Berkeleytime Scheduler

Empowering students to build their semester schedules—realistically and with confidence.

DURATION
March-May 2023 (Research)
Jan-March 2024 (Design)

ROLE
Product Designer

TEAM
Kevin Wang (PM), Michelle Tran, Rachel Hua, Carissa Cui

PROCESS
Survey
Contextual Inquiry
Interview
Synthesis
Ideation
Wireframing
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Iterations
Hand-off

OVERVIEW

Berkeleytime is UC Berkeley’s official course data platform, serving over 40,000 students. Observing low engagement with the scheduler feature, I led a full redesign to better reflect how students plan their semesters. My responsibilities included user research, insight synthesis, and end-to-end design execution. The updated experience, currently in beta, has resulted in a 34% increase in user satisfaction and an 18% improvement in engagement.

BEFORE THE REDESIGN

Students use the scheduler to plan their semesters after reviewing grade distributions and enrollment data on Berkeleytime. They build drafts, refine course selections, and export finalized schedules to their Google Calendar. Below is the original scheduler interface prior to the redesign.

THE PROBLEM

Despite being live for over a year, the scheduler had low engagement. Over 80 percent of users dropped off after adding three courses, fewer than the typical course load, revealing friction early in the planning flow and a misalignment with real user behavior.

PRODUCT RESEARCH

Designing the scheduler to align seamlessly with students’ behaviors was critical to reducing cognitive load, matching their mental models, and limiting decision fatigue. To achieve this, I led comprehensive research focused on understanding their planning workflows. Our research centered on three objectives:

Given our research goals, we approached the problem using the following methods:

  • Collected demographic data and tool preferences to map scheduling behaviors at scale and recruit participants for qualitative research.

  • Conducted in-situ observations with 20 undergraduates as they planned their Fall 2024 schedules, capturing workflows, decision points, and pain points in real time.

  • Facilitated semi-structured interviews to triangulate findings from contextual inquiry and uncover underlying motivations, mental models, and unmet needs.

  • Evaluated the redesigned scheduler with 30 students through scenario-based tasks, measuring task success, friction points, and perceived usefulness to validate alignment with student workflows.

RESEARCH INSIGHTS

Students are planning for more than just academics. Their schedules are shaped by club meetings, part-time jobs, and wellness routines. An ideal schedule supports focus, flexibility, and well-being across all aspects of student life. Yet Berkeleytime offers little support for how students actually iterate and adapt. Students need a planner that offers customizability and makes it easy to compare options side by side.

DESIGN GUIDELINE

To address the gap between the current design and actual student behavior, the interface must support side-by-side comparison and maintain context for personal commitments. These interactions should allow students to quickly assess trade-offs, adjust their plans, and move forward with confidence.

I redesigned the layout to improve clarity, accessibility, and alignment with student workflows. I separated core scheduling actions from external tools to reduce distraction and decision fatigue, and introduced live-editable titles to streamline the experience. Visual consistency was improved through unified truncation rules, clearer time label logic, and increased text-to-background contrast.

DESIGN AUDIT & REDESIGN

Before redesigning, I conducted a UX audit of the existing Scheduler to identify friction points in layout, interaction flow, and accessibility that contributed to task failure and low user satisfaction.

FEATURE ITERATION- ADD A COMMITMENT

I explored design iterations for the “Add a Commitment” feature, balancing discoverability, scalability, and alignment with user mental models. After evaluating usability and engineering constraints, I chose the last iteration which streamlines the flow while maintaining clarity.

Iteration No. 1- “Add a Commitment” button under class selector

Iteration No.2- Separate tab for commitments

Iteration No.3- Add commitment from calendar grid

Iteration No.4- “Add commitment” as an option in class selector

FEATURE ITERATION- SIDEBAR EDITOR

I iterated on the commitment editor to better align with student workflows—shifting from an overlay to a sidebar so they could view their schedule while adding commitments. Based on user insights, I introduced optional activity tags to support time tracking and inform future feature planning. In the final iteration, I focused on clarity and usability, like marking required fields and simplifying interactions to reduce friction.

SOLUTION

I improved the usability and introduced features that allow students to add personal commitments and compare schedules, giving them the flexibility and clarity they need to plan with confidence.

At Berkeley, many students build their schedules around club meetings, workouts, and personal routines, reflecting the school’s vibrant extracurricular culture. I added the ‘Add a Commitment’ feature, allowing students to incorporate non-academic priorities directly into their planning. This gave them greater control to create schedules that reflect their actual lives, not just their class lists.

To minimize friction and maintain task continuity, I introduced in-context schedule creation, enabling students to start a new schedule without leaving their current flow. This supports faster iteration, reduces cognitive load, and aligns with how students naturally explore multiple planning scenarios.

Building on the insight that scheduling is not a linear process, I designed features that allow students to create, save, and revisit multiple versions. This approach enables students to explore trade-offs, such as time conflicts and productivity preferences, without losing their work or starting over.