January 24, 2022

Better Teacher Personas Lead to Better Product Design

If you're still designing edTech products based on user research conducted before the pandemic, it's time to update your data. Both student and teacher personas have changed drastically over the past two years—and so have our approaches to researching them. From new methods in classroom testing to emerging feature ideas, here's everything you need to know about how the pandemic transformed your teacher persona. Plus, you'll learn how user experience research (UXR) can help you design more competitive digital learning tools in a rapidly changing edTech landscape. Let's dig in. How Teacher Personas Have Changed Teacher personas describe everything from…

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January 11, 2022

UX for Kids: Designing Inclusive, Engaging edTech Experiences

As the edTech market becomes more competitive, your digital learning tools have to tick a lot of boxes. Thoughtful UX design for education must support both students and teachers in the classroom—all while being inclusive, engaging, and fun. Below, we'll help you identify which design elements make educational products stand out from the crowd. From choosing inclusive illustrations to designing features that promote learner agency, here's how to design digital learning tools that support real learning outcomes. Making Inclusive UX Design Choices for Education Products The greatest edTech products celebrate inclusivity. By encouraging creative design solutions and fostering user engagement,…

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December 21, 2021

One Year Later: Two Teachers Discuss Shifts in edTech & In-Person Learning

When teachers turned to edTech products to support at-home learning last year, we wondered whether the pandemic had inadvertently convinced more educators of the value of edTech.  One year later, we wanted to know: are the teachers who embraced digital learning tools in 2020 still using them during in-person learning in 2021? And what kind of shifts in edTech can we expect in 2022?  Earlier this month, we talked to two members of Backpack Interactive's Teacher Council, Rachel Pauta and Kylie Reiman, to find out.  Over the course of our conversation, we learned which kinds of learning tools they're still…

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December 13, 2021

Design for Education Toolkit: Why User Needs in Higher Ed Are Changing

The market for edTech in higher education is changing fast, and edTech product owners can do more to support shifting user needs.  Both higher ed administrators and university students require more flexible technology solutions to address the rising costs of college and the coming enrollment crisis.  The role of edTech at the university level is changing, too.  Gone are the days of viewing edTech as a supplemental solution for individual classrooms. Instead, universities with resources and vision view technology as an infrastructural or business need.  That means product owners and edTech UX designers have new opportunities to help—and new ways…

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December 1, 2021

4 Tips for Designing Content in Your Learning Management System

Whether your LMS helps users review videos, work through interactive experiences, or read .PDF resources, designing content that creates a user-friendly information hierarchy for students is a major challenge.  For starters, your users likely have many different content needs. Are they tackling lessons asynchronously on their own time, or are they visiting your LMS to download resources to use later? Maybe it's both? No matter what kind of edTech tool you're building, students need content that's digestible, affirmative, and self-contained. That's especially true for your LMS!  From readability to content sequencing, here's everything you need to know as you rethink…

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November 17, 2021

How to Level-Set with edTech Product Stakeholders throughout the Discovery Process

You're about to design a brand new edTech product, and you know the first step is to align internally with all the product stakeholders. Easier said than done, right? After all, you still have to: Get the right product stakeholders in the room Identify your most pressing user challenges Prioritize your project goals And use the right visual tools to keep everyone focused. Read on to discover how spending more time on stakeholder alignment during the discovery process will save you time, money, and heartache—all while setting you up for success once it's time to launch your new learning tool!…

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November 11, 2021

How to Run a Design Thinking Workshop for edTech Products

EdTech is in the middle of a major transitional moment, and the stakes for education have never been higher.  To make matters even more complicated, we don't yet know the full impact the pandemic has had on both teachers and learners. From learning loss to the effects of social isolation, students may face an uphill battle in the classroom next year.  Meanwhile, teachers' relationships to technology have changed. There's still so much more to learn about their professional needs and expectations when it comes to edTech. Even as we're operating under plenty of unknowns for Fall 2021, product owners are…

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November 9, 2021

Outsourcing Your edTech UX Design: Everything You Need to Know

Weighing the benefits vs. challenges of outsourcing UX design is an important part of developing and launching your digital tool.  For instance, your company might not have internal UX resources—even though your product relies heavily on technology or a sleek user interface. External UX teams can be a great way to bring those skill sets to your existing product team. You might even be in the process of strengthening your company's internal UX capabilities. If that's the case, there are compelling reasons to hire external UX teams as you invest in the internal resources that make in-house product development and…

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October 26, 2021

How User Research Findings Can Help Futureproof Your edTech Product

User experience research, or UXR, is the key to understanding your primary users without losing valuable time or resources. Post-pandemic, your user research findings are more important than ever.  How are teachers using your product in their classroom? Does your product help them transition easily between in-person and hybrid learning? Who's the next person they'll talk to about your product's output or analytics? The more details you uncover about your users and their environment in your qualitative research findings, the easier it will be to continue designing edTech for the long term. We talked to Jessica Millstone, former Director of…

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October 13, 2021

Digital Project Manager

We're hiring! Backpack Interactive is a small but mighty strategy, UX/UI and edTech design studio. We are committed to serving our educational and non-profit partners with products and interactive experiences that support educators and learners where they are. We look to hire the very best problem solvers we can find to join our award-winning team. You’ll be responsible for managing 3-5 projects (depending on duration & complexity) across the product/development cycle. You’ll work collaboratively with the Backpack team, developers, and partners to make sure products meet their user experience and educational goals, while also delivering on time and within budget.…

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October 11, 2021

15 Ways Universal Design Improves User Experience for All Students

This fall, most schools are back to in-person learning. But the rise of the Delta variant means virtual or hybrid learning isn't out of the picture yet. Parents and educators are also searching for edTech products that will help close instructional gaps from the past year. For parents and teachers of students with special needs, identifying software driven by a universal design user experience is even more urgent. When you ensure that your learning products are not just inclusive but accommodating to students with special needs, you improve overall usability. edTech products that adopt a universal design user interface help…

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