Albert Plus

Problems

How can NYU students search courses and plan their degree more efficiently?

Target audience: NYU students.

The current Albert system has four key pain points that consistently frustrate students during registration.

Messy UI/UX

Cluttered and outdated — too many clicks, dense text with no visual hierarchy, and pop-up modals that hinder scanning.

Hard to search and find courses

15+ filter dropdowns return plain text lists with no way to compare sections, professors, or timings side by side.

No course planning support

No built-in way to track degree requirements or see what courses still need to be completed.

Can't preview the calendar

No calendar preview before committing — students can't spot conflicts or build a balanced schedule without registering first.

Solution

Search, review, and schedule, designed as one connected flow.

Smart course search

Find courses by navigating easily through school and major, with filters and a search bar to narrow down to the course you want.

AI-powered course detail and saved courses

See all course information clearly, with an AI summary of the course. Save courses to your account and access them anytime.

Timetable builder

Build your own timetable by adding courses and see how it looks. Save multiple timetables and compare different course plans.

Four-year plan builder

Build your own four-year plan by adding courses, see the bulletin requirements of your majors and minors, and check whether you are on track to graduate.

Figma prototype

Process

User research

I interviewed 20+ NYU students to understand how they really feel about the course selection system.

“I have to click through so many pages just to find one course. The interface feels like it was built in 2005 and never touched since.”

— Junior, CAS

“There's no good way to compare two sections of the same class. I have to open like five tabs and flip back and forth.”

— Sophomore, Stern

“I genuinely don't know if I'm on track to graduate. Albert gives me a checklist but I still have to manually figure it out every semester.”

— Senior, Tandon

“I accidentally enrolled in two classes that overlap because there's no calendar preview. I didn't find out until the first week of class.”

— Junior, Gallatin

Existing alternative — Einstein

Einstein is a student-built tool offering a cleaner course list and timetable builder, but it still falls short in key ways.

What works:

• Cleaner than Albert — a more readable course list with less visual noise.
• All course info in one place — details, times, professor, and credits are visible without navigating away, easy to scan and compare.
• Built-in timetable builder — students can preview their weekly schedule before committing, a step Albert lacks entirely.

Issues:

• Visually overwhelming — bright, saturated course cards with no clear logic create a loud patchwork that makes scanning harder, not easier.
• Hard to navigate — small, unlabelled school filter icons and no clear hierarchy make it hard to move from search to selecting and adding a course.
• Calendar is hard to use — no conflict or credit-load feedback; switching between Favorites and numbered Schedules is unintuitive and easy to lose track of.

Existing alternative — Paper (Northwestern)

Paper is a course-planning tool used at Northwestern that introduces smart multi-year planning and a fluid schedule builder — but its interface works against its own strengths.

What works:

• Smart four-year plan — dragging courses into a year-by-year grid makes long-term degree planning intuitive and visual.
• Course-to-schedule flow — searching a course and adding it straight into a live calendar preview is seamless, so conflicts show before committing.

Issues:

• Cluttered, hard to read — dense information and inconsistent hierarchy across the Plan and Schedule views make it hard to know where to focus.
• Disconnected navigation — the planning grid and the weekly schedule feel like two separate products, with no through-line from search to plan to register.

Conclusion: create a clear, simple tool with smart navigation that helps students search courses easily and plan their degree more efficiently.

Design system to hi-fi

From design system foundations to full hi-fi screens, I built Albert Plus iteratively in Figma, establishing components, layout patterns, and visual language before moving into refined interface explorations.

Design decisions

I didn't treat this as a set of separate features — I designed “search → review → schedule” as one continuous, connected flow.

Connecting the flow

Albert forces students to jump between search, bulletin, and timetable separately. I designed these as one continuous journey — state carries forward instead of resetting.

Pages that influence each other

Selecting a course updates the timetable live. Adjusting a time slot filters the course list back. Users never re-enter information — the interface keeps everything in sync.

See results, not data

Core details surface first; additional context expands on demand. Students see outcomes directly instead of having to process raw data themselves.

The trade-off

More information means better decisions — but also higher cognitive cost. I resolved this with layered disclosure: key details always visible, deeper context revealed on demand.

Reflection

This project taught me how to build useful tools around complex user experiences, and how design can create a much better workflow — bringing the concepts into practice.

Fragmented flows are the real problem

Complex systems feel overwhelming not because they lack features, but because their flows are split across too many disconnected surfaces. The challenge here was reassembling those pieces into one natural path.

Design as flow reorganisation

The value wasn't adding features — it was reordering the sequence. Search, options, and schedule visible together and in sync make decisions faster and far less stressful.