Quill 1.0 App
Is it possible to save college stress, incredible financial burdens, and hundreds class hours based on scheduling alone? Can a machine learn to do this? Oh, oh yes.
Introducing Quill, a scheduling app for selecting collegiate courses that saves you time and money.
A new Quill 2.0 is in the works, and uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to bring clarity and ease in selecting scheduling collegiate courses, in a refined and fresh way that was out of scope for 1.0.
As branding strategist and UI/UX designer, a full case study, ideation sketches, wireframing flows, and complete prototyping will be available by late summer 2017. The whole works.
The Problem: The 50¢ Budget
When I was a teenager in college, I was in a routine of hunching over my desk lamp at 3am, burrowing through my climbing college expenses and complicated course scheduling. I was terrified. If I didn't start paying more to my college that I worked so hard to be accepted into, I would have to drop out. I had three jobs, worked 40 hours a week on top of a full course load, and pursuing higher education seemed like a systematic impossibility.
I was eating a budgeted two eggs a day because a dozen eggs for 50¢ at the local grocery store was all I could afford. But at the end of it all, I never hit below a 4.0 GPA in my design program. I was happy, grateful, stressed, and didn't have time for this.
It kept me sane, but there has got to be a better way of doing this.
The Process
At one point, I had plans to live in either my beat-up Volkswagen or a little storage unit I rented for $20/month as a roof if I couldn't make ends meet.
Then my extremely talented colleagues* invited me to be involved in their scheduling project and it all came together: What if I don't need money? What if I just need more time? What if I can balance my schedule so I can work and study comfortably, while being able to afford three meals a day? What if I could figure out what scholarships I'm eligible for based on my four-year plan and GPA, if I could map that out in a way if I hit all my prerequisites on time? What if a machine can learn to do this for me? What if I can have more time so that I can earn more money to survive?
The Solution
This app integrates my small story into a much larger and more important one: education is difficult to attain, and it's even more difficult to survive it on our own. We need to make it easier, and we need to design for all.
Based off an annual course catalog, Quill works off the user's selected major and gives easy access to the program's courses in a card stack. No more flipping through a long PDF.
Scheduling that's all laid out and all added up.
Explore majors and minors, career outcomes, and scholarships the user is eligible for based on populated program data and academic records. Easily add or drop courses to ensure the semester load is healthy and happy.
*Designed and developed in collaboration with the bright developers Stephen Clemenger, Tyler VanZanten, Andrew Peterson, and Matt Koster.