What changed when students started using MySched

MySched began as my thesis project. It scanned a registration card, extracted the schedule, and displayed it. The demos and defense went well.

Then students tried it with phones and photos that were different from mine. Some cards were crumpled. Some photos had bad lighting or awkward angles. Campus Wi-Fi could be slow during enrollment. I had tested a much smaller set of conditions than the app would actually face.

Those failures changed what I worked on. I put new features aside for a while and spent more time on errors, retries, and ways to continue without starting over. If an import failed, the student needed to understand what happened and what they could do next.

I also had to think more carefully about fixes. A change could work with my test input and still cause trouble for someone else. More students meant more situations to check, and getting the schedule wrong could affect the rest of their school day. I started judging a fix by whether it helped students finish the task with the inputs they actually had.