2024-09-10 Meeting notes

Introductions

• Name, division and what you’re excited about with Trends

What is Trends

• Search grades + RateMyProfessor data

• Compare different searches

• https://trends.utdnebula.com/ vs. https://dev.trends.utdnebula.com/

  • The later is the redesign which will be out in a month

• Work to be done

  • engineering

    • decent amount of bug fixes

  • designers

    • tweaks for compare and cards

    • redesign filters and academic session select

• You can work on any division

• Questions

  • Default sorting: Issue up for grabs

  • Make ratings in Trends: Up for discussion post-redesign

  • Mobile friendly: usable

  • Can you see RMP reviews in Trends?: No

    • It needs a link to RMP but that’s not there right now and is scheduled for after the redesign

  • Tech stack: Nect.js, React, Typescript

  • Lauch data: Be ready by Oct 7, 2024

  • Why React?: industry standard

Discuss: LHS Information overload

• Left Hand Side Information overload (Color and Duplication)

  • Problem:

    • Too many colors/bubbles (visual overload), not clear how colors correlate across columns

    • Information duplication (from the search result card header to the inside of the expanded search result card and the compare page)

  • Suggestions:

    • Color legend to indicate color scale

      • Could be in a tooltip

    • GPA is 0 to 4 and RMP is 0 to 5 which creates color inconsistency

      • Maybe having different colors for each column

      • Some kind of indication of this 0-4/0-5 scale

    • Red green is universal but the color contrast is not up to compliance

      • Red-green color blindness

    • Omit number to standardize sources

    • Remove colors

      • Too much color is distracting

      • Maybe just an option to turn colors off

    • Maybe you don’t want to be making a decision just on difficulty

    • Should Would take again be in the main table

    • Could reshuffle which columns are in the table

    • Letter grade instead of GPA

      • People understand A+ better than GPA

      • Map distribution to GPA then GPA to average letter grade

      • You lose info tho

      • Hover on letter to show the GPA(Toggle would be nice)

      • Letter on right and number on left

Discuss: RHS Compare

• RHS - (Will talk about next week)

  • RHS Compare row duplication

    • Might put Letter grades instead of GPA

  • Put a limit on how many you can compare

Consensus on the LHS

• Problem Summary

  • Differences in scale, which end is good/bad, overloading from too many colors, make this decision difficult

• Potential Solutions

  • Toggles for colors and more data (gpa)

  • Tooltips and hover actions to explain color/scales and offer alternative data (gpa when hovering on letter)

• GPA vs Letter Grade

  • Differences in 0.1 of GPA(How impactful is that)

  • Most courses have B average in classes

  • Is GPA that important?

  • Lots of numbers so some letters might be okay

  • Raw GPA might be better

  • If we use letters just get rid of the colors.

  • General Consensus: Show average letter grade in the results, show average GPA in the expanded card and compare page

• Rating

  • It should be included (everyone agrees).

• Sizing

  • Make the LHS smaller

  • Might make it draggable

  • Switching the LHS and RHS size ratio (looks better)

• Styling

  • Maybe use some of the 2024 spring design mock-up, specifically speaking the stars for ratings

• Difficulty Talk

  • Take out difficulty and just keep everything else

  • Might just hide the difficulty

  • One reasoning is our university has the grade distribution which is more accurate to the specific class’s difficulty

  • idea: have an optional 3rd column where users can select some metric to sort by

Design

• Two people find which colors work best for the letters and stars

• other 3 work on the redesign of expanding the RHS size

  • Maybe two mockups

Engineer

• Experienced people

  • Look for the non “good first issue” issues

• New people

  • Look for the new issues and maybe ask for help from experienced engineers or group up.

Assign Tasks

via discord