What I Have Learned from Tech Industries That Bring Value to Higher Education: UX Best Practices Edition
Cross-functional collaboration in the UX design of student-facing portals is lacking in higher education, leading to missed opportunities for new efficiencies, better service, and greater institutional resilience. Effective collaboration across business units—whether admissions, financial aid, registrar, advising, or IT—is especially critical as student journeys become more digital and expectations for seamless campus experiences continue to grow. Are you integrating a unified UX process across departments for better student outcomes? Are you empowering your UX team to engage with cross-functional stakeholders to improve the student portal experience?
Reimagining Student Portals: Why Cross-Functional Collaboration Matters
Student portals are the digital gateways to the campus, connecting learners to every administrative, academic, and engagement resource they need throughout their lifecycle. Yet, many institutions struggle with fragmented systems, siloed decision-making, and confusing user interfaces that drive up support costs and frustrate students.
The solution? Build cross-functional UX teams that are empowered to bring together stakeholders from all departments involved in the student journey. This means involving admissions, registrar, financial aid, IT, advising, and student services early and continuously in the design and redesign of these critical systems.
Building Collaborative Processes in Higher Education
A successful cross-functional portal project is anchored in transparent, evidence-based processes:
Form a portal steering group with representation from every major stakeholder department.
Run journey mapping workshops to identify pain points and overlapping touchpoints in the student lifecycle.
Execute design sprints and rapid prototyping with iterative feedback from students and staff, using data to validate which changes are most impactful.
Document standards and share findings openly using collaborative platforms and design repositories—creating a common language and set of expectations.
Monitor success with agreed-upon KPIs such as ticket reduction, user satisfaction, and conversion rates, using these metrics to drive continuous improvement.
Problems Solved by Unified Student Portals
When cross-functional collaboration is embraced, higher education institutions solve persistent problems:
Student confusion and frustration: Portals become intuitive, reducing the need for training and one-on-one support.
Redundant IT and administrative workload: Self-service options and automated workflows free up staff time for higher-value engagement.
Inconsistent communications: Unified portals mean students, faculty, and staff have one clear channel for information and action.
Fragmented data and reporting: Integrated systems support richer analytics and evidence-based decision-making.
Long-Term Institutional Benefits
Institutions that invest in cross-functional portal governance realize enduring advantages:
Improved student engagement and retention: Easier access to resources lowers barriers to success and increases satisfaction.
Stronger organizational resilience: Collaboration breaks down silos, enabling rapid adaptation to changes or challenges.
Greater operational efficiency: Automated, well-designed portals reduce cost and support needs while enabling more consistent service.
A sustainable framework for innovation: Regular cross-department collaboration embeds continuous improvement as an institutional norm.
Cross-functional collaboration is a proven strategy for future-ready institutions seeking to unify campus experiences, enable innovation and the creation of a completely self-guided digital student journey, putting students at the center of every process. By adopting best practices for collaborative portal design, colleges and universities can create lasting change that benefits learners, staff, and the entire organization.