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Automating Contract Management for International Education
Role
Lead UX/UI Designer
Timeline
6 Months
Team Structure
VP of Experiences, Product Owner, Lead UX/UI Designer, VP of Engineering, Director of Technology, Back-end & Front-end Engineers, QA Specialists, Partner Success.
Company Overview
A leading provider of software solutions for study abroad and experiential learning programs. Trusted by universities and educational organizations globally, this tool empowers institutions to streamline their contract workflows, manage partner organizations, and monitor exchange balances all from a centralized, intuitive interface.
The end-to-end design and user experience of a robust contract management and tracking platform tailored for international education offices.
The Problem
International education offices juggle hundreds of exchange contracts, each with unique terms, partner contacts, and student quotas. Most relied on spreadsheets or disjointed tools, making it hard to:
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Track expiring contracts
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Monitor student balances
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Maintain accurate, accessible documentation
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Ensure data visibility and permission control across teams
Our goal was to design a comprehensive yet simple system that consolidates contract and organization management while offering automation and insights.
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Research
Overview
Discovery
We conducted:
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User interviews with study abroad and international office administrators
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Competitive analysis of existing ed-tech and contract management tools
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Heuristic evaluations of internal admin workflows
Key insights:
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Users needed clarity and speed—not complexity
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Tracking student balances manually led to frequent errors
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Permissions and visibility were often poorly managed in legacy systems
Design Goals
Simplify contract management
Automated tracking and a real-time dashboard
Empower collaboration
Through smart permission controls
Centralization
Centralize partner organization data
Support scalability
With import/export and integration features
Solution Highlights
At-a-Glance Dashboard
Designed a modular, personalized dashboard showing:
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To-do tasks
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Expiring contracts
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Active student balances
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Recent partners
Organization Management Suite
Created a centralized overview of each partner, including:
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All contract documents
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Contact management
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Activity logs
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Bulk import via CSV
Contract Overview & Details
Streamlined how contracts are created, categorized (exchange/general), and tracked:
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Visual timeline of activities and notes
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Automated student balance tracking
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Customizable goal and timeframe settings
Permission Control System
Built on the least privilege model, allowing:
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Granular access control to contracts and organizations
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Role-based product access (Via Global, Inbound, etc.)
Design Approach
Our design approach focused on delivering clarity and control in a complex contract management environment.
We prioritized a clean, intuitive UI that simplifies dense information through thoughtful structure and visual hierarchy.
By combining card-based layouts, color-coded statuses, and organized tables, we enabled users to quickly scan, interpret, and act on data.
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Clear workflow segmentation and minimalist design choices kept the experience approachable, even for users managing hundreds of contracts and partnerships.
The result is a system that feels both powerful and easy to use, built to support the real-world needs of international education professionals.
Brainstorm & Ideation
During the brainstorming and ideation phase, we began by mapping out the contract lifecycle through user journey maps and process flows, which helped us understand the end-to-end experience of managing exchange and general contracts.
These exercises revealed key interaction points and user needs, guiding us as we defined the system’s information architecture. We identified core entities, such as contracts, organizations, users, and students and mapped their relationships to ensure seamless navigation and data consistency.
With this structure in place, we sketched early concepts of the dashboard, contract detail views, and permission settings, using low-fidelity wireframes in Figma to quickly test layout ideas and interaction patterns. These sketches served as a foundation for aligning the team and validating our direction before moving into detailed design.
Outcome
Currently in Beta
This tool is currently in beta, with early adopters actively using the platform to manage real contracts and provide critical feedback.
This phase has been instrumental in validating our core workflows and identifying opportunities for refinement, especially around permissions, reporting clarity, and contract creation flows.
Our team is using this feedback loop to make iterative updates, ensuring the product not only meets user needs but exceeds expectations as we move toward full launch. Early responses have been positive, with users noting improved visibility and reduced manual tracking efforts.