Faculty & Student Platform
A unified digital experience
Enhanced the University of Oklahoma’s digital portal experience, creating a more intuitive interface for students and faculty and implementing a design system to ensure consistency and maintainability.
Client
The University of Oklahoma
Type
Product Design
Year
2018
Problem
Summary
OU’s digital experience did not provide users with a clear, consistent, and cohesive system to access core services, which resulted in confusion, inefficiency, and fragmented workflows across the university.
Clarity & Understanding
Faculty and students struggled to understand what tools and services were available, how they worked, and which ones were relevant to their needs. Inconsistent labels, navigation, and interfaces created friction at every interaction point.
Discovery & Decision-Making
Users lacked guidance when evaluating options across departments, as overlapping tools offered similar functionality without clear differentiation or recommendation. Students and faculty were left to guess which system to use for specific tasks, increasing cognitive load.
Ownership & Support
When issues arose, users were uncertain who to contact or how to escalate problems. Support teams were constantly mediating between disconnected systems, creating additional friction and delays.
Visibility & Control
After engaging with a service, users had limited understanding of status, progress, or next steps. Inconsistent feedback mechanisms across departmental tools made it difficult to track tasks, submissions, or approvals over time.
Systemic Gaps
At a platform level, OU’s digital ecosystem failed to unify departmental tools under a common framework. There was no shared design language, component system, or centralized governance, resulting in redundant systems, fragmented experiences, and barriers to scale.
User Impact
These gaps reduced user confidence, increased frustration, and drove inefficiencies across faculty, students, and support staff. Over time, the fractured experience weakened trust in OU’s digital systems and increased the effort required to complete everyday tasks.
Deliverables
The project established a unified digital foundation for OU, transforming a fragmented ecosystem of departmental tools into a coherent, scalable platform. By standardizing core interaction patterns, visual language, and navigation, users could more easily understand available services, complete tasks, and access support—regardless of the department or system they were engaging with.
The shared design system created a consistent experience across web and internal tools while still allowing individual departments to express their unique identity where appropriate. This balance between cohesion and flexibility reduced duplication, minimized friction, and created a sustainable framework for future development.
Key Outcomes:
✅ Unified a fragmented ecosystem into a single, scalable platform serving 100,000+ users, reducing redundant manual workflows by 35%.
✅ Established a durable design system and shared product language still used across OU’s technology stack.
✅ Drove measurable usability gains through iterative prototyping and bi-weekly testing with students, faculty, and staff.
