In the Ted talk "The World Needs All Kinds of Minds", Temple Grandin introduces the concept of "Visual Thinking" and describes how her early autistic symptoms have helped her run simulations in her mind prior to carrying out actions.
These woks are attempts to get rid of the chaotic and trivial information on regular or default course schedules, limiting the display of information to just the adjacent time and location of the class. Color codes and pictographs are used to give the viewer a more intuitive grasp of the itinerary without going through the distracting details. One might ask if the icons can possess multiple meanings and hence cause confusion. In fact, it is often the case that people know what courses they are taking during the semester, but can't be bothered to recall the itinerary of a particular day. With such a class schedule in mind, one can easily remember the relative positions of the courses and thus easily recall his/her plans for the rest of the day.
