2020 was most clearly defined by one thing: COVID-19. That was true for the world at large, and it was also decidedly true for the smaller world of EdTech. The pandemic forced a handful of industries into the spotlight. Chief among them? Health, finance — and education. As schools everywhere rushed to assemble remote learning protocols, EdTech products and other tech companies (hello Zoom!) stepped up in a major way to fill the gaps. But that doesn’t mean it was seamless. Far from it.
The primary trend in 2020 was the sudden shift to remote learning. As the COVID-19 pandemic forced everyone to go remote, educators scrambled to find fast, effective digital solutions to facilitate their new reality. While we’re all relieved to be in 2021, many challenges remain. We’ve already established that when it comes to EdTech tools, digital doesn’t equal remote. And EdTech companies are still working to develop or optimize tools to support online classes.
If you’re like many EdTech companies, you probably don’t have concrete data on how your competitors’ products perform at the task level. But your ability to set the proper usability targets for key tasks within your own product depends on your ability to do so. Establishing task-level baseline metrics is the only way to properly prioritize your UX team’s efforts moving forward. Here’s what you need to know to ensure that you use these metrics to maximize the ROI of your efforts.
Accessibility is a fast-growing concern for all EdTech companies. If your EdTech product doesn’t effectively serve all of its users (including those with disabilities) then you have a problem. You aren’t just excluding whole categories of users. You’re shortchanging your overall user experience — and setting yourself up for possible lawsuits to boot. Don’t put your product’s accessibility on the back burner. Start planning your accessibility audit and remediation plan today. Your users (and your legal team) will thank you.
