Redefining student pathways at 116 California Community Colleges

Overview

The Academic Plan Generator is the front end of the Common Course Numbering Project.

I was the sole UX designer and researcher on this project, and also the first UX designer introduced in this machine learning heavy lab.

116

23

9

CSU

CCC

UC

This system aims to help students transfer from a California Community College to either a CSU or a UC

I had complete ownership of the design and spearheaded much of the research initiatives.

> Conducted 15 user interviews to understand the current landscape.

> Constant design iteration and weekly syncs with the director of the lab and engineers.

> Multiple rounds of usability testing conducted with 7 participants from the CCNS leadership team and students.

Picture credits: Folsum Lake College

My Learnings

This was my first time having complete ownership over the design and aim of the project. I learnt how to prioritize and juggle tasks.

I reached out to friends and colleagues in my network for user testing, which turned out to be incredibly effective in gathering valuable feedback when other emails went unanswered.

Learnt a lot about the community college scene and systems set in place in California, and how students tackle them.

It was also my first time creating an entire design system from scratch to overall enhance cohesiveness across the project.

This was such a wonderful end-to-end project I worked on. Reach out so we can talk more!

priyal_mehta@berkeley.edu