Davis Cattlelog
Simplifying course registration for students at UC Davis.
OVERVIEW
Cattlelog serves as a centralized resource hub that aims to provide reliable course information and recommend classes based on desired degree requirements for UC Davis students. Course instruction quality, appeal of curriculum, course difficulty, course workload, and other relevant metrics will be provided by Cattlelog through student-written reviews and ratings.
THE PROBLEM
There is a lack of resources available to UC Davis students regarding instruction and course quality, with word-of-mouth being the main source of acquiring knowledge. Outside of Rate My Professor and Reddit, students at UC Davis do not have access to crowdsourced, qualitative information that is useful for schedule building, and may miss out on discovering relevant or interesting courses that help work toward their degree. A more intuitive and data-driven approach can significantly improve the decision-making process for students.
APPROACH
USER RESEARCH
My team conducted user research to get a better sense of the types of site features that students needed. The responses generated from our survey revealed that students wanted faster filtering options to help narrow down the search for classes, as well as insight on professors in the form of average ratings and reviews, which allow students to make better-informed decisions when it comes to choosing classes. Grade distribution data was another highly-requested feature due to students' lack of access to these records.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
MID-FIDELITY
I drafted mid-fidelity wireframes of each page with the goal of keeping cognitive overload to a minimum while displaying all features necessary for course searching. With this in mind, I decided to implement a fixed filter bar to make the main search page more scannable. This allowed users to see the immediate refining of courses while selecting specific course requirements.
HI-FIDELITY
My hi-fi designs were driven by my goal to help students efficiently refine their searching and save time by narrowing down search results to the courses and professors best suited to their needs. The addition of components such as tags to identify professors teaching in the next quarter, graphics to display overall ratings and difficulty rating, interactive buttons, as well as the intentional placement of color all work together to deliver relevant academic information to students, allowing them to make better-informed decisions about their prospective schedules.
Products that deal with content such as academic information tend to be text-heavy, so I focused on cleaning up my desktop designs to reduce visual overload before transitioning to a mobile interface. I rearranged the compositions of each page in my mobile designs by splitting the main page into three distinct collapsible units, which provides users with more intentional flows to follow.
Because the UC Davis' colors are a shade of blue and gold, I decided to use a similar color palette to create the impression that Cattlelog is meant to be used as a university resource.
MARKETING
GRAPHICS AND FLYERS
The week before our marketing push, I designed flyers that would be used to promote our product, concentrating on enhancing our branding and graphics. Because our product's logo is a cow wearing a top hat and monocle, I decided to incorporate the chain of that monocle in my poster designs, using it as a playful graphic element to "lasso" the contents of the flyers together.
MARKETING INITIATIVES
For our first marketing strategy, my team and I took to tabling in high traffic areas of our university's campus, handing out flyers and pitching our product to students and university staff who stopped by to listen.
IMPACT
ANALYTICS
One week after launch we achieved:
500+
unique site users
2000+
page views
One month after launch we achieved:
3000+
unique site users
15,000+
page views
Six months after launch we achieved:
10,000+
unique site users
250,000+
page views
REFLECTION
Though the launch of Cattlelog was quite nerve-wracking for us, my team and I have been thrilled to witness the growing results of our hard work and dedication. What we have achieved with Cattlelog is incredibly rewarding personally, as this was my first experience working as the sole designer on a relatively large project. Collaborating with my team to build Cattlelog has taught me so much about the importance of quick and effective cross-functional communication, especially given our limited time frame.