Uncovering How Berkeley Students Plan Their Degrees
Berkeleytime is a student-run platform used by thousands of UC Berkeley undergraduates to explore courses and build schedules. While the platform is highly trusted for its grade data, students were fragmenting their actual planning across Google Sheets, Notion, and CalCentral, treating Berkeleytime’s tools as one-time validation steps rather than a planning hub. I led foundational and evaluative research across two tools: Scheduler (visualizes class combinations, checks time conflicts) and GradTrak (multi-year unit tracking and requirement checklist, newly launched). This was a self-initiated research effort, my job was to find where the product was leaking value and turn that into a prioritized, evidence-backed roadmap for design and engineering.
Role
User Researcher
Team
Sole user researcher for Scheduler and GradTrak, worked alongside Engineers and Designers
Timeline
Jan 2026 to May 2026
Tools
Figma, Figma Make, Gemini, NotebookLM, Claude, Perplexity, Lovable, Google Stitch
CONTEXT
How Berkeley students plan their degrees
What is Berkeleytime?
BerkeleyTime is a student-built platform used by thousands of UC Berkeley students to explore courses, compare grade distributions, and plan their schedules. With 78.6K monthly active users and 27K accounts, it is a major part of how Berkeley students make course decisions.
Problem space
Previous internal research found that BerkeleyTime was the most influential source students used when choosing courses, ahead of Reddit, upperclassmen, and academic advisors.
However, students faced a fragmented experience when they moved from choosing individual courses to planning an entire semester or four-year degree.
What shapes students’ final course decisions the most?
Berkeleytime
30%
Decide independently
19%
15%
Upperclassmen
15%
Rate My Professor
11%
Friends
7%
Academic Advisors
4%
My Role
I served as the sole user researcher for Scheduler and GradTrak, owning the research process from discovery through synthesis and product ideation.
GradTrak
A new multi-year planning tool for organizing courses, tracking units, and monitoring degree requirements.
Scheduler
A weekly calendar tool that lets students visualize course combinations and identify time conflicts.
Because GradTrak was still relatively new and its roadmap was still forming, I focused on research that could directly inform product decisions rather than simply producing a broad list of student frustrations.
My research goals
🗺️ Map the student planning journey
Understand how students plan courses and track degree progress, including when they switch between BerkeleyTime and other tools
🔄 Understand drop-off and sustained use
Identify why students create GradTraks or Schedules but stop using them, and what would make them return
🔍 Identify unmet planning needs
Uncover the information, workflows, and decision points BerkeleyTime does not currently support well
🧠 Understand planning mental models
Learn how students organize requirements, compare course options, build backup plans, and determine when they feel confident in a plan
🌱 Find opportunities for ongoing value
Identify ways GradTrak and Scheduler can support students beyond enrollment and become part of their ongoing academic planning
My research process
PHASE 1
Competitive & Product Analysis
PHASE 2
User & Stakeholder Research
PHASE 3
Research Synthesis & Insights
PHASE 4
Findings & Product Ideation
THE CHALLENGE
COMPETITIVE & PRODUCT ANALYSIS
Where students actually plan
Competitor analysis
I evaluated 9 platforms students use for course and degree planning, course discovery, and advising by trying each one and documenting my experience. I also reviewed student perspectives on Reddit and YikYak to understand what students turn to each tool for, where their needs are still unmet, and why they switch between platforms. This helped identify opportunities for BerkeleyTime to better support the full planning process.
Platforms Analyzed:
Scheduler
GradTrak
CalCentral Schedule Planner
Berkeley's visual planner
Google Calendar
Visualizing personal time commitments alongside classes
Peer advice, course reviews, and planning workarounds
Rate My Professor
Professor quality and difficulty signals
Google Sheets
Flexible, manual tool for planning and comparison
Notion
Customizable system for semester and degree tracking
Academic Progress Report
Official source for degree requirement status
Department Websites
Requirement lists and sample four-year plans
COMPETITIVE & PRODUCT ANALYSIS
What site data was telling me
I also reviewed BerkeleyTime’s own product analytics, account creation, Scheduler and GradTrak utilization, and how both trend around key enrollment moments, to see where students engage, drop off, and never return.
GradTrak
Growth Is Driven by Enrollment Moments, Not Habit
GradTrak accounts were growing quickly, up 88.4% over the last 90 days and 13.9% over the last 30 days
However, GradTrak creation spikes around key academic moments, especially course enrollment, add/drop, finals, and academic breaks, when students are making decisions about their schedules and degree progress. Students turn to GradTrak when they need it, rather than returning consistently throughout the semester.
GradTrak accounts created
600
90 days ago
941
30 days ago
1119
Today
Average number of courses added per user
265
0
265
1-5
210
6-10
329
11-35
50
36+
Students Start Planning, But Don’t Finish
24% of GradTraks are completely empty. The percentage of GradTraks with courses dropped by 6% over the last 90 days, even as account growth accelerated.
The average GradTrak user has added 8.9 courses. That is only about 25% of the 32 to 40 courses typically needed for a complete four-year plan.
Scheduler
Students rely on the Scheduler most at the start of the semester
Daily schedule creation is highly concentrated around the start of the semester, with roughly 420 schedules created on January 19 to 20 as Spring instruction began. This suggests students turn to the Scheduler primarily when they need to make immediate course decisions, rather than using it consistently throughout the semester.
Scheduler Utilization Ratio
Ratio of schedules with courses added vs. schedules left empty
The 7.33:1 utilization ratio, which improved 10% over 30 days, shows that this activity is meaningful: students are not just opening schedules, they are actively adding courses. The opportunity is to turn this high-intent, start-of-semester behavior into more sustained planning throughout the term.
USER RESEARCH
How I approached user and stakeholder research
Research planning
Selecting Methods: I brainstormed a range of research methods, then narrowed them to the highest-impact options I could complete within a couple of weeks. I shared the plan with the product manager and designers before recruiting to align on priorities early and make sure the research would lead to actionable product decisions.
Participant Sourcing: I recruited participants from BerkeleyTime’s beta tester list and through personal outreach to students across different majors and ages. I also promoted the study through BerkeleyTime’s Instagram.
Research Methods I Brainstormed
= Selected to conduct
Contextual Interviews
Diary Study
Card Sorting Study
User Interviews
Stakeholder Interviews
User Survey
Concept Testing
Contextual interviews
I asked students to screenshare and explain the tools they use to plan their semesters and long-term schedules. With permission, I captured examples of their planning systems.
Topics Discussed:
Observe students’ preferred tools in action
Asked students to screenshare and explain the tools they use to plan their semesters and long-term schedules. With permission, I captured examples of their planning systems.
Evaluate how BerkeleyTime compares
I asked students to complete key tasks in Scheduler and GradTrak while thinking aloud, allowing me to observe their reactions, decision-making, and friction points.
Reflection
I asked students to compare the experience with their preferred tools and identify anything they wished BerkeleyTime offered.
Concept Testing
I explained potential Scheduler and GradTrak features from the product design team and gathered reactions.
4 user interviews
I interviewed students about how they plan their courses and degrees, the tools and workarounds they use, and where Scheduler and GradTrak fit into their planning process.
Goals:
Understand students' academic planning process, goals, and decision-making
Explore the tools, resources, and workarounds students use across course and degree planning
Understand how students use Scheduler and GradTrak within their broader workflow, including building schedules, tracking degree progress, and planning future courses
Identify friction with current tools, unmet needs, and reactions to potential new features
1 academic advisor interview
I interviewed an advisor to understand common student planning behaviors, questions, mistakes, and graduation concerns. With over a decade of experience supporting students, they helped me assess whether patterns from my small interview sample reflected what advisors see across a much larger student population.
Topics Discussed:
What students repeatedly misunderstand about degree requirements and course planning
Common planning mistakes and where students tend to go wrong
Students’ most common graduation concerns and when they typically seek help
Recurring questions and pain points advisors see across students
User surveys
Broader Survey
33 RESPONSESI worked with user researchers from two other BerkeleyTime teams, Social Features and Personalization, to design and launch a survey for Berkeley students.
Goals: I wanted to understand how students use BerkeleyTime across different needs and identify gaps shared across products.
Scheduler and GradTrak Survey
25 RESPONSESI designed a targeted follow-up survey focused on students’ experiences with Scheduler and GradTrak.
Goals: I wanted to understand why students dropped off, what they were trying to accomplish, and which tools they used instead.
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS
What the research was telling me
I prepared a research report and presentation for my team that consolidated both the quantitative and qualitative insights together.
✍️ Manual entry builds trust
Students view manual data entry as something that gives them certainty, not something they simply have to put up with. They are skeptical of automated outputs and often double-check them before trusting them. Even students who want automated requirement tracking describe it as something they would use alongside their existing planning tools, not instead of them.
"The main perk of Sheets is that I can do it myself, which means I know it is accurate. Anything automated makes me wary."
🧩 Students want tools that work together, not one tool that does everything
Students don’t necessarily want BerkeleyTime to become an all-in-one planning hub. They prefer a modular set of tools with clear, non-overlapping roles. This also came through in underused Scheduler features: students did not see much value in adding custom events or using a monthly view because they already manage those things in Google Calendar.
"I mostly use Scheduler to visualize my weekly schedule and check for time conflicts. I usually open it after I've already decided which classes I want to try taking."
🔀 Students plan for what could go wrong, not just what they want to take
Scheduler is mainly used for the final conflict check, while the “messy middle” happens elsewhere. 95% of students revise their schedules at least 2 to 3 times, and 89% build at least one backup schedule, averaging 2.1 backups.
Yet Scheduler does not currently support the branching decisions students make when a class fills up. Students often build fully realized backup schedules so they do not have to replan under pressure. A backup also cannot be just any open class. It needs to fulfill the same requirement as the primary course, which students identified as a key constraint when evaluating alternatives.
"There was a semester where the CS class I wanted filled up immediately, but I had already built a backup schedule with a different class that still fit my timetable. Because I had that ready, I didn't panic."
"I usually open Scheduler after I've already decided which classes I want to try taking."
🌱 GradTrak is arriving too late for students who already built their own system
GradTrak’s biggest barrier is timing, not necessarily the product itself. Many students discover it as juniors or seniors, after years of building personal systems in Google Sheets or Notion. By then, migrating their existing plan feels like more effort than switching is worth. Several students liked GradTrak and said they would have used it if they had discovered it earlier, making freshmen a high-leverage audience because they are starting from scratch.
"It takes a lot of effort to transfer over all that information from Sheets to GradTrak, so I stopped using GradTrak."
The competitive audit reinforced this opportunity: GradTrak's semester-by-semester layout already resembles the structures students independently build in Notion and Sheets.
🤖 Students want automation, but they need to trust it first
Automatic requirement tracking emerged as one of the most requested improvements across the research. Students want BerkeleyTime to mirror CalCentral's Academic Progress Report and show which requirements each course fulfills. At the same time, they are skeptical of automated answers because degree requirements change frequently. They want BerkeleyTime to do more of the work while still being able to verify the results.
"Handling major requirements is tricky because they change and are often posted as PDFs. That's why I had to do everything manually in my own system."
📊 Students are already using GPA data to judge the whole semester, not individual courses
Students frequently switch between Scheduler and BerkeleyTime's course pages to look up grade distributions while building schedules. They are not simply asking, "What's the median GPA for this class?" They are trying to understand the overall academic load and GPA profile of their semester. Students specifically wanted a weighted median GPA for their entire planned semester, which would let them compare different course combinations without manually calculating the tradeoffs.
"Another thing I wish existed is seeing median GPA or workload information directly inside the Scheduler. Right now I have to keep switching back to BerkeleyTime to check those stats."
IDEATION & PRIORITIZATION
Turning findings into a prioritized roadmap
Ideation happened throughout the research process. I gathered ideas from users, concepts we tested, and ideas I came up with or discussed with the team. I then collected ideas across both Scheduler and GradTrak, then evaluated them based on impact and effort.
Low Effort
Medium Effort
High Effort
Strong Evidence
converging methods
Rename “Clone” to “Duplicate”
Clearer label for copying a schedule
GPA & workload calculator
See course GPA and workload without leaving Scheduler
Onboarding tutorial
Guided setup so new students build a real plan
Backup courses
Build backup schedules that match the same requirement
Degree requirement tracker
Auto-map courses to requirements, like CalCentral’s APR
Import from Sheets & Notion
Bring an existing plan into GradTrak
Moderate Evidence
some convergence
Clearer semester status
See at a glance if a semester is complete
Better section planning
Fix missing sections, compare and swap faster
Four-year plan templates
Official plans for common majors
Requirements visible in Scheduler
See which requirement each class satisfies
Connected Scheduler & GradTrak
See requirement progress while building a schedule
Needs Validation
single source
Course catalog links
Direct link to the official course page
Move courses between schedules
Drag classes across draft schedules instead of rebuilding
Verified course info
Trust signals for peer-contributed course data
Walking-time between classes
Flag schedules with tight campus transitions
Plan beyond courses
Extend planning to internships, research, and clubs
Scheduler
GradTrak
Cross-Product
Features that were prioritised
Onboarding tutorial
GRADTRAKA guided first-run flow that walks new students through GradTrak’s core concepts and helps them build a real first plan.
Why? Nearly 47% of students have 5 or fewer courses in their plan, far short of the 32 to 40 courses needed for a four-year plan. Interviews pointed to a steep learning curve, confusing terminology, and the effort of manual entry as key barriers. An onboarding tutorial could reduce this friction and help students build enough of a plan to see GradTrak's value.
ADD YOUR COURSES
Show all steps to set up your GradTrak
In-context GPA & workload calculator
GRADTRAKCourse GPA and a live weighted-median GPA for the full planned schedule, shown directly inside Scheduler.
Why? Survey data identified grade distribution as the #1 course-selection factor, and interviews showed students cared about the combined rigor and GPA of their entire schedule, not just individual courses. Students specifically wanted a weighted median GPA across their full schedule. Research also showed students were already doing this analysis manually, pulling GPA data from BerkeleyTime across multiple pages to evaluate their schedule as a whole. Bringing this into Scheduler would eliminate that round-trip and help students make tradeoffs in context.
WEIGHTED GPA
3.42
A live weighted GPA for the whole planned schedule
Backup courses
SCHEDULERBuild and save full backup schedules, matched to the same requirement, that you can switch to in one click.
Why? 89% of students build at least one backup schedule (avg. 2.1), and requirement fit mattered most when choosing one. Scheduler analytics show this “messy middle” of revising happens entirely outside the product today.
PRIMARY
BACKUP
Same requirement, one click to swap
CalCentral APR → GradTrak
GRADTRAKImport your Academic Course Planner PDF from CalCentral to auto-populate semesters and courses in GradTrak, reducing manual entry and feeding real course data into the GPA calculator.
Why? Manual entry is the biggest barrier to getting started, and students already trust CalCentral’s APR for degree planning. Importing it gives them a meaningful starting point faster, while still letting them review and verify it.
APR.PDF
Semesters auto-populate from your plan
THE CHALLENGE
NEXT STEPS
Where this goes next
Shipping Onboarding, the GPA Calculator, and Backup Courses is the start, not the finish line. Here's how I'd keep the loop closed.
Validate designs continuously
Pair future feature launches with lightweight usability testing and follow-up surveys to validate concepts and understand why students return or drop off.
Instrumentation
Measure the full GradTrak funnel
Track onboarding completion, course additions, feature engagement, and return rates to identify where users drop off and whether new features improve activation and retention.
Track feature-level behavior
Instrument key actions such as requirement tracking, search, tags, and custom semesters to understand which capabilities students actually use.
Monitor usability friction
Use interaction signals such as repeated clicks or abandonment around known pain points, particularly section selection and confusing terminology, to identify areas that need further iteration.
REFLECTIONS
What I learned
🧩 Activation is often about removing friction, not adding complexity
The 54.7% increase in GradTraks created showed me how addressing an early point of confusion can meaningfully change whether users reach a product's core value.
🔬 Qualitative and quantitative research answer different questions
User research helped us understand why students struggled with GradTrak, while behavioral data helped us understand where they were dropping off. Using both made our prioritization more grounded.
🚀 Launch is a starting point, not the finish line
I learned to think beyond whether a feature ships or performs well initially. Strong product design requires continued measurement and research to understand how people use a feature over time and what should come next.
🌱 Small interventions can create momentum for a larger product experience
The onboarding work did more than improve the first-time experience. It helped create a foundation for additional features like GPA Calculator and Backup Courses, reinforcing for me that product design is an iterative process of identifying friction, testing solutions, and building from what we learn.
This write-up only shows part of the process.
Reach me at aashnapatel11@berkeley.edu and I will walk you through the rest.
