I began my research with a survey distributed to 11 Syracuse undergraduate and graduate students. The goal was to better understand how students interact with MySlice and identify key pain points in the class registration experience. Take a look:

One key insight that emerged from user feedback was a recurring frustration: while MySlice provides all the necessary information for tasks like class registration, it isn’t presented in a way that feels accessible or intuitive. This disconnect often leads to confusion, inefficiency, and lost time. Centering the user experience, I identified the following KPIs to guide my redesign:

While students overwhelmingly use desktops or laptops for class registration today, this behavior appears to be driven more by necessity than preference. The current MySlice interface demands a large screen because it requires excessive page-to-page navigation and complex schedule comparisons, both of which are cumbersome on smaller devices.

However, 72.8% of surveyed students said they’d be open to a mobile-optimized experience, provided it was designed with intuitive filters and layouts.

This signals a key opportunity: The problem isn’t that mobile is unfit for registration — it’s that the current design isn’t mobile-friendly.

By addressing the key KPIs from user feedback — shortening registration time, reducing navigation friction, and simplifying course comparison — a thoughtfully designed app could offer a tap-based experience that reduces registration time and allows students to do it on the go.

Ultimately, the app isn't a constraint — it's a solution to the limitations that make the desktop version frustrating in the first place.

With the lo-fi wireflow complete, I moved on to building a hi-fi wireflow, using insights from my survey and conversations with five users reacting to my lo-fi wireflow to guide this new iteration of the design. My top priorities were simplifying the Class Search filters to reduce clutter compared to the current MySlice experience and reducing friction around the class swap process, which participants of the initial survey overwhelmingly cited as one of the most confusing and frustrating aspects due to unclear schedule compatibility. The full flows, along with rationale for each decision, is shown below.

During the high-fidelity design phase, I considered whether users should view a single class entry with the option to register via a modal or view the class information (pictured left) or see all sections of a class as separate class cards (like MySlice currently does, pictured right).

I ultimately chose the former, as users found it clearer and appreciated the reduced need for scrolling. This was surprising because it was contrary to my initial assumption that users would want a one-click way to register for classes.

One piece of feedback I incorporated from the latter was relocating the alert from the middle of the class card to the top, aligning better with user expectations for clarity and visibility.

I conducted user testing with five participants who had not been involved in earlier conversations during prototype development, observing as they attempted to register for a class using the prototype. Key findings from both the test sessions and the conversations that followed them are outlined below:

While the prototype only supported registering for a single class, user testing revealed that the redesigned filters, class card layout, and registration flow were significantly more intuitive. Participants completed the task faster, with more confidence, and preferred the overall layout compared to the current MySlice experience.

However, there's still room for improvement. Three key pieces of feedback that I received:

When I started this project, I made a conscious effort to keep users at the center of the process: engaging with them through a survey and one-on-one conversations, and using their feedback to directly inform my design decisions. That shift in approach had a noticeable impact, especially compared to my earlier projects. In just a few months, I’ve learned a lot—but for this reflection, I want to focus on just one lesson.

Good design starts with listening, not wireframing. There's something I didn't tell you at the beginning of this case study. Months ago, when Prof. Peruta offered extra credit for ideas to improve MySlice, I actually went and mocked up some screens for a mobile redesign. But, looking back, there's so much that I hadn't considered, from key parts of the user flow I wouldn’t have identified without mapping it out to design choices that ultimately didn’t make the cut because they didn’t reflect what real users actually wanted.

At the time, I literally thought these three screens were all I needed. I didn't think through the details; I just jumped straight into designing. And while a few of these ideas made it into the final product, if I had stopped here, I would’ve completely missed the chance to build something that creates impact and delights users.

All of this is to say that—even as a conceptual project—this project meant a lot to me as a self-taught product designer. It reinforced that design decisions made in a vacuum, no matter how polished, fall flat if they aren’t grounded in the needs of real users.

Because, at the end of the day, products that don't serve people aren't worth building.

Some ideas beyond the scope of this project that might merit further exploration:

Thank you to everyone who participated in this project!