SCAD Degree Planner

Redesigning the academic experience focused on clarity, organization, and long-term decision making.

problem

The SCAD Degree Planner created friction throughout the academic planning process. Students struggled with fragmented information, unreliable course visibility, limited customization, and difficulty understanding long-term degree pathways. Research showed many students avoided relying on the planner entirely, instead piecing together information from multiple sources.

solution

Designed a more structured planning experience that consolidated academic information into a clearer workflow. The redesign focused on reducing cognitive load, improving visibility into degree progression, and creating a more intuitive system for long-term planning and decision-making.

This project focused less on redesigning screens and more on reorganizing a complex system. My primary role involved leading UX initiatives and leveraging interaction design to simplify how students understood requirements, course pathways, and academic progress.

Through competitive analysis and student research, our team identified opportunities to improve structure and create a planning experience students could actually rely on. Rather than forcing users to jump between disconnected information sources, the goal became creating a more centralized and understandable workflow.

Several months after the project concluded, SCAD’s degree planning provider released a redesign that aligned closely with many of our recommendations and design decisions. Seeing similar patterns emerge validated both our research findings and systems-thinking approach.

year

2023

timeframe

10 weeks

tools

Figma, Midjourney, Canva