UT Registration Plus

UT Registration

UT Registration Plus is a browser extension built by Longhorn Developers and used by thousands of UT Austin students during registration. I worked on three features: improving modal visibility, rebuilding the feedback form to match the design system, and designing a Quick Add feature that lets students add courses directly from the extension using a course number, removing several steps from a task they repeat every semester.

UT Registration Plus is a browser extension built by Longhorn Developers and used by thousands of UT Austin students during registration.

September 2025

Product

UT Registration Plus

Role

Product Designer

Team

3 Product Designers

Research

Define

Iterate

Solution

Impact

Overview

The Product

UT Registration Plus is a browser extension built and maintained by Longhorn Developers that enhances the UT Austin course registration experience. It's used by a significant portion of the UT student body, adding features to the university's course schedule that the official site doesn't offer.

The Task

Three problems surfaced during user testing: students weren't noticing the calendar popup on the course schedule page, the feedback button and form didn't match Longhorn Developers' design system, and there was no way to add a course directly from the extension without navigating back to the UT site.

The Solution

Redesigned the modal's visual hierarchy, color, and scale to make the calendar action more visible. Rebuilt the feedback button and submission form to align with Longhorn Developers' design system. Designed a Quick Add feature that lets students input a unique course code directly into their calendar view, cutting out several steps from the registration flow.

Research

The Longhorn Developers team ran a mixed-methods research process before scoping work for the semester. User testing sessions with 5 participants, an ongoing user feedback channel, and a competitive analysis of 4 comparable scheduling tools surfaced 11 distinct problems across the extension. I worked on three of them.

Quicker access is important to students during busy reg time

extension is to help with quick access

User Testing Summary

Testing and feedback surfaced problems across the extension: missing time blocks, no schedule generation, limited course information, and no way to add courses by code. Two visibility issues stood out most starkly from testing: 2 out of 5 users missed the calendar button entirely, and 4 out of 5 didn't know they could switch schedules from the popup.

Finding #1: Hidden Calendar Access

The calendar button on the course card is visually indistinct from the other action buttons. At a glance, it reads as one of several equal options, so 2 out of 5 users in testing missed it entirely and navigated to the extension popup instead to access their calendar, adding unnecessary steps to a repeated task.

Finding #2: Off-Brand Feedback Entry

The feedback button and submission form didn't follow Longhorn Developers' existing design system. The entry point for submitting feedback wasn't visible enough to surface organically, and the form itself had no consistent visual relationship to the rest of the extension's interface.

Finding #3: Too Many Steps

To add a course to their schedule, students had to open the course schedule on the UT site, find the specific class, open its modal, and then add it from there. For students who already knew exactly which course they wanted, usually by unique course number, this was several steps to complete a task that should take one. 4 feedback notes specifically asked for a way to input course codes directly without navigating back to the UT site at all.

The research findings translated into three design principles that guided the ideation and iterative processes.

Competitive Analysis

The team benchmarked against four tools across three categories: peer schools with similar systems (UT Planner, UTRP), aspirationally strong tools with high design standards (UW, UMich), and innovative outliers solving the same problem differently (Coursicle). The feature comparison looked at core scheduling functions including adding courses, comparing schedules, and adding breaks, to identify where UT Registration Plus had gaps relative to both its peers and its aspirational targets.

Coursicle is the only outlier solving course-adding differently, outside the university system.

Comparing schedules is a gap across most tools, including UTRP

Fewer steps

Students using the extension during one of the most stressful academic tasks shouldn't have to navigate away from it to do something basic. Every flow we touched had to reduce the number of steps between a student's intent and the completed action.

Visibility > Navigation

The features students needed most, calendar access, schedule switching, and course adding, were already there. The problem was they couldn't find them. Every redesigned surface had to surface the right action at the right moment.

Consistent Systems

Typography, color, component styling, and copy all needed to follow the existing design system so the interface reads as cohesive and trustworthy to students who use it every registration cycle.

Define

Iterate

Tested minimal input (code only) vs additional context fields

Tested minimal input (code only) vs additional context fields

Quick-Add

Quick Add went through the most iterations of the three features. The core question was whether a unique course number alone was enough input, or whether students needed more options like semester selection. We also had to design for failure states: what the interface shows when a course code doesn't exist, when the course is already on the schedule, or when it's closed.

Burnt orange is the design system action color, not green

Tested icon-only vs icon + label for button placement

Explored placement positions to maximize feedback visibility

Solution

Quick-Add

Students can now input a unique course number directly from the extension's schedule view without navigating back to the UT course schedule site. The input sits inline with the calendar, semester selection is handled by a dropdown, and the interface returns a specific response for every state: course found, course not found, already added, or section closed. No ambiguity about what happened or what to do next.

Modal Redesign Visibility

The calendar button on the course card was redesigned for visual hierarchy, given distinct weight and placement relative to the other action buttons so it reads as the primary action rather than one of several equal options. The modal layout was also updated to surface the most relevant course information more clearly and reduce the scan load on a card students are reading quickly.

Feedback Visibility

The feedback entry point was repositioned and redesigned to follow Longhorn Developers' existing design system, making it visually consistent with the rest of the extension. The submission form consolidates input that was previously scattered across email and Discord into a single on-brand channel, with a straightforward two-field form that matches the visual language students already associate with the product.

Impact

The three features shipped as part of the semester's release. The Quick Add feature in particular got picked up organically by students, with feedback coming in through email and the in-product channel after launch. The consolidated feedback form also gave the team a single, on-brand channel for input that had previously been scattered across email and Discord, making future research cycles easier to run.

Takeaways & Key learnings

Cross-functional collaboration

Understanding the constraints on the engineering side changed how I scoped features, how I communicated design rationale, and how I thought about what "done" actually means on a shipped product.

Research -> Action

Seeing how the team moved from raw findings to estimated size to assigned features showed me that synthesis and communication are as important as the research itself.

Designing for a product you use

Being a UT student using UT Registration Plus during registration meant I had genuine context that outside designers wouldn't. That proximity was useful, but it also required actively checking my own assumptions against what testing actually showed, because what bothered me personally wasn't always what bothered the broader user base.