Scenario
Ben Bitdiddle is an MIT student who just finished the spring semester of his freshman year. He declared Course 6 as his major and is excited as he looks forward to all the interesting classes he has ahead of him in the EECS curriculum. Browsing the Registrar's course listings he decides it would be prudent to map out when over the next 6 semesters he plans to take each of the courses required for his degree (in addition to HASS classes and cool electives!)
First things first, he needs to decide which courses he wants to take next semester. Preregistration is just around the corner, after all! He needs to visit the EECS webpage to get an idea of which classes should come next based on for which of them he has already taken the pre-requisite courses. He finds seven or eight CS classes he could take, but wants to narrow it down to three, with room in his schedule for a HASS class and a Sloan elective. He needs to plot out the days and times when these classes meet so that his schedule doesn't include any conflicts. Furthermore several of these potential courses are project-heavy, so ideally he would take them with friends in the department. Finally, he has some leeway in terms of choosing between, for example, 6.041 and 6.042, and would like to make these decisions based on which courses have gotten the best reviews/ratings by students who've taken them in the past.
Ben spends a whole afternoon making complicated Excel spreadsheets of courses and their pre-req's, cursing the frustrating Course Picker Beta UI, opening dozens of eecs.mit.edu tabs in his browser, and text-blasting his friends to ask "When are you planning to take 005?" Ben is overwhelmed and the semester hasn't even begun!
In the nick of time, Ben’s friend and classmate Alyssa P. Hacker comes to his rescue with QuickPick.com; a brand new web app that makes choosing courses as easy as “Hello World”. With QuickPick, Ben and Alyssa can map out a plan for the rest of their time as MIT undergrads based on the classes their friends are taking, the courses and professors that their predecessors rated most highly, and when these courses are offered. What a relief!