RateMySwat Bot
In collaboration with my team, I designed a platform for submitting course reviews internally at Swarthmore College as part of CPSC 091R Social and Crowd Computing.
In collaboration with my team, I designed a platform for submitting course reviews internally at Swarthmore College as part of CPSC 091R Social and Crowd Computing.
Overview
The Swarthmore Mastodon RateMySwat Bot is a short project dedicated to helping students make informed decisions about their academic paths. We set out to build a new social tool within Swarthmore’s Mastodon that would allow community members members to submit reviews and provide valuable insights to their peers.
ROLE
Product Designer
Engineer
TIMELINE + TYPE
December 2023
DELIVERABLES
Prototype for Engineer Handoff
SKILLS
Figma
Python
HTML
JavaScript
Design Process
Research: We conducted user interviews and surveys to understand the pain points of the existing course review process and gather insights on what features students would find most useful.
Ideation: Based on our research findings, we brainstormed potential solutions and features for the new platform.
Wireframing: We created low-fidelity wireframes to map out the user flow and key screens of the platform.
Prototyping: Using Figma, we created high-fidelity prototypes to demonstrate the look and feel of the platform and test the user experience.
Testing: We conducted usability tests with a group of Swarthmore students to gather feedback on the prototype and iterate on the design.
Post UXR Considerations
How to balance subjective versus objective opinions + moderation (using Perspective API)
How to generate an overall rating from both written and polled response? What metrics would be relevant?
Nice-to-haves
Ability to filter users by whether they’ve taken the course
User puts the courses they’ve taken in their profile?
Or if they just add the hashtag to a post then the bot adds that to a database tracking their course history
How do we store each user’s course history (and ask at the end of each semester for an update on what courses they’ve taken)
What if we use Mastodon as our database?
Using this model, we would post a new Mastodon thread every single time someone enters a review on our website
In order to filter the reviews, our bot would search by the course title hashtag (ex. #CPSC091S) and display that embedded on the website page
Users would not need to make a Mastodon account using this model (we would bring Mastodon to them), but they could if they wanted to reply to review threads
Project Outcomes
Something new I learned... Mastodon is amazing for open-source development and testing. For class purposes, we kept our tool closed to the public, but we hope to continue updating in the future to encourage students to keep using the bot!
My favorite part was... Working on a project that directly benefits the Swarthmore College community and helps students make more informed decisions about their academic journey.