tinkering with fragile schedules
A direct-manipulation cascading change visualizer for an academic schedule. Click any class — adjust it. Click any faculty — release a section, full sabbatical, leave, retirement, target load, preferences. Adjustments stack.
The fixture is invented. Imagined faculty in a design school, eighty sections, twenty-one rooms, a Spring 2027 term with four sections still TBD on day one. None of it is real. The shape wants to be. Tenure-line miss their target loads if you don't watch them. Lecturers cost more when you ask them to overload…
A brief input — release someone, off one section, sabbatical, leave — returns three plans for the same disruption. One minimizes total perturbation. One protects day, time, course, and room preferences for tenure-line above all else. One spreads the burden across the lecturer pool with a single-section cap per person. Each plan reports its own metrics: total moves, induced preference strain, an equity index on extra load, hires posted, dollar delta. Apply commits. Preview tries it on the calendar grid first, with a banner offering keep or revert.
A small research shelf under the nav carries the literature any of those strategies leans on.