Three Ways to Leverage UXR Before You Build Your EdTech Product

As EdTech becomes more competitive and markets tighten, many of the companies we work with are facing new pressures before they design, build, and ship features or roll out product updates.

We get it. You don't want to invest in a product build and design a feature that won't help teachers and learners succeed.

The costs for getting it wrong are simply too high.

That's why incorporating cycles of user research into your design and development process is so important. 

These feedback cycles help you validate decisions before you design, iterate based on meaningful input from teachers and learners, and improve product design.

We regularly help EdTech companies maximize their user research budgets by driving internal decision-making, mitigating risk, and protecting their existing design budgets.

Here's how you can advocate for the same practices internally and drive impact for the teachers and learners who use your tools.

Use feedback loops from teachers and learners to drive internal decision-making during discovery

When it comes to designing EdTech products, the best solutions are generated by getting to know your users through user experience research (UXR).

Through qualitative user interviews, iterative user testing, and other forms of research, you'll identify the pain points, needs, and frustrations of teachers and learners more effectively.

Here's how I see UXR used most successfully to guide the solutions and priorities of internal product teams:

Identify challenges instead of validating assumptions

When you see users face challenges in real time during a user test, your team is ultimately able to design a better learning experience.

Maybe you've watched as a student struggled to log in without help from an adult. 

Or maybe you've conducted a testing session during which a teacher strained to organize their data using your tool.

The biggest mistake I see companies make at this point is isolating their user testing results to prove what they already believe about their product.

Rather than ignoring user feedback that contradicts your original assumptions, keep gathering user data that helps you pinpoint new or existing challenges.

More often than not, addressing these challenges makes good business sense and good sense from a UX standpoint.

When teachers and learners can use learning products more successfully, you're setting up users for success—and proving the efficacy of your tool for buyers and educators.

Guide internal stakeholders and create stronger product roadmaps

After working with dozens of EdTech companies, I've seen first-hand how feedback loops with users help organizations develop more successful product strategy. 

When you can use your user research to remind internal teams of the stakes, it keeps everyone aligned and focused on the most important solutions.

But it's important to start this process early.

Bring your findings to discovery meetings, long before any real decisions are made about your EdTech product or its release.

During discovery, you'll learn whether your research findings align with the assumptions from other internal stakeholders. 

Compare and contrast! Which needs are the same? Which are different? 

Used in this way, UXR facilitates collaboration across internal teams and helps you align with all the stakeholders in your company.

By developing a more nuanced understanding of your users, you can also help internal stakeholders develop more effective product roadmaps.

As stakeholders come to understand user challenges through the lens of specific interviewees, your company's users become more real. 

And your design solutions become more targeted, cost-effective, and easier to plan.

Mitigate risk by testing the EdTech market and your feature ideas with users

Thinking about how to best prioritize features for your next EdTech product?

The sooner you loop in your users, the better.

Here's how we use qualitative user interviews and competitive research to help our clients validate product ideas and prioritize their next feature.

Prioritize EdTech features that educators will value and use

If you want the perspective of users to guide your feature priorities, set up interviews as early as you can. 

Interview three or four people from your target user group and identify the trends that emerge from those conversations.

Remember: administrators, educators, and learners all have different needs from EdTech products. 

Researching across these user groups will help you get the clearest picture of the challenges your learning tool needs to address and which features users most value.

Validate new product ideas and product-market fit

You can also use this approach to gather business intelligence and determine product-market fit for new learning tools.

Qualitative research helps product teams work backwards from what your users' problems are, so you can mitigate risk and roadmap an entirely new product backed by research.

At Backpack, we've even conducted this research through email and LinkedIn campaigns by tracking and validating how customers respond to specific ideas. 

Conversions for your campaigns represent a higher-intent response group, which then provides a foundation for conducting more qualitative research.

As with all user research, it takes experience to navigate user interview responses effectively.

Time and again, we've seen how a user's positive response to an idea proposed in a testing setting doesn't necessarily correlate with increased purchasing power.

Experienced researchers can help your team navigate the nuance of qualitative feedback and design for success.

Protect your budget by pinpointing critical needs for improvement

If your goal is to redesign a particular feature, you'll want to know which solutions are most cost-effective and deliver the highest impact.

Real-time user tests protect your budget by helping your team pinpoint critical needs.

They also help you prevent making design decisions that can compound and add friction over time.

Observe user challenges in real-time testing

To produce better, more cost-effective solutions, test your current product with users in real time.

As you observe users engaging with your learning tool, you should be able to identify where a user flow breaks down.

These friction points can help you pinpoint cost-effective solutions, so you can protect as much of your design and development budget as possible.

Catch new issues before they compound

Throughout user testing, you may discover that the problem you originally identified isn't the same challenge a user demonstrates during testing.

Rather than seeing the feedback as a setback, use it as an opportunity.

Consider interviewing users more broadly about the product by asking them to discuss the things they find frustrating or the ideas they have for improving a particular workflow.

All of this data gives you a helpful benchmark before you begin the redesign process.

And it helps you identify the design solutions that prevent long-term user frustration and churn.

Final Thoughts

From prioritizing new features to redesigning old ones, user experience research works best when it's woven throughout the strategic design process. 

Use the results to educate and inform internal stakeholders, facilitate collaboration, and accelerate strategic decision-making. 

In the end, you'll wind up with a better picture of who your users really are. 

You'll also design a learning product that solves real challenges faced by teachers and students—a result that's well worth the investment in UXR.

Are you redesigning your EdTech product or rolling out a brand new one? 

Contact us below to get expert help validating your feature priorities or pinpointing the right design solutions for your budget.