September 10, 2021

What Your Development Team Needs to Know to Convert Print Content into an edTech Tool

Transforming a print product into an edTech tool is a big undertaking. To make it all happen, you'll likely need lots of new people on your team. This includes developers who can help you identify exciting new technology opportunities, as well as a UX team who understands the changing needs of teachers and students. Because of the pandemic, teachers and students have become more sophisticated users of technology. Meanwhile, consumers are on the hunt for learning products that offer the students in their family something more than a print book or workbook.  This means product owners have an incredible opportunity…

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September 1, 2021

Shifts in EdTech: What This Top-Level Hiring Trend Means for You

Tech-focused edTech startups are ramping up their hiring, especially for roles at the intersection of UX, product, and technology.  Over the past month, new chief product officer positions have popped up at: GoCoach, a professional development and education platform DreamBox Learning, a math software company Sketchy, an illustrated learning platform for medical and pharmaceutical students What does this shift in edTech hiring mean for you and your company? And how can you get ahead of the curve through UX edTech research and product planning? We break it all down for you below. Why Smart edTech Start-Ups Are Investing in UX …

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August 11, 2021

5 of the Latest edTech Trends You Need to Know

The education landscape for Fall 2021 keeps shifting, and edTech trends will shape how teachers and students work in new hybrid classrooms. From immersive learning to subscription-based content, we're seeing edTech products that address increased needs for flexibility. Even as changing edTech trends respond to the pandemic, we still believe that the best classroom technology amplifies a teacher's ability to help their students learn. To design better tools for the new demands facing teachers, edTech product owners can springboard off the cutting-edge thinking that happened in virtual classrooms all across the country in 2020. No matter what kind of product…

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July 28, 2021

UX in Education: Why UX Designers are the Learning Engineers of the Future

When it comes to designing UX in education, a generalist approach to product design and user experience simply doesn't cut it. Learning products have very different requirements than consumer tech. They're used by teachers and students in school environments to achieve high-stakes outcomes.  That's why it's even more important to base the UX of learning tools on research that reflects how students learn most effectively. By specializing in learning science, product design, and user research, UX designers in education are poised to become the learning engineers of the future. What Makes UX in Education Different A great UX designer in…

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July 27, 2021

What Shifting Back to In-Person Learning Means for EdTech

Fall 2021 is still up in the air as school districts around the country consider whether to permanently end remote learning.  In May, New York City announced that remote learning will no longer be an option for its students in the fall. In 2020, about 600,000 of its 1,000,000 students chose to learn from home.  Meanwhile, more than half of San Francisco's public school students are still learning remotely. Hybrid classrooms are expected to continue in the new school year. What does the shift to in-person mean for the edTech industry? And how should you address it in your own product…

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July 9, 2021

A Guide to Turning Your Successful Print Product into a Digital Learning Tool

Your company has a successful print product on its hands, and you're on the hunt for ways to turn that curriculum into a digital tool.  On the surface, this seems like good business sense. You know how popular digital tools are with your users; plus, there are no shipping or warehousing costs when you move into edTech. A win-win! But if you're used to dealing with print publications—or you've only ever built content platforms—you may be unsure of what to do next.  Below, we outline what it takes to build a brand new edTech product based on content that's been…

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July 1, 2021

Why Users Struggle in Your edTech Product

Users experience challenges in edTech products for all sorts of reasons. Everything from overly complex navigation patterns to visual noise can distract from your learning content and prevent users from getting the most out of your tool.  Has your customer service team noticed a pile-up of user feedback on the same feature? Or are your sales dwindling unexpectedly? If so, it's time to get to the bottom of things with user experience research. By using tools from the UX research process, you'll be able to pinpoint specific areas of frustration and develop better solutions. This could mean conducting a full…

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June 16, 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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June 10, 2021

Translating Teacher Suggestions into edTech Product Features

When you work in a specialized industry like edTech, you get comfortable with the lingo. Product owners and UX designers use terms like "adaptive" or "responsive" all the time, for example—and we know what we mean. (Products that use analytics or AI to respond to student activity, for starters.) But when teachers use the term "adaptive" or "personalized" to describe edTech product features, they can often mean something quite different. Since there's no official Teacher-to-edTech Product Owner Dictionary (not yet, anyway!), it can be difficult to understand what teachers really want.  Even if you've held incredible feedback sessions, misunderstandings can…

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May 28, 2021

Educational Resources for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month & Beyond

This is part of an ongoing series about edTech industry shifts in at-home learning. You can read our related article, "Educational Resources for Talking to Your Kids About Race and Anti-Racism," here. As Asian Pacific American Heritage Month comes to an end, we wanted to share resources and stories that we’ve enjoyed throughout the month. These resources are dedicated to helping teachers, parents, and edTech product owners learn more about Asian-American history, read more work from Asian-American voices, and better understand our experience. Below, you'll find books, films, and curriculum guides for discussing the Asian-American experience in the classroom and…

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May 21, 2021

How Good UX Design Provides a Safe edTech Environment for Online Student Interaction

We all saw how challenging it was for teachers to keep their students engaged during remote learning. If anything, it's made us rethink the role of edTech in supporting peer-to-peer learning interactions and building classroom communities within digital products.  Maybe you've already been tasked with creating more opportunities for students to interact with their peers within your digital tools. Or maybe you're looking for new ways to incorporate social emotional learning (SEL) features into your existing products and need inspiration for the peer-to-peer aspect of collaboration tools.  Whatever your user engagement goals might be for 2021, strong UX and design…

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