From observation and personal experience it seems evident that the current tools available to aid students in course selection do not do enough to ease the process. These difficulties arise in scheduling classes for a particular term and also for developing an overall plan of courses to take to complete various major and institute requirements.
With Planner, a student is currently able to enter a set of classes that he/she would like to take in a given semester and the set of possible non-conflicting schedules are displayed with the student able to go through the possibilities to find the optimal schedule. This takes out most of the guess work that other tools such as Picker have inherent in them. Aside from the power of being able to quickly construct schedules for the current semester another goal for Planner is to be able to help students plan which classes to take on a multiple semester basis, accounting for classes that are only offered in particular semesters and years as well as major and institute requirements.