Better Teacher Personas Lead to Better EdTech Product Design

The last time things changed this quickly in EdTech user research, we were at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. And, oh, what a long time ago that was!

Now, thanks to an influx of AI-powered tools in education and persistent classroom challenges, educator personas are shifting rapidly yet again.

In this updated guide to teacher personas, you'll learn tactical ways to update your user research and account for the shifts we're seeing across the industry.

Plus, I'll show how user experience research (UXR) can help you design more competitive digital learning tools.

Let’s dig in.

How to update your teacher personas for 2026 & beyond

In 2026, educator needs and pain points around educational technology have become more complex and nuanced.

Schools are adopting—or restricting—new technology in the classroom, managing spotty student attendance records, and trying to solve for limited educator bandwidth.

When we work with clients now, we advocate for deeply specific avenues of user research.

This includes researching more specific educator roles, investigating educator beliefs around technology, and surveying educators about specific tools.

The more specific and nuanced I can be in my research, the more helpful, tactical, and targeted my personas will be as the team guides product design decisions.

Here are the top three research needs I'm returning to in client engagements:

Move beyond the generic teacher persona

EdTech product designers can no longer design for a single, generic teacher persona.

Schools employ a range of educators, from classroom teachers to curriculum coaches to department heads—and they all need something different from the same EdTech tool.

You might address these differences in simple, straight-forward ways, like how you design for administrative access to accounts or classroom rostering.

Nuanced persona differences will also affect more complex areas in your product, like user flows for learning content creation and lesson planning, or the overall information architecture of your learning tool.

At Backpack Interactive, I typically lead research projects that investigate factors like:

Educator demographics
School type, whether private or public
Familiarity with and beliefs about technology
Specific curriculum needs
Classroom restraints, including time and access to technology
Tool use, from learning management systems to generative AI

Qualitative research that uncovers detail and nuance at this level translates to more specific, tactical design decision making.

Deepen your understanding of educator beliefs about technology

While the pandemic changed how educators use technology in the classroom, most educators still have a wide variety of views about digital learning tools.

Put another way: just because a school adopted Google Classroom as their learning management system, doesn't mean every educator is also a generative AI power user.

Investigating educators' beliefs about technology use in the classroom uncovers the best ways to support them within your learning tool.

For example, in a recent project with PBS Learning Media, we took the time to research the differences in user needs between tech-savvy English Language Arts educators and late adopters.

Ultimately, these details shaped how we prioritized site updates and will likely continue to shape product architecture decisions in the future.

Most recently, I've also noticed an uptick in the number of schools that have meaningful constraints around technology use, like screen time limitations.

Qualitative design research uncovers these beliefs and real-world constraints—while persona development makes them visible and actionable for your entire product team.

Investigate specific tool use, including AI tools

Asking your users about their digital tool use is also a valuable research activity, and their answers will affect how you prioritize improvements, integrations, or feature development.

In addition to learning about competitive tool use, I also like to investigate how educators use common tools and platforms, like major learning management systems.

The more I understand an educator's digital ecosystem, the more pinpointed my recommendations for product integration or other types of improvements can be.

As educators continue to experiment with generative AI tools in the classroom, the need to survey educators about their tool use will also only increase.

Using teacher persona research for more competitive product design

Teachers are constantly choosing from EdTech products with better software integrations or learning content that aligns more closely to curriculum standards.

These user preferences ultimately affect how Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) make purchasing decisions at the district level.

Understanding what your persona’s needs are will help you prioritize features with more confidence—and ensure that you stay competitive.

With more accurate data, you’ll be able to pinpoint the use cases for robust features, including:

Different types of user views for teacher-facing products, like admin views or parent portals
More robust family communication tools or student progress reports
Better documentation for lesson sequencing and planning that supports teacher professional development

You'll also be able to more effectively optimize your existing user flows to take advantage of market gaps identified during your research phase.

Whether you conduct a full competitive audit or collect more nuanced survey data, user experience research is your best bet for refining teacher personas and staying ahead of the curve.

Creating feedback loops with real educators

It’s important to invest in meaningful relationships with your users.

By treating teachers as co-designers, you’ll receive richer insights, prioritize features more accurately, and design for education more effectively.

At Backpack Interactive, we implement a variety of testing and user feedback systems to improve client user flows.

These include prototype testing with users, co-design sessions, and qualitative interviews with members of our Teacher Council.

Due to limitations in educator time and access to the classroom, we still depend heavily on virtual prototype testing.

Virtual testing offers educators more flexibility in their schedules, provides crucial insights into how your edTech product will be used in digital or hybrid environments, and can help you with feature prioritization.

If you have easy access to a classroom for in-person testing, be sure to create a lightweight prototype, so it works easily on a slower internet connection or with older technology.

No matter what type of feedback loop you opt for, the testing phase is where you collect meaningful information about how to improve your tool before pushing changes live.

Final thoughts

As changes in EdTech continue to accelerate, conducting user experience research over time provides your product teams with the most clarity and direction.

Whether you’re designing an entirely new learning tool or rolling out feature updates, it’s time to dig into the nuanced specifics that make your product stand out in a crowded market.