Schedule Builder
A redesign of a critical UC Davis Tool

Overview
Redesigning the process of using schedule builder, UC Davis' official course registration tool, as well as the navigation to heighten the user experience.

I ran through a six-week design sprint process to redesign schedule builder, leading the prototyping and A/B testing portion of the project (equally collaborated on other parts of the design sprint).
Project Details
My Role
UI/UX, Visual Design, User Research, Led prototyping and A/B testing
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Team
Kiara (Project Mentor), Meghna, Aeon, Kai
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Tools
Figma, Google Forms, Notion, Slack
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Duration
Six weeks, Winter 2020
Schedule builder?
What’s that?
Schedule Builder is the official UC Davis tool to create, edit and register for courses, used by 35,000 enrolled students.
What's the issue
Students undergo time consuming user experience due to excessive clicking and scrolling due to the unclear navigation and organization. Many of schedule builder’s features are hidden under tabs or duplicated, leaving users with multiple ways to access a function, such as searching for a course.
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This problem mainly affects...
New such as freshman and transfers students, and students looking to make a schedule in a short amount of time.
Research: Understanding our audience
Research Plan
To approach the redesign of Schedule Builder and develop a solution, our team worked to better understand the needs and concerns of our target audience. Being that Schedule Builder is a central course registration tool for students at UC Davis, our target audience naturally fell to students.

We planned to do a competitive audit but it was difficult as we didn’t have access to course registration programs from other universities. As a team we decided that since our main research goals was to better understand how the platform is utilized and where their pain points lie, a survey would be our next course of action.
Survey + insights
We sent out a survey asking students about how often they utilize Schedule Builder on a regular basis, what’s their overall satisfaction and asked them to rate how comfortable they are utilizing certain features. The rating questions were based on a scale of 1-5 (1 being extremely negative, 5 being extremely positive) and here is what they had to say.
Rated 2.95/5 using schedule builder for the first time
3.19/5 building schedules without conflicting classes
3.33/5 looking up classes they’re interested in
Interviews
Though the survey was a good way to get insights from our audience, we decided further research was needed to better understand what students are struggling with and what they wished exists, so eight user interviews was conducted. Each team member conducted two interviews and here are key points that my interviewees mentioned.
1. "I don't think it's possible to use schedule builder without the (chrome) extension"
2. "I wish I could see specific details for each class"
3. "There are too many too many buttons at first and it can be overwhelming"
Synthesis
To streamline the findings from interviews and prioritize the main focus areas we used affinity mapping to categorize related responses together.
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1. This was helpful to understand the audience's goals and would lead the remainder of the design process
2. Categorized it into visual presentation, convenience, accessibility, integration, features, and other

After categorizing them, as a team, we voted on three features that best encapsulated the user's pain points based on interviews
Key points
Refine the problem statement
While each user had a variety of needs and pain points, after categorizing and looking across all our users, we crafted a how might we statement that encapsulated our user’s main goals
Ideation & visual design
Sketches
Each one of us diverged and created solution sketches based on features that best hit the pain points of our users. Some things we considered were…
1. Restructuring how our users would look at their courses and schedule on the calendar
2. Making time conflicting courses more obvious to warn users ahead of time
3. Making course details easy to read and minimize the navigation on a page
Low-fidelity
From our sketches, we split up to develop different portions of our low-fidelity wireframes. My task was centralized around the main calendar and scheduling portion of the interface. Focusing on how users would edit their schedules and how it would display different types of schedules such as the week, day, and finals view.
Mid Fidelity + Usability testing
User flow
In addition to developing low-fi wireframes, we created a usability testing script to prepare for user testing. This also allowed us to ensure we have the pages necessary for our mid fidelity wireframes and could prototype all the pages without any missing parts.
Mid-fidelity & usability testing
After developing both a user flow we developed the mid fidelity wireframes. At this stage we implemented colors, and a more cohesive design system.

We had users run through tasks such as opening the schedule page, viewing different quarters, editing and saving their schedule, as well as searching for courses. Observing how they interacted with the prototype and if they ran into any problems.

Things we looked out for...
How effortless is it to complete the assigned tasks?
How well does our assumed user flow align with our users' approach?
Insights
Based on user testing we found that many had trouble navigating the prototype and most weren't able to complete the tasks given to them.

Many noted that they were confused by the wording on the buttons which led them to being unsure of where to click to view different modes such as the finals schedule or how to edit their schedules.

Before proceeding to our final solution we decided to conduct A/B testing to get more insight and clear up portions that users found to be confusing.
A/B Testing
After taking note of common trends that users struggled with, some that stuck out were unclear wording and icons which led to overall confusion on navigating the prototype. So from there I created new iterations and sat down with those users again to test if these new solutions improved usability.

Through testing I was able to identify areas that improved usability and went forward with those design choices in the final solution.
Wording on the "save" button
Navigation bar
Color Scheme
The final solution
Hover buttons & viewing course description
Where to view different versions of schedules students have created and view schedules from their current and past academic terms.
Edit Schedule
Where students go to edit their schedules and Search for a course function and adding course onto schedule.
Register all classes
As mentioned in interviews, the overwhelming navigation and hidden features led them to feel overwhelmed. In this final design a 'register all' button was included so users can quickly enroll their schedule.
Advanced search
For new users such as freshman and transfer students, this tool is particularly helpful when looking for general education courses, courses with certain unit counts, and courses held in certain days.
My takeaways
For the project, time constraints were definitely a big factor in how the project progressed throughout the six weeks. Had there been more time I would’ve loved to user test the final solution and get more feedback on how the prototype is. I really want to ensure that I’m getting to the heart of the problem and create a solution that our target audience needs.

Another unexpected challenge was how to design for a target audience when I’m part of the demographic. It’s easy to start creating assumptions when I’m included within the demographic (a student at UC Davis), however, it taught me to challenge my way of thinking and step back from the project to really design for users.

Lastly, this was my first ever UX design project and I definitely dove headfirst. I can honestly say it was one of the best learning experiences that I’ve had. It taught me a lot about collaborating in a team setting, especially on a design project, which is something I hadn’t done before. Many obstacles were thrown into the mix such as collaborating remotely, varying skill levels, and different time commitments.
Thank you for reading till the end! But it doesn’t have to end here, let’s connect!
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