive our app is and how
beneficial it is to students. Then they can help us
promote it to all the students through U of C / SU
websites, news articles, newsletters, etc. The
maker of DNDN (a current web-based schedule
building alternative) has also offered to promote
our app on his website once it is built.
Another promotion strategy is to use social
media advertisements and word of mouth. Almost all
students currently use some form of social media. We can use Facebook
advertising to heavily promote our app during the beginning of every
semester. As fourth year students at the University of Calgary, we can
promote the app to friends and other students who will directly and indirectly
promote the app. Networking is a proven and successful marketing strategy
used by many other companies on campus such as Yik Yak.
Advertising
The University of Calgary has not initiated any enhancements to PeopleSoft
for over a decade. Students are therefore forced to use an inefficient,
outdated scheduling system, and will continue to look for better solutions.
Each semester students need to register for classes and build customized
schedules. We will provide updated course listings, enabling students to
plan their semesters accordingly. New features will also be added to our app
over time to keep current users interested while attracting new university
students. These enhancements will be described in the next section.
Customer Retention
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17. The Future & Engagement
There are various expansion routes for the app. This roadmap for updates is
listed in the order of importance for the business’s future.
1. Android App
The app must be cross platform if students are paying for
the app through their tuition. According to
iphoneincanada.ca, iOS and Android make up over
75% of Canada’s national cellphone market. This
number is likely much higher for university students
as younger people tend to adopt new technologies
at a faster rate. That being said, much of the user
interface would need to be redesigned to fit within the
Google ecosystem.
2. Expand to Other Schools
While the University of Calgary is a great starting point, expanding to other
schools across the country has the potential help a broader student
population and increase our quarterly profit. Once the app is launched at U
of C, other schools may gain interest as students often network between
schools. Expansion would only occur if the app is a success at U of C
otherwise, the product does not return a sufficient profit to continue
development.
3. Book Store Integration
Students spend hundreds of dollars on textbooks each year. To simplify the
textbook purchasing process, the app could integrate
with both the University’s local book store and
various online sources. Each book purchased
through the app would give the business a royalty.
Textbook prices could also help students determine
what lectures to take and save money each semester.
15
18. 4. iPad App
Apps on iPad are beautiful. The
schedule building app was
originally designed for smartphones
to make the app more accessible to
students. That being said, the expanded screen
real estate on the iPad is more suited for schedule
building. While it would be a great opportunity to optimize the app for
tablets, students have fewer iPads compared to smartphones. iPhone apps
(while unoptimized) can run on an iPad as well, as a current alternative.
6. Progress Visualization
Data visualizations often help people better understand complicated data.
An educational progress visualization could help students stay on track
throughout their academic
career. Data that could be
potentially visualized includes
GPA, acquired courses, fulfilled
degree requirements, and more.
Adding a visualization to the app
would increase its overall value
and keep students engaged
throughout the semester.
5. Deeper University Integration
Currently, the only data the app uses to recommend courses is the student’s
major and minor. By building a closer relationship with the university, the app
could use data such as course availability to recommend more appropriate
classes. The app could also access student specific data such as the
courses they have already taken to suggest new courses based on fulfilled
prerequisites.
current U of C degree navigator visualization
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19. Survey
To better understand our user’s current schedule building experience, we
posted a voluntary online survey for university students. Below we'll go over
each question’s results.
17
1. What school are you currently attending?
This initial question helped us ensure that the
majority our data came from University of Calgary
students. We also allowed students from other
universities go through the survey as we wanted
to find out if other schools had similar schedule
building challenges. Participants who stated the
were not currently enrolled in a post secondary
institution were taken to the end of the survey. In
total, we had 85% (120) U of C students respond.
85%
120 U of C Students
2. What program are you currently enrolled in?
We posted the survey in many places across the
web including U of C’s Reddit page, our personal
Facebook pages, and popular U of C Facebook
pages such as U of C Confessions. In the end,
we found that 21.7% of students declared they
were enrolled in a Computer Science program.
This may create somewhat of a biased
response. In the future we would like to gain
support from the SU to reach out to students
across other faculties.
3. What year of study are you in?
A student’s year of study can also help us understand a user’s familiarity
with the current schedule building system. 18% of students stated they were
in their 1st year, 18% in second year, 15% in third year, 32% fourth year,
14% fifth year, and 2% as grad students.
20. 4. What devices do you currently own?
18
To ensure we targeted the correct platform(s) in the future, we wanted to
know what devices university students own.
iPhone Android Windows
41% 57% 1%
iPad Android Windows
24% 12% 9%
Mac
39%
Windows
66%
Other
2%
21. 19
5. What tools do you use to build your school schedule?
We felt it was important to know what tools students use now, to ensure
Schedule Builder included a better alternative.
University Website Rate My Prof Excel
88% 65% 14%
Paper Other
35% 11%
Since this Survey was open to
students attending other schools,
we excluded DNDN. However,
students indicated they used
DNDN under the “Other” option.
6. How much total time did you spend building this semester's
school schedule?
As it turns out, students spend a ton of time building their schedule. Over
half of students spend over an hour building their schedule each semester.
Over one-third of students spend over two hours!
22%
14%
25%
25%
9%
5%
0 Minutes (Automatically Generated)
Less than 30 Minutes
Less than 1 Hour
Less than 2 Hours
Less than 3 Hours
Over 3 Hours
22. 7. How easy was it to find interesting courses that fit into your
school schedule?
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This question was created to better understand how difficult current
schedule building solutions are perceived to be. Just under half of students
responded that is somewhat difficult to difficult for them.
8. Should your school implement a better schedule building
solution?
17%30%38%14%
Easy Somewhat Easy Somewhat Difficult Difficult
Simply put, we wanted to find out if
students wanted their university to
improve it’s schedule building
technology. So, we asked. Over 80%
of students responded that their
university should implement a better
schedule building solution.
18%
82%
Yes
No
9. Why are you dissatisfied with the school's current schedule
building solution?
If respondents stated they were dissatisfied in question 8, we asked why
they were dissatisfied. We could then use these answers to build an app
that creates a solution to these problems.
73% 51%62% 44%64% 38%
4%
too difficult to
navigate, poor
user interface
information
in too many
s e p a r a t e
places
t o o m u c h
time to fit
courses into
a schedule
too much
time to find
courses
difficult
to find
p r o f
ratings
lack of
mobile
version
other
23. 21
10. How much would you pay for a better solution?
Asking students how much they would like to pay was a mistake. Most
participants viewed this questions as us personally charging them, and
stated that the University should provide a better schedule building service
to students for free due to their high tuition costs. While this question was
misleading, it did confirm that approaching the University for a partnership is
the right business strategy to take.
11%8%4%9%25%44%
< $1 < $5 < $10 < $20 < $50 other
11. Is there anything else you would like to say?
To end the survey we provided a text field where participants could share
any other thoughts. Some of the most interesting responses are below.
Built in scheduling is terrible. However, a free tool (dndn) exists that makes this
much easier. Don't see why I would have to pay additional money for this as easy
class scheduling should be a given, not an extra
I don't do my building on
mobile, and will never do
something that requires
detailed work on mobile. I
need something that helps me
multi task, because I need to
find classes that are interesting
from different faculties. Then I
look for the times.
Needs to offer classes that
would help more with real
life than teaching us theory
all day.
Make one for high schools.
Your survey is poorly
designed and your results
will be questionable. Get a
soci prof to look over it
next time.
Usable software shouldn't cost students anything;
why should we pay for the university's inability to
recognize useless software?
We are already
implementing
this solution in
android. May
the best product
w i n . ( M a y b e
ours? ;) )
24. 3
Results
Setup
While the initial mockups included a comprehensive setup section, our end
of semester implementation includes a simple welcome screen. Setup is not
necessary in this version of the app as selecting setup options does not
change the way the app works. In the future, with a University partnership,
student login support and other setup screens would be added. These
screen are ready to be connected in the project’s storyboard.
While much shorter, the final version of the setup has a similar look and feel
compared to the initial UI mockups. Only minor additions need to be made
in the future in order to implement more options. Once a student taps Get
Started they are welcomed with the Featured page.
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UI Mockup Final Version
25. Featured
Before developing the Featured tab even further, a
second mockup was created (on the left). This
second mockup includes high quality icons (from
www.flaticon.com) and a new Recommend a
Course button at the bottom of the screen. This
button would allow students to tell us what their
favourite are and get them featured on the page!
This mockup also includes some solid examples of
featured categories. We discovered U of C has
many courses on Video Games and that this page
could also help promote new, lesser known,
courses.
Our final implementation of the Featured tab is
much different. Currently this section contains a
specialized list view. Featured categories are
displayed next to each other along the top on the
UI, and their respective
groupings of courses are
displayed below. Users can swipe left and right
across the top to switch categories. While tapping
on a course in these lists currently does nothing,
we would like to add the ability to take users to
respectively selected course pages.
This version of the Featured tab does the bare
minimum of displaying featured courses. However,
it doesn’t feel fun enough to ship in the final
product. The Featured tab was designed to be a
place for students to explore courses. Right now, it
simply feels like another list in the app. Next, we’ll
explore another list-based experience.
UI Mockup
Final Version
23
26. The Courses tab stays true to many of the initial mockup’s overall goals while
supporting a concrete backend. On the surface, it provides a place for
students to search for every course the University has to offer. Behind the
scenes, our servers maintain a comprehensive database of each course that
is updated every day. Since course data is stored offsite, the app currently
requires an internet connection to load the data. In the future, we would like to
add some type of cache to
keep data local.
Course pages display nearly
all of the content specified in
the initial design mockups.
Course descriptions, lecture
times, lab & tutorial times,
and the favourite button are
all present. We decided to
remove professor ratings as
the U of C would not be able
to display them (due to rating
validity) in the final version of
the app. If a partnership was
developed with the University,
we would include USRI
ratings instead. Currently,
prof names also do not
appear due to a bug. Finally,
a button to Hide Tutorials &
Labs was added that will
shrink each grey box to filter
through large lists of tutorial
and lab offerings.
Courses
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UI Mockup
UI Mockup Final Version
Final Version
27. Schedules
The schedules tab is one of
the biggest “wow” moments
of our app. After favouriting
courses, users can build
their semester schedules
from a generated template,
or from scratch. Throughout
t h e s e m e s t e r w e
redeveloped the schedule
b u i l d i n g b a c k e n d t o
generate a wider range of
a u t o m a t i c s c h e d u l e
suggestions. Please note
that due to a bug, this
currently only works when
two courses are favourited.
To edit these schedules,
users can tap various lecture
and tutorial sections below a
mini schedule visualization.
Invalid options in the list are
greyed out as sections are
selected.
Once a schedule is built, students can save their creation and refer back to
it later. Currently there is no way to edit a schedule once it is created.
However, it is possible to view schedule details by tapping on them in the
Schedules tab. We would like the add the ability edit, duplicate and delete
schedules in the future as its feels like a core part of the app. With that being
said, despite some UI bugs this section of the app feels incredibly close to a
final shippable product.
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UI Mockup
UI Mockup Final Version
Final Version
28. Nearly all features of the
Favourites tab were
implemented. Students
can browse courses they
have previously favourited,
and unfavourite courses
by using the standard iOS
swipe to delete method.
Tapping on a favourite in
the list takes users back to
its respective course page.
One feature that could be
added is the Edit button. This would allow students to unfavourite multiple
courses at a time, and clearly communicate that this list is editable to users.
Favorites
26
UI Mockup Final Version
The Me tab has been renamed to become the Settings tab. We found that
using a me naming convention caused some confusion for users as it felt like
there may be some
social-networking and
user profile features in the
app. Other than the name
change, this section of
the app is simply a UI
placeholder waiting for full
implementation to be
added. Selecting any
option does not currently
change how the app
behaves. Clear All Data
was also removed.
Me Settings
29. Website
We purchased www.schedulebuilder.ca. The current website acts as a
promotional splash page with our app logo and contact information. We feel
like we have created something wonderful, but are not ready to share the
entire design with the world quite yet.
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While further optimizations could still be made, the website is also
responsive to mobile browsers.
30. O n c e t h e a p p i s
launched, the website
will be transformed into
a place for users to
learn about the app
a n d g e t s u p p o r t
through video tutorials
and user manuals.
28
