Students' perceptions of problem-solving (PS) tutorials in upper-division first-semester electromagnetism (EM1) were studied over a two-semester, mixed-methods approach to inform the authors about tutorial design from students' perspectives. This study is part of a larger-scale EM1 tutorial design study which seeks to address two issues: first, the tendency of PS tutorials to either focus on a single element of a PS framework, or on specific conceptual topics; and second, the need for increased instructional flexibility in design. Results indicate that a PS framework developed for introductory-level problems can be useful for upper-division EM1, with adjustments to avoid frustrations with perceived linearity and redundancy. Feedback on perceived difficulty of individual topics – both stand-alone and within a tutorial set – suggests students find certain EM1 topics more difficult than others, requiring more attention. Finally, we observe a strong correlation between performance on the tutorials and performance within the rest of the course.