Modernizing a Student Portal

When I joined Penn Foster in 2021, the company faced declining enrollment despite strong marketing and increased demand for online education. Legacy systems, fragmented brand experiences, and a drawn-out infrastructure overhaul strained resources. Leadership turnover further amplified uncertainty, creating an urgent need for clarity and modernization.

Penn Foster was navigating intense operational and product complexity. On the surface, the brand had momentum: a surge in online learning demand, increased venture interest, and a strong reputation in the education sector. But beneath the surface, the learner experience told a different story.

Five distinct brand platforms, each acquired at different times, had evolved in isolation. Each carried its own design language, navigation patterns, and workflows. For students, this meant inconsistent terminology, disjointed user flows, and a frustrating need to jump between systems to complete basic tasks.

Compounding the user experience issues were deeper organizational and technical challenges. Leadership turnover (four CEOs in three years) created change fatigue and an unclear strategic vision. A long-running, over-budget infrastructure overhaul consumed engineering resources, delaying innovation and eroding morale. Payment and enrollment workflows had grown into a labyrinth of exceptions and legacy business logic, introducing friction right where students needed clarity most.

Meanwhile, design resources were scattered across low-impact projects, with little influence on the core learner experience. The absence of a unified product design process meant that every initiative risked adding to the inconsistency rather than reducing it. Modernizing the student experience would require not just new interfaces, but a complete realignment of priorities, processes, and platforms.

The Learner Center launch marked a turning point for Penn Foster. By reallocating resources toward core learner journeys, the team accelerated delivery of meaningful improvements while building trust across disciplines. The unified portal and design system not only improved consistency and reduced development time, but also positioned the organization to sustain digital transformation through a clear multi-year roadmap.

This project reminded me that transformation goes way beyond UI; it’s about creating alignment across people, processes, and platforms. Clear communication and steady stakeholder engagement proved as critical as the design work itself.

For me, the biggest lesson was the value of interdisciplinary collaboration: working closely with engineering, product, and business teams made the design system stick and kept improvements sustainable. If I were to do it again, I’d bring content strategy and success metrics into the design process even earlier, so that outcomes were defined as clearly as the interfaces.