Insights

As EdTech companies mature, they inevitably look to grow their user bases. When you find yourself at such an inflection point, it’s more critical than ever to refine your research, design, and development processes to ensure you don’t create or compound your UX problems. In this first article in our series on optimizing your UX program to enable smooth growth, we’ll examine what this means for your research process.

Your EdTech product has found its footing with a dedicated user base. The intuitive, fast-moving approach that got you here has served you well. But now you’re at a critical juncture — perhaps you’re expanding functionality, targeting new user segments, or completely reimagining core features. Whatever the catalyst, one thing is clear: a focus on engineering that often propels products’ initial successes might now need a shift towards researching users’ needs and experiences.

In growing organizations, the relationship between design and engineering teams can make or break product development. Many companies start with strong engineering teams and bring in design expertise later. As EdTech products scale, lurking usability problems become emergencies that tax customer support teams and divert engineering teams away from the roadmap.

As we enter 2025, we’re sensing an inflection point for the EdTech industry. While artificial intelligence continues to dominate the conversation, we’re experiencing a broad evolution toward more rapid experimentation that’s driving strategic innovation.

As EdTech companies mature, they inevitably look to grow their user bases. When you find yourself at such an inflection point, it’s more critical than ever to refine your research, design, and development processes to ensure you don’t create or compound your UX problems. In this first article in our series on optimizing your UX program to enable smooth growth, we’ll examine what this means for your research process.

Your User Experience researchers and designers and your Customer Experience team have a lot to offer each other. It’s easy, however, for UX and CX teams to work in silos. When UX and CX teams fail to collaborate, challenges can arise. These issues not only affect team efficiency but also impact the overall user experience.

User experience research and design is often misconstrued as “nice-to-haves” — not a non-negotiable like world-class product engineering. Especially if you’re an early-to-mid-stage EdTech company, you likely begin the product development process with a proof of concept and build it out as an evolving, real-world solution, with the engineering team at the helm.

Openfield helps early-, mid-, and mature-stage EdTech companies quickly identify and eliminate barriers that keep their products from reaching their full potential. Project-based engagements typically run between two to six months in duration. The majority of new relationships with product teams begin with a project to address a specific challenge with a clearly defined scope, budget and timeline. Timelines and budgets are largely dictated by how complex your challenges and goals are. Your EdTech product’s needs may be highly focused around a specific feature or component, or they may have more broad implications across your product that require more planning, […]

Rapid prototyping is a cost-effective, resource-light approach to getting real-world feedback from users. Whether your product is brand new or you plan to release a significant feature revamp to a product with an existing user base, working iteratively through a rapid prototyping process allows your team to gain confidence that your ideas will truly solve your users’ problems.  Our EdTech Rapid Prototyping Package is Designed to be Fast, Flexible, and Cost-Effective Quickly align stakeholder expectations, shorten time to launch, and get the real-world user input you need to enter the market with the strongest possible product experience. Because every product […]

When done right, one of the most rewarding and fruitful things an EdTech product team can do is rapid ideation. Generating a multitude of solutions to user and business problems in a short period of time can be a key tool to quickly increase user loyalty and sales. But with the daily grind of product development, it can be hard for EdTech teams to find the time to plan and conduct fruitful ideation sessions. The challenge of conducting successful ideation sessions is often underestimated. Many product teams put off group brainstorming because they don’t know how to select the right […]

Too often, EdTech product teams focus on speed at the cost of accuracy. Has a recent update caused a user revolt? Is your user base growing increasingly restless because they believe you’re not listening to their calls for improvements? These scenarios are unfortunately common — and almost always arise due to a lack of user research. Acting quickly and decisively is important, but if you fail to accurately identify and prioritize acute UX issues using the right blend of user research and stakeholder brainstorming, you risk compounding your problems. Nothing is more painful for a product leader than expending time […]

We’re sensing a lot of pent up desire to move on big picture initiatives in 2024. The past couple years were filled with many unknowns as investment in the sector was heavily scrutinized for both early-stage and mature EdTech products. If you’re like many product leaders we talk to, you may be looking at 2024 with continued trepidation but feeling the pressure to address underlying issues that are keeping your product from being the best it can be. But 2024 could shape up to be your best year yet — if you play it right. We compiled a list of critical trends that will be the biggest influencers on your business.

Following a period of reticence toward spending on longer-term strategic initiatives in favor of quicker wins, we believe there is pent up desire to tackle bigger picture initiatives. But the need to scrutinize big moves feels more important than ever as investment in the EdTech sector continues to reset to normal pre-pandemic levels. That means investors, stakeholders and buyers are seeking safe bets on viable solutions to well-researched user needs. Whether you are an early, mid, or late-stage EdTech product, you can’t afford to have a declining user experience.

Whoever receives a grant from your organization should assure you that those grant dollars will be put to good use. Especially if they’re an EdTech company designing products for better student outcomes, their ability to affect those outcomes is contingent on the quality of their UX research and design processes. Those elements are critical to their success as an EdTech — and yours as a grant foundation funding them. That means your grant program design must specify that applicants demonstrate a firm grasp of UX research and design best practices within the education industry.

Products, like people, don’t always age gracefully. When it comes to digital products, this aging process begins as soon as new features or bug fixes are introduced and it accelerates when you’re consolidating multiple products into one platform. Over time, as more and more changes take place, design debt (or internal inconsistencies that don’t match the product’s underlying design system) naturally begins to accrue. From minor visual discrepancies all the way up to broken functionalities, design debt fragments and undermines user experience.

Prototypes are essential tools to ensure efficient, cost-effective and ultimately successful EdTech products. But how do you know which prototype to use for every scenario? Our guide demystifies the process of choosing the right type of prototype with a detailed tour through the different stages—from initial paper sketching to functional iterating.

Gamification is a term that comes up frequently in user experience (UX) design. It’s a method whereby designers borrow design principles from video games to create products that are more intrinsically enjoyable to use. Think Duolingo: it’s a language-learning app with game-like features that keep users motivated to become fluent in a new language.

Actionable data holds the key to unlocking valuable insights that empower users to make informed decisions. But it’s challenging to decipher which data will inspire your users down a guided path versus which will only confuse them. This eBook explores how actionable data in data visualizations transforms the way your users interact with their information to achieve better outcomes.

Gone are the days of pandemic-era funding, when buyers at educational institutions were quick to adopt new EdTech. For the last few years, institutions had the financial bandwidth to try any and all EdTech that facilitated remote learning or in-classroom work. Now that in-person education is back, there’s less incentive to try new tools — and frankly, even less money to do so. Fewer buyers can draw from the well of stimulus money anymore. So what does that mean for your EdTech? It means there’s a higher burden of proof on your product’s value. That’s where data visualization comes in.

If you’re not designing your plan to help you meet your business goals, you’re missing a major opportunity. UX research plans aren’t just for mining feedback about a design or concept. Done well, a robust research plan paves a path toward meeting all your objectives. So how do you empower your UX research team to build a plan that incorporates your business objectives? In this four-step guide, we’ll show you how to set up your UX research team and your business for success.

You’re responsible for ensuring the successful development, launch, and management of your company’s EdTech products. But between internal politics, siloed communication, and limited resources for design and research, your job is anything but simple. Hiring a third-party agency like Openfield can provide the external support teams like yours so often need. We’re an ideator partner that isn’t beholden to internal politics, allowing for faster and more collaborative decision-making.

You know the value of usability testing, but are you prioritizing learnability testing, too? Measuring your product’s learnability, which is essentially the time it takes for users to acclimate and become efficient at its related tasks, is just as important as testing overall usability. However, learnability is rarely tested or represented in traditional usability tests. Overlooking learnability is short-sighted. If users can’t get beyond the onboarding stage of using your product, how can you expect them to integrate it into everyday usage?

To get the highest return on your UX research investment, you need to carefully evaluate each finding and focus on the features and fixes that yield the biggest impact — for your users and your product’s future. Download our four tips on how to properly prioritize your UX research findings and you’ll be on your way to doing just that.

When you think of inclusivity in EdTech product design, your mind probably jumps to accessible design principles. But truly inclusive design starts long before UX designers put pixels to prototypes. In fact, the seeds of inclusivity are planted in the earliest UX research stages. And it all begins with how you recruit and relate to test users. 

For your EdTech product to be as valuable as possible, it’s important to meet users where they are. But what if you don’t know exactly where that is? How can you develop new products that meet their needs? Or successfully maintain products that continue to do so? UX research exposes areas where users may experience frustration within your product. Many times, though, additional challenges happen adjacent to the use of your product — outside the product itself. However, these obstacles can still impact the use of your product. 

A co-creation session is a powerful tool to unleash a wide range of new ideas for your EdTech product. Instead of waiting for user testing or other types of validation, you can generate ideas alongside your users. Co-creation is a beneficial exercise in upfront discovery as a method to gather early input from users. But it can also be used in later stages to either extend your product roadmap or uncover solutions when you have questions or features you want to update.

The discovery phase sets the stage for the successful launch of your EdTech product. Our latest resource guides you through the process and the tools to maximize this first step in the UX process. The result? Stronger alignment among your team and a better experience for your users.

Both project-based and long-term UX contracts have a place in the EdTech space. It’s not an either/or scenario. But each option for engaging an external UX partner comes with a unique set of considerations. The scale and scope of your project will play a significant role in your decision about the best approach. Regardless of which option you choose, there are a few things to keep in mind. At Openfield, we’ve worked with product owners in both contractual capacities and have learned what makes each one successful.

EdTech companies need to be serious about ADA compliance, and fast. The number of lawsuits filed against organizations has grown exponentially over the last few years, and COVID-19 has added a new dimension as users are challenged with adapting to remote conditions. It’s more important than ever to ensure your product won’t put you in the crosshairs in an era of heightened scrutiny. Simply put, making products accessible for ALL users is more than a requirement, it’s the right thing to do. On the business side, the consequences of not doing so include ADA lawsuits, declining sales, and negative brand perception.

Educators are among a rising group of individuals turning to data to inform their every day decisions. The most successful instructors often turn to data available from EdTech products for insights and recommendations to guide their students’ learning. When it comes to data, though, a natural tendency for product developers is to share everything available. But that can be overwhelming for teachers and in turn render the data useless. Data is no longer reserved for only analysts or “tech-savvy” individuals. And instructors shouldn’t have to struggle to use data that is available to them. Instead, data should help educators understand trends and make decisions about when students are achieving their goals and when instructors should intervene

A comprehensive approach to EdTech product development means more stakeholders are at the table. But when groups who should be working toward the same goal are at odds, it slows down the process and the progress toward your product’s launch. Developers are now joined by teams from content, marketing, customer support and other product groups (just to name a few). This diversity of roles and disciplines now represented on the team leads to a better product in the end. But the growing number of personalities and perspectives increases the potential for conflicting priorities. 

As an EdTech product manager facing time and budget pressures, you might be looking for a shortcut to get your product to market faster. In these instances, cutting UX research or testing may seem like the best approach. However, while many shortcuts are designed to make tasks quicker and easier, not all shortcuts produce desirable results. In the world of EdTech product development, cutting corners in UX simply isn’t an option. 

One of the most common challenges we help product leaders work through is how they can plan, build and adapt UX budgets over months, quarters and years. It can be very difficult when setting yearly budgets, for example, when you know unforeseen challenges and opportunities will inevitably require you to pivot along the way. In many organizations, tension arises when internal stakeholders, not to mention CFOs, learn that discovery work has unearthed new insights that will require your team to incur additional costs to address.

A speedier design process and a better end-product are possible when your UX designers and researchers work in lockstep. And that requires their continuous communication at all points of your product’s development process — especially in user testing. Download this free user testing worksheet that our UX designers and researchers created together in order to: track important user testing dates and links, describe users and research goals, and provide a list of research questions, tasks, and subtasks.

When you identify that you have cross-cultural product users or you want to expand to other regions, design complexity ensues. Your EdTech product’s UX design choices are important; everything from color to copywriting directly impacts how your users experience your product. Each design element either helps meet your users’ needs — or prevents them from being met.

In the EdTech industry, data drives business decisions — and that’s a good thing. Leaning into facts and metrics prevents you from being sidelined by assumptions and blinded by bias. Plus, data is available for your whole team to use. Shared data points can keep your team aligned and create ways for them to collaborate and connect. But data can be incredibly difficult to sort through; it’s not automatically helpful and instructive.

Part of making your EdTech product truly accessible is inclusive design; the other necessary part is inclusive copywriting. Both elements, when working in harmony, help create meaningful learning experiences. However, it’s important to recognize that product design processes may create dissonance between these two elements. Too frequently, copywriting is treated as an afterthought. And that may end up causing accessibility issues that get caught late in the game. Or not at all. 

Your EdTech product has a unique and constant challenge: It must meet the ever-evolving needs of your users. And UX research that includes frequent user testing is critical to identifying those needs. Your research can’t provide meaningful insights without the participation of the right users. Just who the “right” users are depends on the goals of the testing cycle. Unfortunately, product testing sessions tend to lean heavily on the involvement of the same users over and over again: power users. Power users know your product well and use it to its full potential.