Start University: one student portal and a shared base system for 20+ education websites

Start University works with partner universities and runs institutional websites, program aggregators and blogs for Latin America and India. The goal is to connect prospective students with education programs, and every site has to respect its institution's brand.

Each site had its own version of the student portal, so every change had to be repeated site by site. On top of that, legacy sites had to be migrated to .NET Core, aggregators pulled data from different sources, and new partner universities needed a site without starting from scratch.

I led UX/UI design for the education platforms, student portals and academic management tools. I coordinated a team of designers and HTML/CSS developers: from wireframes to visual design, front-end implementation and code review. I also worked with engineering, marketing and business, and handled landing pages and forms for campaigns.

• Many institutions, each with its own visual identity.
• Aggregators fed by different data sources.
• Sites on a legacy platform, being migrated to .NET Core.
• Marketing needed quick turnarounds alongside product work.

1. 1Identify which parts of the portal and the sites were shared across institutions and which ones changed.
2. 2Design a reusable component system in Figma from that shared base.
3. 3Test the usability of the main flows and adjust.
4. 4Support implementation with the front-end team and review code before release.

• One modular student portal that adapts to each institution with minimal CSS changes, instead of one version per site.
• A shared base system to launch sites for new partner universities.
• Consistent aggregator UI even with data from different sources, with regional adjustments: colors, imagery and localized branding.
• Accessibility and SEO built into every delivery, not as a separate phase.

A unified student portal for every institution, a reusable design system and a common technical base for the sites. On that base, existing sites were migrated and redesigned, and new ones were launched.

Figma, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, .NET Core (site platform), Jira, SourceTree.

• UX/UI design for 20+ live sites: universities, aggregators and blogs.
• 5 legacy sites migrated and redesigned on .NET Core.
• 7 new sites launched from the base system.
• A unified student portal: changes are made once and reach every institution.
• Redesigned aggregators with a shared interface.