Insights

When it comes to making decisions about which user pain points to solve first, EdTech product leaders are caught between two opposing forces: increased investment scrutiny and faster release cycles driven by competitive pressures and AI.

You’ve built something users love. Now you need to figure out what to charge for it — and who your buyer actually is.

EdTech teams should use AI as a strategic multiplier, not an initiator. Start with human-led strategic thinking to define goals and user needs, then use AI tools to enhance ideation, refine concepts, and accelerate prototyping. This approach creates products that solve real problems rather than impressive demos that fail during user testing. The key is following a structured 6-phase process that keeps human expertise at the center of strategic decisions.

When product leaders begin a partnership with an outside UX team, the discovery process presents a unique challenge. All stakeholders must gain alignment about the product problem to solve and come to a shared understanding about your users. And in order to understand your users, you need to consider their flows. Task flows, user flows, and user journey maps can all be useful in the UX discovery phase. All of these tools share a sense of establishing and tracking user movement. But they are discrete tools that have specific purposes and appropriate uses. You should know what outcomes each of these three tools provide, how they overlap, and how they support each other. That way, you’ll know where your efforts will be best applied in our discovery work together.

Stop implementing AI features that don’t deliver value. As an EdTech product leader, you’re facing impossible pressure. Your business demands AI integration to stay competitive, but rushed implementations often create features that impress in demos yet fail to solve real problems for educators and students. Get the strategic framework that turns AI pressure into competitive advantage.