RESOURCE
Creating a style guide for data visualization
Are your EdTech product’s data visualizations telling stories that are useful to users? If they don’t meet the thoughtful and consistent standards in your own style guide, they probably aren’t. When you access our Quick Action Guide, you’ll have all you need to empower your data visualizations with: uniform look and feel, quicker design process, overarching strategy for data reporting, first-rate user experience, adherence to accessibility requirements, data and product credibility.
ARTICLE: Trevor Minton
2021 delivered more uncertainty for the EdTech industry. How different will 2022 be? Our team weighs in.
When the pandemic shut down life as we knew it in 2020, schools had to somehow keep their digital doors open. The EdTech world rose to the occasion, providing products that helped facilitate emergency-state educational experiences. In 2021, while the threat of the virus seemed to lessen at times, uncertainty remained. EdTech providers — and the educational market that relies on their products — had to ask exceptionally difficult questions with no clear answers. Who are our current users, now that the height of the crisis has passed? How do we prioritize blended experiences? Will we face another cycle of fully remote learning — and how can we prepare?
ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag
Just how valuable is your EdTech product? Ask both your UX and market research teams.
UX research and market research both assess the value of your EdTech product for its users. These two distinct groups of researchers have pretty different ideas of what “valuable” actually means — and how it’s measured. Your UX research team determines your product is valuable when it meets the needs of students, instructors, and administrators in learning environments. The central question for UX is whether or not your product is helpful in an educational environment and easy to use. Market researchers, on the other hand, ascertain your product is valuable when your product is purchased. The most important questions for market researchers are, “Will this product sell? And to whom?”
ARTICLE: Annie Hensley
Turn instructors into EdTech product champions with exceptional onboarding
EdTech users expect more of your product than ever before. Not only does your product need to be easy for users to navigate, but it also must facilitate a superior learning experience. UX (user experience) and LX (learning experience) add up to a truly valuable EdTech product in today’s classrooms — and not just for students. It’s important for your team to remember that instructors are learners, too. Instructors need to feel comfortable and confident with your product. And ideally, they will be convinced of your product’s role in the achievement of learning outcomes. Your team needs to prioritize instructors’ engagement with your product — and prove it with exceptional instructor onboarding.
ARTICLE: Adam Sonnett
Integrate instructors’ expertise in your EdTech product’s UX design to improve learning outcomes
Your EdTech product is just one facet of a greater educational experience. Technology, content, and teaching methods are all essential to creating an optimal situation. And of course, these three facets only become relevant when instructors and students are skillfully using them — to teach and to learn. It’s all too easy to have tunnel vision with your EdTech product. You’re naturally dialed in to the most important principles of UX. You know your product needs to be intuitive, predictable, and familiar for your users to have a seamless interaction. But your focus on good UX can actually erode the learning experience — the very thing you are designing to support.
