On the second day of the semester, I was almost late to my HCI class. For some reason, I thought the class was supposed to start at 12:50 pm, while clearly it started at 12:40 pm when my friends messaged me to join Zoom (fortunately it was on Zoom instead of in a building far away from my dorm).
After class, I checked the screenshot of my schedule chart which I saved as my phone lock screen and confirmed that the start time actually is 12:40 pm, while I have to say that this design could be better, especially since Covid-19 has made our course schedule a little different than what we used to have.
Before Covid-19, most of our courses started sharply on full and half clocks, so I used to have a schedule that looked pretty straight forward. However, my current schedule consists of a bunch of courses that start on 10, 40, or 50 minutes after the clock, which made this presentation a little vague and cumbersome.
In order to improve the design, a few easy ways could be to label the start time on each block or to adjust the time label on the axis according to each schedule. After these changes, students will no longer be guessing or assuming whether a course starts at 12:40 pm or 12:50 pm, and they also do not need to make an extra click to get to the detailed course information.
