The problem
Each year there are millions of college students who fall victim to the chronic stress of deadlines and extended procrastination. The combination of balancing assignments, tests, classes, and social life deplete students of what little free time they have. This is where Coursigner comes in. Every semester, in the midst of midterm exams students must decide what classes they are going to take the following semester. Students always spend hours trying to find what classes they need for their majors, minors, and other classes and how to organize them in a way that it best fits into their schedule. They also need to worry about if they are signing up for the best classes, and if they will be able to decide that in time to register before the classes fill up. This added stress is all while students need to balance their academic workload and everything else going on in their lives.
Our solution
Coursigner is dedicated to helping universities accommodate the needs of their students by addressing one of the most stressful times of the semester, choosing courses. Our product helps students from the time-consuming struggle of having to look through all the possible courses offered for the following semester by automatically generating a unique, customizable schedule catered to the needs and desires of the student user. A student will simply login through his/her school account which allows us to gather required information to generate a schedule for them. From there, Coursigner will output a schedule given the students needs for that semester. Students can then research these courses inside Coursigner by looking at professor and course evaluations and reviews. They can also add and drop, and explore courses. Coursigner offers a robust starting point for students to kick start their course-choosing process in order to help ensure their success as college students.
Prototype
Meet the team
My name is Ritika Saxena and I am a junior at Brandeis University studying Computer Science and Economics. I particularly have an interest in software product development and innovation in the tech space and how it overlaps with many sectors like finance, healthcare, and more. I enjoyed working on this Coursigner because it addresses problem my group members and I personally face, and know our peers do too.
My name is Alan Huang and I am a sophomore at Brandeis University studying Computer Science and Business. I particularly have an interest in product management type roles where I can best integrate my experiences and knowledge. Throughout the development of Coursigner, I loved the entire process of planning, developing, testing and experimenting. This project has taught me so much and has allowed me to see how much students and administration love our project. I would love to continue working on and developing our product and hopefully one day help students just like me.
My name is Youbin Ahn and I am a junior at Brandeis University studying Computer Science, Business and Psychology. Working on this project and coming up with Coursigner was an amazing experience. This project has taught me so much and pushed me to meet more people. I am excited to continue to work on this and hope that this could one day help many students.
THe Process and problems we faced
Our journey consisted of lots of research, interviews, and user-testing. We also came across numerous pivots in our business model, pricing structure, and more. We interviewed students from Brandeis University as well as students from other universities in order to understand their struggles and needs as well, and how they differ from ours. We also interviewed numerous people within the academic advising departments of Brandeis, but also of schools such as Haverford college. We struggled a bit with figuring out who our customers should be. We knew this product was for students and that this sector of customers is in need of such a product. However, we also had a hunch that students, like ourselves, hate paying for anything. Through testing this was found to be the case. We originally aimed to have universities pay for the product, but that was met with some backlash regarding if universities would actually spend money on it when they already have existing, sufficient schedule makers. Because of this, we pivoted our customers to be the students and created a pricing structure for students individually paying for Coursigner. We soon found out through testing that students would exploit this by sharing accounts, or would not buy the product in the first place. So, we decided to pivot back to the universities and created a way that even if these schools have existing programs, to market ours in a way that displays itself as better and shows how unique our product is because it generates a sample schedule for the student.
future GOALS
We hope to continue our work on Coursigner, beginning with the initial stages of technical implementation and perfecting our front-end. Once we have a working model, we would like to pitch it to Brandeis University for launching. Based off the results here and revisions based off of that, we want to pitch Coursigner to other schools in the area. Since we are students and the product is built for students, we will continue to revise and edit functionalities in order to best fit students needs in this market space. Students are a viral target audience because of how fast news travels, once students start using Coursigner and sharing their schedules with others, more students will use the new product as well. As our customer base continues to increase, we expect exponential growth of our product to new customers.
