NYU Albert Redesign

Boosting Course Registration Efficiency

Course registration is an essential part of students’ college lives. It largely affects one’s GPA, graduation date, as well as the overall learning experience.

Every semester, tons of students from New York University are complaining about how frustrating it is to use NYU’s course registration website - Albert. To address this problem for our community, I initiated this project to redesign Albert and finally pitched to the NYU IT department successfully.

 

DURATION

6 Weeks, Early 2020

PROJECT TYPE

Passion Project. Successfully pitched to New York University.

TEAM

Ruyi C. & Heather K. - UX Designer

Yang Y. - Engineer Consultant

MY ROLE

Lead UX Research, UI/UX Design

Responsible for User Testing, A/B Testing, Prototyping

Revolutionized how NYU students filter through thousands of courses in more than 230 areas of study

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Course registration has been an essential part of college students’ lives. Students from New York University find it very hard and frustrating to use their registration platform “Albert” to search, browse and enroll in courses.

The Challenge

 

Initial Research: What is Users’ Current Experience with Albert?

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01. Data Shows that Users are Indeed Suffering:

60 %

Registration Failure Rate

9

Mins to Register Each Class

 

02. Interviews Show that There are 3 Major User Pain Points:

Pain Point 1: Difficult Use of Search & Filter FunctionStudents don’t trust the search function, don’t understand what the filters mean, and find position of search elements counterintuitive.

Pain Point 1: Difficult Use of Search & Filter Function

Students don’t trust the search function, don’t understand what the filters mean, and find position of search elements counterintuitive.

Pain Point 2:  Lack of Information HierarchyStudents are complaining about the readability of Albert (tiny font size, cluttered information display).

Pain Point 2: Lack of Information Hierarchy

Students are complaining about the readability of Albert (tiny font size, cluttered information display).

Pain Point 3: Duplicated WorkflowStudents have to go back and forth a lot between browsing courses, adding them to the wishlist, and enrolling in courses. There are too many unnecessary steps and one single mistake will lead to redoing everything fr…

Pain Point 3: Duplicated Workflow

Students have to go back and forth a lot between browsing courses, adding them to the wishlist, and enrolling in courses. There are too many unnecessary steps and one single mistake will lead to redoing everything from the very beginning.

Empathize with Users

Explore Experience Journey to Identify Design Opportunities

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Comparative Analysis

  • Direct Comparison: looked at course registration platforms from 8 other schools

  • Indirect Comparison: looked at design patterns from other businesses (travel, e-commerce)

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Design Ideation

“How might we make the Search Bar and Filter Function easier to use and more trustworthy?”

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“How might we better organize and display the course information and improve visual hierarchy?” 

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“How might we simplify the registration workflow?” 

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NYU Style Guide

I later found out that NYU Albert was made by one professor and several CS students under a short period. CS department agreed that the current programming and template for Albert is outdated, and Albert will be updated soon. Therefore, we decided to incorporate NYU's design system for the newer version to create NYU’s very own registration site.

 
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Final Design

 
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01. Search & Filter Function

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02. Improved Visual Hierarchy

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03. Smoothened Workflow

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04. Final Prototype

 

BEFORE

Hard to use search/filter function.

Manually browse through tens of thousands of NYU majors/courses.

AFTER

Redesigned the search and filter function.

Boost up efficiency of course searching and browsing experience.

 

BEFORE

Lack of visual hierarchy.

Difficult to read and distinguish information.

 

BEFORE

Duplicated workflow.

Students have to go back and forth a lot and tend to get lost.

 

AFTER

Improved visual hierarchy.

Increased readability and information hierarchy.

 

AFTER

Simplified and streamlnized workflow.

Built out mental model and utilized e-commerce site’s shopping concept.

Outcome

 

90%

Registration Success Rate

2

Mins to Register Each Class

 

Successfully Pitched to New York University IT Department and Started Collaboration.

Reflections

 

Challenges

  • This is a very research-heavy project since everyone is complaining about how hard Albert is to use, but no one knows what exactly is the problem. As a designer, coming up with a useful research plan and competitive analysis, as well as synthesizing data within a limited time, can be extremely important in this case.

  • Can technology support this? There is a constant discussion between the design decisions and engineering ability. We do not have access to the engineering of NYU Albert. However, I did talk to my computer science students to figure out what’s possible.

Takeaways

  • User experience design is not only about designing an experience for “my users,” but also an experience for “my designer teammate.” Every designer has their ideas and opinions, so when it comes to collaboration, it is essential to set a guideline and an agreement beforehand for a success matrix. We also need to be open-minded and value each other’s work all the same time.

  • Personas are critical throughout the whole design process. We should always go back and check if our design ideas are needed or are just our assumptions.

  • Define what’s needed and what’s nice to have. During the data synthesizing process, some users’ inquires are urgent, but some are about personalization. I need to decide what’s the essential part of designing for the first stage.

Potential Next Steps

  • Since this is the first stage of the redesign, the aim is to solve some current problems. But I should explore more UI patterns later when it goes into the second stage of the redesign.

  • Revisit the navigation bar to redesign the workflow of switching back and forth between the shopping cart and enrolled courses.

  • Continuously get more user feedback on high-fidelity design in both quantitate and qualitative ways.