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    Background image showing icon of blueprints depicting the need to conduct good user research when planning
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag & Juli Lanzillotta-Eck

    EdTech Growth Series | Part 1: Research strategies that build the foundation for expansion

    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.

    Background image showing product schematic with broken line indicating problems.
    ARTICLE: Jacob Hansen, Alex Hiser & Tanner Sotkiewicz

    EdTech Growth Series | Part 2: Planning processes to navigate your product’s next evolution

    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.

    Background image showing icons of a UX Designer and Engineer collaborating
    ARTICLE: Kyle Bentle, Annie Hensley & Jordan Aguilar

    EdTech Growth Series | Part 3: Design collaboration that accelerates development

    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.

    Image of student using laptop with
    ARTICLE: The Openfield Team

    9 Essential EdTech Trends Changing Product Innovation in 2025

    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.

    Photo of an EdTech product team reviewing growth plans
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag & Juli Lanzillotta-Eck

    Effective UX research lays the foundation for strategic growth

    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.

    Photo of a female EdTech product leader looking at post-it notes on a window.
    RESOURCE: eBOOK

    The Only UX-Fueled EdTech Growth Playbook You Need

    Is your EdTech product ready to scale? Discover the essential UX strategies that will support your growth and set you apart in a competitive market. Our comprehensive ebook, “The Only UX-Fueled EdTech Growth Playbook You Need,” offers invaluable insights for small and midsize EdTech companies preparing to expand their user base and product complexity. on’t let UX be a bottleneck in your EdTech product’s growth story.

    Photo of members of an EdTech CX and UX team collaborating on product improvement notes on a wall.
    ARTICLE: Natty Smith and Jacob Hansen

    Boost your EdTech user understanding through UX and CX team collaboration

    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.

    A photograph of an EdTech UX designer and an engineer collaborating together
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Supercharge your EdTech: blending engineering prowess and UX insights for transformative impact

    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.

    Image of two members of an EdTech product team in a rapid ideation session
    ARTICLE: Natty Smith

    Take your EdTech product from problem to solution with these 3 ideation exercises

    Of all the critical moments in the product design process, the leap from a defined problem to solution idea is one of the most exciting and critical steps. Whether building a product for the first time or generating ideas for the “next big thing,” an effective ideation process can ensure a strong start to the production cycle. Different business needs call for different kinds of ideas. All moments of ideation, however, benefit from a strong and creative plan for input and innovation.

    Photo of an EdTech app on a smartphone
    Project-Based Engagements

    Project-Based Engagements

    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, […]

    Photo of young male student using EdTech software on laptop
    EdTech Rapid Prototyping Package

    EdTech Rapid Prototyping Package

    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 […]

    photo of teacher showing student how to use educational software on a tablet
    Ongoing EdTech Monthly UX Design & Research

    Ongoing Monthly UX Design & Research

    Whether you’re an early-stage product with no internal UX staff, a mid-stage growing product with a small team, or an enterprise-level product, Openfield provides a strategic and tactical power boost to your UX program. Openfield specializes in UX research and design for EdTech product teams. Since 2006, we have been working with teams like yours on an ongoing basis to quickly resolve specific user experience problems in the short term, while also tackling complex challenges around scalability, product innovation, data organization, and design systems. Our Ongoing Engagements Allow EdTech Product Teams to: Scale up quickly without the pain of recruiting, […]

    Photo of EdTech product team collaborating in rapid ideation workshop
    3-Day Ideation Workshop

    3-Day Ideation Workshop

    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 […]

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    Acute UX Diagnostic and Action Plan

    Acute Diagnostics Package

    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 […]

    Photo of high school students using laptops in a classroom
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    How a Comprehensive Approach Improves EdTech UX Outcomes

    The EdTech sector is experiencing an increase in funding and investment. However, you still need firm justification for UX research and design initiatives across a long chain of command. That means if you want to invest in user research and design services, your product team needs to demonstrate a clear return on investment. As specialized EdTech UX research and design experts, we’ll guide you through each stage of our comprehensive approach to UX design, including outcomes and deliverables. This guide will allow you to assess whether Openfield is the right UX partner to drive measurable value for your EdTech.

    Image of student using laptop with
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton & Brian Keenan

    8 EdTech trends to drive your 2024 strategy

    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.

    African American elementary student using a tablet in the classroom
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    How Openfield gets quick wins while tackling long-term solutions for strategic EdTech product growth

    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.

    Photo of two students using e-learning software in a classroom
    RESOURCE

    The 3-step guide to validating your EdTech product

    Without proper user validation, many EdTech companies risk missing the mark with their products. If your concepts don’t actually resonate with your end users, they easily get lost in the crowded EdTech marketplace. It’s especially risky in light of funding fluctuations and the cessation of pandemic-era funding. You need to ensure that your products and services stand out as must-have solutions to users’ everyday needs. Our 3-step guide to validation will help your EdTech product get the best start possible.

    Photo of student using EdTech software in a classroom
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Designing tech-focused educational grants? The best applicants have these 5 qualities.

    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.

    UX team members conducting an audit of an EdTech product to reduce design debt.
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley

    Getting out of design debt with an actionable UX audit

    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.

    Photo of young Native American student using educational software
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Does your product really serve all your users? Yes, it may be accessible, but you need to ensure you are accommodating other underrepresented populations.

    Underserved populations face challenges that you may be overlooking in your UX research and design. Product teams need to consider their needs because making sure your product is accessible means more than just ensuring it functions well for users with physical and intellectual differences.

    Background graphic for EdTech prototyping guide
    RESOURCE

    Not sure which prototype to use? Here’s your guide to strategic prototyping.

    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.

    Photo of young African American boy using learning app on smartphone
    ARTICLE: Jacob Hansen

    Motivational design: a new perspective on gamification in UX design for EdTech

    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.

    Abstract background image depicting futuristic AI technology
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Achieve better UX outcomes by using AI strategically

    Throughout 2023, the education market appears to be steadily shifting from a position of apprehension toward AI’s role toward embracing the it’s potential. It was only last year that instructors lamented ChatGPT and its ability to promote plagiarism in the classroom. Anecdotally, however, we believe we’re seeing fewer instructors who view artificial intelligence as an adversary and more who view it as an ally. 

    Image of students' hands raised with data visualizations in background
    RESOURCE: eBOOK

    Leverage actionable data to drive user engagement and improve learning outcomes

    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.

    Graphic showing EdTech product data
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    EdTech buyers want proof of efficacy and usage – here are 3 data visualization strategies

    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.

    Photo of student users with EdTech software
    RESOURCE

    5 UX research program pitfalls to avoid at all costs

    Many EdTech companies make the same common mistakes when structuring their UX research programs, each of which can have significant consequences. But knowing where you’re more likely to make missteps can reduce your chances of making a costly one. By understanding and avoiding these pitfalls, you can ensure your UX research programs are effective and contribute to the overall success of your EdTech products. From focusing solely on user testing to failing to properly validate experiences through product development, these are the five mistakes to watch out for.

    Photo of upward arrows symbolizing UX research aligning to EdTech business goals
    RESOURCE

    How to design a UX research plan that supports your business goals

    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.

    Photo of UX designer meeting with product owner
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley

    Scale up, speed up, save up: 5 benefits of partnering with an external agency for EdTech product design

    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.

    Photo of two spheres balanced on see saw shape.
    ARTICLE: Kyle Bentle

    A working relationship: How to stabilize the push-pull between UX and product management

    In EdTech, it’s not uncommon for UX and product teams to struggle to collaborate as effectively as they should. After all, while both teams have the same overarching goal — making the best product possible — they sometimes disagree on how to get there. Both teams share similar objectives, but prioritize them differently.  Your product management (PM) team is focused on meeting your company’s business objectives. And while your UX team has some of these same objectives top of mind, their role writ large is really to advocate for your users. 

    Photo of female college student using laptop in library
    ARTICLE: Lauren DeMarks

    Why the learnability of your EdTech product is as important as its usability

    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?

    Image of EdTech product team reviewing baseline metrics for usability.
    RESOURCE

    Learn to prioritize your UX research findings (and level up your EdTech product)

    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.

    Photo of SXSW EDU 2023 stage by Openfield
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    4 key takeaways from SXSW EDU 2023 that all EdTech product leaders should read

    Another year, another successful SXSW EDU event! We’re always energized by the annual event, but this year might have been our favorite yet.  (Full disclosure: We do have a habit of feeling this way every year). Openfield’s Chief Experience Officer, Trevor Minton, was in Austin at the event to immerse us in a wide range of topics that matter most to EdTech product leaders. 

    Photo of diverse students
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag & Jacob Hansen

    Encourage user research participation with these 5 inclusive practices

    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. 

    Photo of an EdTech service design team brainstorming
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    Why service design needs to be part of your EdTech product development roadmap

    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. 

    Photo of sunrise with 2023 text
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton & Brian Keenan

    2023 is a year of recalibration for EdTech. These trends will keep your product relevant.

    As we begin 2023, the education industry is in a very different place than where we were three years ago. With nearly all schools returning to in-person instruction, the reliance on technology solutions as the sole provider of learning is not as prevalent. That means EdTech product users are really scrutinizing what they are willing to take a chance on. They’re not going to simply use whatever is available. Instead, they will be more discerning about the products they adopt — and those they remain loyal to.

    Photo of a group of students and UX designers in a co-creation session
    ARTICLE: Jacob Hansen

    Bring users into your EdTech product design process with digital co-creation session

    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.

    RESOURCE

    Optimize the discovery phase for your EdTech product with this guide

    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.

    Photo showing fatigued man resting head on laptop
    ARTICLE: Lauren DeMarks

    Avoid user testing fatigue with this 2-part approach

    Regular input from users is critical to the ongoing success of your EdTech product. After all, your product is designed to meet the needs of your users. However, relying too heavily on a single group of users for feedback increases the likelihood that they will fall victim to user testing fatigue. Just as the name implies, user testing fatigue describes a condition that affects people asked to give feedback over and over. Symptoms include disengagement in the feedback process and a growing apathy to providing responses.

    ARTICLE: Chris Albert

    Project-based or long-term contract UX: Find the right approach for your EdTech product

    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.

    Blind user navigating an educational app on his smartphone.
    ARTICLE: Alex Hiser

    How to safeguard your EdTech product from the continued rise of accessibility lawsuits

    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.

    Photo of student using EdTech software
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    How better data-driven storytelling in your EdTech product can drive more meaningful engagement

    The users of your EdTech product share a desire for your product to make them better than they were before they started using it. While that may feel like a daunting task, it is possible for your product to deliver a more useful and meaningful experience for your users — one that makes them the hero of their own learning story. It starts by creating a product that demonstrates an innate understanding of your users. But before we dive into how to drive better learning outcomes, let’s look at the narratives that guide EdTech product use from three key audiences: students, instructors and administrators.

    Photo of teachers reviewing data dashboard in learning software.
    ARTICLE: Jesse Bruce

    How to guarantee your EdTech product delivers the best data experience for instructors

    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

    Photo of UX team working with stakeholders
    ARTICLE: Lauren DeMarks

    How your UX team can keep stakeholder conflict from derailing your EdTech product launch

    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. 

    Photo of hand stopping dominoes from falling
    ARTICLE: Chris Albert

    Trust debt: How minor inconveniences in your EdTech product grow into a pricey liability

    In the world of EdTech product development, accumulating some degree of debt is acceptable. Minimal levels of design debt (design-related inconsistencies that occur within a product over time) or technical debt (shortcuts in development that prioritize speed over perfect code) are a reflection that you’re constantly evolving and updating your product. What happens, though, when multiple debts mount over time and cause increased user frustration? The result is trust debt — an increasing lack of confidence in your product and your brand.

    Photo of EdTech UX team collaborating
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley

    Find a scalable solution for your next EdTech project with the right UX partner

    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. 

    Graphic pattern of dollar signs and question marks
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Why you must advocate for flexible UX budgets for your EdTech product

    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.

    An EdTech product owner and UX researcher review early testing recaps.
    RESOURCE

    Early research recap worksheet: A timesaving guide to capturing key testing session insights

    Sure, it would be ideal if you could sit in on all your EdTech product’s test sessions. But as a product owner, it probably feels like there are never enough hours in the day. You simply can’t be present every time users test your product. But you also don’t have to wait until testing is complete to get up to date. When you access this Early Research Recap Worksheet, you can squeeze the most value out of each round of UX research. It provides a thorough report of what’s happening, as it’s happening — and the answers to your most pressing questions.

    UX researchers and designers preparing for tests
    RESOURCE

    User testing preparation worksheet

    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.

    Graphic image of world map
    ARTICLE: Jacob Hansen

    A primer on how to design your EdTech product for cross-cultural users

    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.

    Photo of an EdTech product leader calculating ROI of UX
    RESOURCE

    Guide to UX reporting essentials

    Your UX research reports serve as a guide for your EdTech product team’s decision making. They should also be an important artifact for design and product development in the future, and as such, must be clear, organized, and insightful. Use our free guide to help you tell a compelling — and enduring — research story through your reports.

    Illustration of edtech users standing on a grid representing UX research data
    ARTICLE: Lauren DeMarks

    Is your EdTech product powered by the best data fuel? Ask your UX research partners.

    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.

    Photo of UX interface depicting how inclusive copywriting makes your EdTech valuable to all users
    ARTICLE: Alex Hiser

    Inclusive copywriting makes your EdTech valuable to all users

    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. 

    Photo of an EdTech product team conducting a remote discovery session
    RESOURCE

    The product leader’s guide to discovery sessions

    Whether you’re launching a new EdTech product or making improvements to an existing one, discovery sessions are a critical step that will allow your product team and stakeholders to develop a shared vision and strategy. To make the most of this inherently collaborative, interactive process, you’ll need clear goals and a practical agenda. Download our free guide to learn how to conduct a meaningful discovery session for your next UX research and design project.

    Power users are already extremely familiar with your product, so you need to be mindful that potential loss aversion will surface in testing.
    ARTICLE: Jacob Hansen

    Tip the balance of power users: why new, casual, and non-users are essential to product testing

    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.

    Design debt weighs heavily on a product leader's mind.
    RESOURCE

    5 tips to manage design debt

    Design debt — the natural accumulation of design-related inconsistencies — has a way of compounding over time, just like interest on a loan. And, like all debts with compounding interest, it can pretty quickly get out of control. If you don’t take it seriously, design debt can add up to poor performance of your EdTech product and unnecessary friction in your user experience. Use the 5 tips in this free guide to help your team skillfully manage design debt — and protect your bottom line.

    Photo of teacher and students in classroom from above
    ARTICLE: Jesse Bruce and Natty Smith

    Your EdTech product’s UX team should include former educators. Here’s why.

    “The Great Reshuffle” has many workers, including educators, leaving their careers for something that better supports their goals and well-being. While at first glance, it may seem like bad news that educators are leaving classrooms, there’s a strong silver lining. Some of them are leveraging their teaching expertise in EdTech user experience roles. There’s no doubt that even the best UX teams can miss important insights about how their products fit into their users’ lives because they haven’t spent time teaching. However, when you choose to partner with a UX team that includes former educators, your product will be informed by valuable, real-world classroom experiences.

    Photo of man using edtech software for continuing education
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley

    To build a truly customizable EdTech product, look to continuing education.

    The most successful EdTech products stay close to the evolving needs and preferences of users. The disruption in education caused by COVID-19 over the last couple of years  — and therefore in EdTech — have made that aim challenging indeed. Of course, it’s not just education that’s been rattled; the job market has been, too. Many employers are having a hard time finding and keeping workers. Both students and workers are asking how they can learn and grow more efficiently and effectively, and yesterday’s solutions just won’t do. In short, people are more focused on their personal goals and less willing to spend time on unrelated tasks with low or no payoff. 

    Image showing EdTech product team planning new features.
    RESOURCE

    The art of talking to users: A UX testing script guide

    When it comes to product development, user insights are invaluable. After all, it’s crucial you develop an EdTech product your users actually want and need. To glean that insight, you’ve got to understand how to effectively talk to users — without influencing their responses. Download our free guide to learn how to craft smart testing scripts that yield the most accurate, actionable user feedback.

    Photo of hybrid learning environment with teacher on screen
    ARTICLE: Kyle Bentle

    EdTech products must meet the needs of hybrid classrooms. UX can help.

    The COVID-19 pandemic turned the traditional in-person classroom experience on its head.  Students were suddenly remote, and instructors scrambled to continue teaching. While most students have returned to the classroom, the hybrid model — where some students are in person and others are remote — is likely here to stay. And that brings a series of unparalleled challenges and opportunities for EdTech products. This evolution of the traditional classroom offers great freedom and flexibility for both instructors and students. But it also presents new problems for teaching and learning. Effective UX design can help defray pain points and create products that are valuable for all users — whether they’re in-person or remote. For your EdTech product to have a lasting impact, it must accommodate the realities of the hybrid classroom.

    Photo of grade school student using e-learning software.
    ARTICLE: Anushka Shetty

    Task flows, user flows, & journey maps: 3 tools worth their weight for alignment & UX design prioritization

    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.

    Image detail showing design system documentation for EdTech product.
    RESOURCE

    Download this Design System Starter Kit to create seamless user experiences more efficiently

    UX teams often view design systems as luxuries they can’t afford. But an effective design system is much more than a “nice-to-have.” It can increase efficiency, save money, and shift your team’s focus to creating delightful new features rather than untangling design knots. While the idea of building a design system may seem daunting, our guide will help steer you whether you’re starting small or jumping in feet-first.

    Photo of compass symbolizing EdTech product roadmap
    ARTICLE: Tanner Sotkiewicz

    Is your EdTech product roadmap at risk over the long term? Ask your UX team.

    The better the roadmap, the better the journey to your destination. It’s true on a vacation, and it’s true for your EdTech product development. Similar factors have to be weighed out when you plan: timelines, experiences, costs, and goals. Unfortunately, many product roadmaps that intend to reflect long-term plans are actually short-sighted. They may not align properly with your strategic direction, or they might be too rigid to handle the reality of what the future holds. And most problematically, roadmaps can be void of real user experience insights. Unless it aligns to what is beneficial to the end user at every step, your roadmap could be at risk of these kinds of vulnerabilities. You’ll need to strengthen it and ensure it’s much more than an informational document.

    Photo of UX designer working on course templates
    ARTICLE: Lauren DeMarks

    Incorporating a UX mindset in your EdTech product’s course templates leads to better learning experiences. Here’s how.

    In EdTech, your product and UX teams share a purpose: meeting the evolving needs of your users. You may be more likely to invest in improving the UX of the visible, user-facing parts of your product. That makes sense — it affects the bottom line. There’s no denying what students and instructors immediately see (like attendance, grades, and assignments) influences what EdTech product is purchased by or for them. These user-facing elements are made with internal course building tools, yet you probably make far fewer investments in them. From a UX perspective, this is a mistake. Internal tools — like the ones that build course templates — powerfully shape users’ overall experience with your product. 

    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.

    Photo of teacher helping students use educational software in the classroom
    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?

    Photo of two puzzle pieces representing the relationship between UX and Market Research
    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?” 

    Photo of a college professor helping students use learning software.
    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. 

    Photo of professor giving a lecture to students
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    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.

    Photo of UX design team reviewing work on EdTech software
    ARTICLE: Crissie Raines

    Manage your EdTech product’s resourcing needs with the right UX partner

    EdTech product development rarely moves along at a predictable, constant pace. There are phases of frantic activity. And there are phases of watching and waiting. The ebb and flow inherent in your product’s life cycle keeps things interesting — and difficult to properly staff. Now more than ever, striking the right balance with resources is a job unto itself. And you may be considering hiring an outside UX agency to support you. Up to this point, you may not have felt the need for an external UX partner. Not so long ago, your product team probably spent time and energy focusing on nice-to-have features. And you had the capacity to do so. But the EdTech landscape is different now. You have to prioritize the features you know your users require in the post-Covid classroom.

    Photo of a blind man using EdTech software on a mobile device.
    ARTICLE: Lauren DeMarks & Alex Hiser

    Does your EdTech product need to prove its commitment to accessibility with a VPAT?

    One of the most important continuing conversations you’ll have about your EdTech product is about how it meets accessibility standards. Adhering to accessibility guidelines isn’t just about avoiding penalties. It’s just the right thing to do. All of your users deserve access to the same information, no matter what their physical or mental abilities. The World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1) are meant to ensure your product’s content is perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. Making sure your product lives up to those principles is not a one-and-done affair. It requires constant evaluations and improvements. You may need to do an internal accessibility audit to work through small compliance issues. Or you may need to go a step further with a VPAT.

    Photo of a teacher and two elementary students using e-learning software.
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    How EdTech leaders can score quick UX wins without sacrificing the long-term product vision

    UX issues are an unavoidable part of digital product development. That’s true whether you’re updating an existing feature or readying a brand-new EdTech product for launch. The real question isn’t whether you’ll encounter usability issues, but what you do about them. Identifying the symptoms of your usability problems may be easy enough. Perhaps your CX team is swamped with complaints about a particular task, or maybe you’re seeing a lack of engagement with a specific feature. But diagnosing the underlying problems — the why behind those glaring symptoms — can be much more challenging. Of course, doing so is necessary if you want to find the right solutions. 

    Photo of student filling out ux research survey for e-learning software
    ARTICLE: Anushka Shetty

    Synthesize your EdTech UX survey results efficiently to save time and budget

    If you’re developing your EdTech product in an environment of rapid iteration, tension can run high. Even though you’re moving fast, you still need to stay close to the reason you are creating a product in the first place: your users’ evolving needs. And that means you’ve got to simultaneously conduct UX research and keep up the pace. Some research methodologies are better than others at different points of your product development. When you’re working under a tight deadline, you need research results in a matter of days, not weeks. User surveys can be effective research methods when you need actionable insights fast. Your research should always be rigorous and comprehensive, so you can make the best product decisions for your users. Keeping up the momentum while gleaning and integrating new insights? That’s a tall order. 

    Photo of a teacher helping a young student use elearning software.
    ARTICLE: Kyle Bentle

    Accessibility tips to ensure your data visualization works for all EdTech users

    Data visualizations can be powerful assets for your EdTech product. They tell clear stories that engage and inform your users. When designed simply and used selectively, data visualizations enhance learning experiences. Unfortunately, though, harnessing their power can be easier for some more than others. Like all other features of your product, data visualizations should be accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. Accessibility guidelines for data visualization aren’t explicitly defined under Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), so it’s easy for your team to deprioritize them. And sometimes your product designers may inadvertently neglect accessibility in their processes. 

    Photo of UX designer leaving job
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    How to protect your UX investment from employee turnover at your EdTech company

    In 2020, people on your product team may have been reluctant to pursue other professional opportunities in the midst of so much uncertainty. 2021 is a different story. Now your team has much greater freedom to explore their options. After all, even a generally happy, productive team occasionally loses key players. It’s inevitable that people seek new industry challenges or take on entirely different work. That possibility can spark fear in the heart of your organization. How will your team move projects forward without stumbling? How will you reassure your users? And how will you fill the knowledge gap?

    Photo of student using elearning software
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    How early-stage EdTech products can fast track releases while protecting their investment

    Whether you’re a new EdTech startup or one with a substantial track record, you’re facing similar challenges when ramping new products and features. You need to define how your new product fits into your overall vision and meets user needs. And you’ve got to make smart judgments about how to use your resources. As you try to handle a slew of competing interests, each with a price tag, hiring an external UX partner might feel like an investment you can’t afford. After all, you’re working with clear budget constraints. Funneling assets outside your organization may feel unwarranted.

    Photo of post-it notes used for user journey mapping for e-learning software
    ARTICLE: Autumn Gilbert

    Ask your users: why UX research is key to an effective user journey map in EdTech

    Knowing how and when to conduct UX research is mission critical for your EdTech product. With well-timed research, you have the insights you need to make the best product decisions. And most importantly, research provides a window into the minds of your product users. Your user journey maps are case in point. Mapping your user’s journey without UX research is like a modern-day cartographer working without satellite images. EdTech products shouldn’t rely on journey maps designed out of probabilities. It’s like using a compass and telescope when you have specialized mapping software at your disposal. 

    Photo of a teacher using e-learning software on a tablet in the classroom
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley & Lauren DeMarks

    Clearing learning experience blind spots to bolster UX is key to differentiation in EdTech

    As an EdTech product leader, you know how challenging it can be to set your product apart from the competition. And the bar for EdTech products is only being set higher. The most successful EdTech products will need to prove more than their efficacy. They’ll need to improve learning outcomes by leaning into learning science (LS) — the study of how learners learn. Getting a product to market that provides an excellent user experience (UX) is just not enough anymore. The core value of a successful EdTech tool should also be a great learning experience (LX). Simply put, UX + LX = good EdTech.

    Photo of student and teacher with laptop using elearning software.
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    No insight left behind: how to get the most out of your EdTech UX research participant

    UX research is the cornerstone of your EdTech product — without it, you won’t be tapped into your users’ evolving needs. Knowing your goals is one vital aspect of research — and another is creating fruitful conversations with your research participants. As a product leader, you’ll want to make sure your research is being conducted in a way that provides the least biased and most productive results. If research conversations aren’t adapted and adjusted to get the most out of your participants, insights are being left behind. In order to meet your UX research objectives, your team ought to define suitable interview demeanor and refine strategies with participants.

    Image of arrows in alignment
    ARTICLE: Kyle Bentle

    Kicking off a UX project: how to align stakeholders and hit the ground running

    For EdTech companies the beginning of a new UX project is critical. Unless your entire team gets on the same page about your discovery process and big-picture project goals, you risk inadvertently duplicating work and missing deadlines. Team members’ opinions about processes can come into conflict. The success of the project depends on the entire team coming into agreement — and that starts with a kickoff meeting. An effective kickoff sets the tone for what will be a collaborative effort — one that ensures all stakeholders are heard. The goal is to work toward consensus of discrete problems from disparate points of view. Here’s how to take full advantage of your kickoff meeting.

    Image of multiple objects balanced evenly representing long- and short-term goals in EdTech
    ARTICLE: Lauren DeMarks

    To innovate in EdTech, balance long-term initiatives with short-term wins

    Every EdTech product leader wants to innovate in their space and make room for bold UX solutions that meet users’ unarticulated needs. But innovative solutions take time and resources to develop. The benefits are delayed — and they don’t always come with a guarantee of success. At the same time, your team likely feels pressure to stay on track with fast-moving development cycles and the perennial demand for measurable improvements. The result? Long-term design concepts are first on the chopping block as “quick wins” and inevitable fires jump to the front of the line every time. 

    Photo of UX researcher at Openfield
    ARTICLE: Autumn Gilbert

    Maximize the value of UX research — and build a product users love — with strategic prioritization

    You already know UX research is integral to developing EdTech products users can’t live without. Whether you’re launching a new product or taking an existing one to the next level, research is a skeleton key with the power to unlock your users’ needs, preferences, pain points, and mental models. But with each successive round of research, your insights can quickly add up to an embarrassment of riches. You can’t possibly tackle everything at once. Not only that, but not all UX research findings are created equal. So how do you choose which of the many findings your research team uncovers to focus on first?

    Two UX designers discussing the importance of learning science integration
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Leveraging learning sciences & UX to put learning outcomes at the forefront of your EdTech product

    The best EdTech products aim to meet the evolving needs of their users. What’s also true is that the best EdTech products are working diligently to uncover new opportunities for teaching and learning. In the world of education, meeting your users’ needs means more than simply crafting a seamless user experience. It means facilitating improved learning outcomes. The future of EdTech will be one in which products are evaluated for their usability and the efficacy of their educational content. In other words, does your EdTech product provide a better education for its users?

    Image showing an EdTech data visualization dashboard.
    ARTICLE: Kyle Bentle

    Understanding user needs is key to taking your EdTech data dashboard from “so what?” to “so useful!”

    Today’s instructors and students expect EdTech products to offer actionable, data-driven insights that pave the way for smarter decisions and improved learning outcomes. So it’s no wonder data visualization dashboards are increasingly par for the course in the EdTech space. Unfortunately, though, not all data dashboards live up to their potential. Too many overpromise in appearance — but underdeliver in actual user value. You see, a lot of data dashboards function like information fire hoses. Rather than presenting a carefully curated selection of insights, they overwhelm users with a high-powered torrent of data points.

    Photo of a teacher helping a young student use e-learning software in the classroom
    ARTICLE: Jacob Hansen

    Is your EdTech product poised to stay relevant in the post-pandemic world?

    During the coronavirus pandemic, educators turned to EdTech to bridge the gap between traditional and remote learning environments. Demand for EdTech products spiked as companies like yours worked overtime to accommodate wave after wave of new users — and adjust to radically different user needs, too. It was a wildly turbulent year, one that required your team to work at a breakneck pace while managing the stress of living through a global pandemic. And it was equally wild from a business standpoint. With so much new demand, the past year was, for many EdTech companies, an unprecedented success. 

    Image of multiple doors depicting various e-learning software options
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    What are your EdTech product’s biggest competitors? The answer may surprise you.

    Competition in the EdTech space is fierce. So it makes sense that you keep a close eye on what your closest competitors are up to. You’re probably acutely aware of any gaps between your own product’s capabilities and those of your biggest rivals. So much so that achieving feature parity may be a top priority when planning your product’s roadmap. No doubt about it: It’s crucial to understand and keep pace with your competitors. But just because the most comparable EdTech product on the market offers a particular feature or functionality doesn’t necessarily mean you should, too.

    Photo of an e-learning user filling out a usability survey.
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    Avoid these mistakes to craft effective UX research surveys and improve your EdTech product

    Surveys are critical tools for UX researchers. In the EdTech space, they can be used to collect standardized feedback about your users’ needs as well as your product’s usability. Yet not all surveys are equally useful. The quality of your surveys, which depends on how they are written and structured, can significantly impact the value of your findings. Unfortunately, the ability to craft clear, effective, and unbiased surveys is a skill not all product teams (or even UX firms) possess.

    Photo of student studying with timer
    ARTICLE: Julee Peterson

    How to build a self-paced or adaptive EdTech product that keeps users coming back

    As instructors, students, and casual learners alike embrace a personalized, learn-at-your-own-pace ethos, self-paced and adaptive learning products are growing in popularity. This approach represents a key opportunity for EdTech products like yours — but it comes with an added layer of responsibility. All EdTech products must be user-friendly to succeed. However, when it comes to self-paced products and adaptive products, the pressure to deliver a seamless and intuitive user experience (UX) is much higher.

    Image with Welcome written in many languages
    ARTICLE: Yanni Xiang

    Your user base includes 1M+ non-native English students. Is your EdTech product ready to serve ESL learners well?

    Your EdTech product serves an international, multilingual, and multicultural audience. That’s true even if your product is only ever used in schools and colleges within the United States. You see, whether your product is geared toward K-12 or higher education, the demographic trends are the same: American schools are increasingly composed of non-native English speakers.

    Photo of guide to UX research methods for EdTech software
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    A Field Guide to UX Research: How (and why) to craft a customized research plan for your EdTech product

    All products — yours included — are only as good as users believe them to be. Which means any EdTech product’s success hinges on its ability to anticipate and solve users’ most pressing problems, both in and out of the classroom. And it’s safe to say that without UX research, your product’s design is little more than a stab in the dark. Why is it, then, that so many EdTech companies struggle to appropriately leverage UX research in their product development process?  

    Photo of an EdTech product leader calculating ROI of UX
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    How adopting a scientific approach to EdTech UX can maximize your ROI and boost revenue

    As an EdTech leader, you know your product needs to be user-friendly to succeed in the market. And you also know user research is key to designing solutions that satisfy and delight. At the same time, though, you may have a hard time defining the true ROI of your UX investment. Without the ability to directly connect UX activities to measurable business outcomes, you may struggle to justify your UX spend — whether that’s to your board, your funders, or even yourself.

    Image of road sign depicting multiple use cases for edtech product ux design
    ARTICLE: Julee Peterson

    More use cases mean more complexity. Here’s how to preserve your EdTech product’s user experience.

    Your EdTech product serves a range of users in different situations with different needs. That’s true even if your product is lean and focused. But as your user base and feature set grow over time, so too will the number of use cases you must account for in your UX design. Growth is a good thing. Yet when it comes to EdTech products, more use cases mean more complexity. And complexity is often the enemy of usability. 

    Image of students using beta features testing EdTech software
    ARTICLE: Allie Lozinak

    When (and how) to use beta features in your EdTech product

    User research is a cornerstone of digital product design and development. And conventional wisdom dictates that you should thoroughly test new features and functionalities before you release them to users. But there’s one notable exception to this golden rule: beta features. Presenting a feature as “beta” can be a great way to increase your team’s agility, go to market faster, respond more quickly to your users’ most pressing requests, and test out concepts on a wider audience. 

    Photo of stressed student using education software
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    EdTech users are more stressed than ever. Here’s how to be part of the solution.

    As the coronavirus pandemic continues to upend life as we knew it — including the usual in-person educational models — students, teachers, and administrators are more stressed than ever before. You’ve seen it with your own eyes. Your EdTech product users are struggling with unprecedented challenges. And they have the elevated anxiety to match. To design the right solutions within your product — and effectively reduce user stress — you must first look at your users’ lives outside your product. 

    Photo of a group of students using educational software.
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    Preselected vs. custom user panels: How to find the right EdTech users for your research efforts

    You already know that user testing is critical to the success of your product. But for many EdTech companies, actually sourcing test users is a perennial challenge. You see, when it comes to user testing, not just any users will do. You can either build a bespoke set of actual users of your product or you can utilize a service that brings their own preselected group. In order to get meaningful insights, you need to start with the right users.

    Photo of student cheating while learning remotely
    ARTICLE: Jacob Hansen

    Want to increase trust in your EdTech product? Reduce cheating.

    Cheating is a perennial concern in education. All educators are aware of it, and all educators know they must monitor students’ behavior for signs of troubling activity. But in an increasingly remote and digital context, sussing out cheating is harder than ever. Instructors are generally savvy to the ways students game digital systems. But that doesn’t necessarily make those deceptive activities easier to spot. More and more, instructors are looking to EdTech products to help solve the problem.

    Abstract image portraying statistics in user research
    ARTICLE: Autumn Gilbert

    Crunching the numbers: how statistics lead to smarter decisions for your EdTech product

    User testing is the key to creating an EdTech product your users will love. That’s the whole reason you do it in the first place: To uncover critical user insights and leverage them to make smart, user-centric design decisions. But the truth is that simply conducting the research — even well-designed research — isn’t enough. In order to get meaningful takeaways from your research findings, you must apply the right level of statistical rigor.

    Image showing EdTech product team planning new features.
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley

    Use these tips to beat the EdTech competition to market (without sacrificing quality)

    The EdTech market is ripe for disruption. Between pandemic-driven changes to educational models and an influx of investors, the industry is now in a state of rapid flux. Which means the pressure is on for your EdTech company to bring useful new features to market as quickly as possible. Of course, that’s easier said than done. EdTech has long marched to the beat of its own industry-specific drum, often moving at more of a leisurely canter than a breakneck gallop.

    Image of school children - Openfield 2021 EdTech Outlook
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    2020 was a whirlwind for the EdTech industry. Our team shares what to expect in 2021.

    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.

    Photo of young student using remote learning software from home.
    ARTICLE: Julee Peterson

    How EdTech can deliver rich, collaborative learning experiences — in a remote context

    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.

    Image of school children - Openfield 2021 EdTech Outlook
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    2020 was a whirlwind for the EdTech industry. Our team shares what to expect in 2021.

    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.

    Image of EdTech product team reviewing baseline metrics for usability.
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    How to use baseline UX metrics to fine-tune your EdTech product plan

    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.

    Photo of blind EdTech user on smartphone
    ARTICLE: Julee Peterson

    How accessible is your EdTech product? To find out, start with an accessibility audit.

    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.

    Photo of product development team at a software startup
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley

    Defend your EdTech product’s marketshare by thinking like a startup

    Are you adapting to meet your users’ changing needs in the pandemic as quickly as your competitors? As an established EdTech company, you’ve already carved out a unique spot for your product (or suite of products) in the market. Now that you’ve solidified your place within the EdTech space, your focus has shifted from staking a claim to defending and growing your marketshare. But if you’re not listening carefully to them and adapting your product quickly enough, someone else may beat you to it.

    ARTICLE: Kyle Bentle

    Why your EdTech product needs a data visualization style guide

    As EdTech products like yours mature, they grow. That is, they amass an increasing number of features, functionalities, and users. And as they do that, they create and collect more and more of something else: User data. This ever-expanding river of data represents a major opportunity to add value for your users by uncovering meaningful and actionable insights. But how you go about presenting that data can spell the difference between success and failure.

    EdTech users in research test
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    How to leverage your user research findings to create a compelling value proposition

    In the world of consumer digital products, the buyer is almost always the end user. And in many ways, this makes everyone’s job easier, from business executives to your sales and marketing teams. But in the world of EdTech products, the same thing can’t be said. Students are by far the largest EdTech user group, yet they almost never have the power to decide which products they will be required to use as part of their education experience.

    Background image showing different types of UX metrics
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    Choosing the right UX metrics can make or break your EdTech product research

    There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all UX metric. Rather, there are a number of key metrics you can pull from depending on the situation. Your prototype’s fidelity, the scope of what you are testing, your test objectives, and your internal stakeholders’ preferences all play a role in determining which metrics make the most sense at any given time. Here’s what you need to know to select the right metrics for your EdTech product. 

    Photo of a member of an EdTech product development team looking out the window while thinking about industry trends.
    ARTICLE: Jacob Hansen

    Keep your EdTech product team on the cutting edge by creating an informed, forward-thinking culture

    As an EdTech executive, it’s your job to think big picture. That means keeping your broader business objectives top of mind. And it also means staying in the know about industry trends. To that end, you may follow a curated news feed or participate in industry-specific LinkedIn groups. Doing so helps you stay on top of current events, trending technologies, and industry forecasts.

    Photo of UX researcher facing internal pressures
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    How an external UX research partner can help you avoid biased results and internal pressures

    As an EdTech product leader, you understand how important user research is to your product’s success in the market. You know you need to invest in UX research. But how? You may be weighing the pros and cons of hiring your own internal UX researcher versus partnering with an external UX team. Hiring an external UX research team like Openfield comes with many benefits.

    Photo of UX designers reviewing the design system for an EdTech product
    ARTICLE: Lauren DeMarks

    Moving to a new design tool? Time to optimize your design system.

    As an EdTech product owner, you know that your team is only as efficient as the systems and processes you put in place to manage production. And those systems and processes are, in turn, shaped by the design and engineering tools you use. That’s one of the reasons why the decision to migrate to a new design tool is such a big deal. But it also means that switching tools — for whatever reason — represents a key opportunity to reevaluate and optimize your workflows.

    Photo of student using video chat for remote learning during pandemic.
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Digital doesn’t equal remote: EdTech insight in the era of COVID-19

    In the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, schools across America are embarking on a totally unexpected — and wholly unprecedented — remote-learning experiment. As the fall 2020 semester kicks off, K-12 schools and higher education institutions everywhere are tentatively rolling out a variety of remote instruction plans. As they scramble to make this arrangement work, educators are looking to EdTech to help close the loop.

    Photo of upward arrows symbolizing UX research aligning to EdTech business goals
    ARTICLE: Autumn Gilbert

    Why your UX research plans must align with your EdTech company’s business goals

    UX research is a critical component of product development. It’s the key to unlocking your users’ needs and preferences. And it’s what enables you to build the best, most user-centric EdTech product possible. Of course, you already know to include key workflows and features in your user testing plan. But what about your broader business objectives — the quarterly and annual goals by which you measure your product’s progress?

    Image of EdTech product development team planning prototypes for a discovery phase
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley

    Fuel smarter EdTech product development plans with discovery phase prototypes

    The discovery phase of any EdTech project — whether a new product launch or a feature update — is all about gathering information. Of course, this usually includes a variety of activities. You might simultaneously be hammering out business objectives, performing a competitive analysis, and interviewing your users, among other activities. The goal? To emerge with a full understanding of your big-picture problem, as well as a keen sense of how best to solve it.

    A young female student uses educational software in the classroom.
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    How to use loss aversion bias to evoke more meaningful user feedback on your product

    As a product owner, you know that your users’ feedback is the most valuable asset in your arsenal. After all, your EdTech product can only succeed to the extent that it actually meets your users’ needs. And the more deeply you understand your users — their desires, mental models, requirements, and preferences — the more perfectly you can tailor your product to suit their taste. So it’s imperative that you draw out frank, unbiased, and uncensored feedback in every round of user testing.

    Background graphic showing research dashboard for EdTech product executives.
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    How EdTech product executives can make sense of mounting UX research data as products scale

    If your EdTech company is committed to your product’s UX, then you already know UX research isn’t a one-and-done activity. It’s an ongoing, holistic part of your product life cycle. Which means that your UX team may generate dozens of research reports over the course of a single year. Each individual report tells a story and provides actionable insights. But as your research scales, so does your data. Before you know it, you can amass an avalanche of information — with no simple way to make sense of the bigger picture story it tells. 

    Image of one open door between two closed doors symbolizing inclusive design
    ARTICLE: Julee Peterson

    To create an accessible EdTech product, banish exclusive design patterns

    Say the words “exclusive design,” and the average person probably starts picturing high-end fashion brands and electronic devices. After all, in the world of marketing, “exclusive” is a good thing. But in the context of digital products, exclusive design isn’t a positive feature. It’s a preventable failure. When it comes to EdTech products, an exclusive design pattern is one that doesn’t meet the needs of all of its users. In other words, it’s a design pattern that only works well for certain groups of people, such as visual users or those with a mouse in addition to a keyboard. 

    EdTech data visualization showing how better graphics can help users understand data better,
    ARTICLE: Kyle Bentle

    How to avoid EdTech data visualizations that are all beauty and no brains

    At their best, data visualizations enable EdTech companies to tell interesting and meaningful stories using the data collected within individual products. Visualizations are both attractive and powerful. They have the ability to highlight trends, support decisions, and improve outcomes across the board. But not all data visualizations are created equal. If you don’t approach them with focus and care, they can actually work against you. A data visualization can be gorgeous — a piece of art worthy of hanging on the wall — without being truly useful.

    Image of stacked shapes illustrating that UX budgets are a balancing act.
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Need to right-size your UX and engineering investment? Understand these risks.

    As an EdTech leader, you know firsthand how challenging it can be to strike the right balance between production costs, time to market, and quality. You must ship great products that generate revenue for your bottom line, build customer confidence in your brand, and ensure that your user and business needs are adequately addressed. That’s a pretty tall order, especially considering that you’re probably also under pressure to tighten your proverbial belt, given the current economic times. As a result, you may be grappling with the inevitable need to trim production costs in the form of UX research, design, and engineering.

    A college student using EdTech software
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley & Allie Lozinak

    How to prioritize user needs as your product team tackles feature requests & business demands

    As a product owner, you’ve been trained to put your users’ needs first. But you also know from experience that you don’t have the luxury of developing EdTech products in a vacuum. While your users should ideally drive everything you do, you must also contend with a host of competing pressures, from budgetary constraints to compressed timelines. The truth is that your feature requests and production timelines are often driven by business needs. But your users are the reason you created your product in the first place.

    UX designers making plans based on research
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    The formula for clear & effective UX research reports

    EdTech companies like yours rely on UX research to make important decisions about your product. Each of your key stakeholders — including your product and executive leadership teams — must clearly understand your research findings and the recommendations that flow from them.  So it’s critical that your research reports are clear and effective. Like the EdTech products you build, research reports are only effective to the extent that they serve their end users. Unfortunately, they are too frequently only formulated with a researcher’s mindset. That is, they are so focused on documenting the individual trees that they fail to also tell a compelling story about the forest.

    Photo of tools
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Evaluate your UX design tools to amp up efficiency and innovation

    Your EdTech company’s UX team relies on digital tools to do their jobs, from design work and prototype creation to UX testing and managing internal workflows. Chances are, your team is fully dialed into a suite of tools that works reasonably well for them. Sure, your tools aren’t perfect. But the familiarity you’ve gained with them enables your team to create smooth, efficient workflows. Or do they? Stop and look a little closer. Your team may be using more workarounds than any of you realize — workarounds that are so deeply ingrained they no longer even seem like workarounds.

    Image detail showing design system documentation for EdTech product.
    ARTICLE: Chris Albert

    Design systems can make or break your EdTech product’s UX. Here’s how to do it right.

    You already know that design systems are critical when it comes to creating consistent user interfaces. In fact, you may already have invested in a design system for your EdTech product. You’ve seen some benefits, sure. But you’ve also found that it’s opened up a whole new Pandora’s box of sticky design questions. Rather than arming your team with the information necessary to make confident decisions, they are frequently bogged down with uncertainty and indecision. It seems like every new use case results in a debate over which version of a component should be used or whether new variants should be created. 

    An L&D manager works on a corporate learning platform.
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    How to develop a corporate online learning platform that drives engagement and gets results

    Today’s corporations are strategically investing in continuing education. Whether they are seeking to upskill or reskill their workforce, learning and development (L&D) initiatives are a cost-effective way for organizations to strengthen their workforce, keep current with emerging technologies, and stay ahead of the competition. As a result, many industries (and the advocacy groups that serve them) are pouring more resources into learning and development (L&D) initiatives. And a significant percentage of those funds are now being funneled toward online learning platforms. 

    UX researcher conducting digital focus group for EdTech product
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    How to use digital focus groups to quickly gain actionable insights

    Your EdTech company may already be in the practice of utilizing focus groups. They can be a great way to bounce new concepts off your users and glean insights about their preferences and mental models. But what about digital focus groups? You may be cringing at the very thought of hosting these events at all, let alone digitally. You might be concerned that they are less personal or effective when hosted remotely. However, with the right approach and tools, digital focus groups can be an extremely engaging and cost-effective way to gain crucial feedback. Here’s what you need to know. 

    Photo of an EdTech product team conducting a remote discovery session
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley

    How to host a remote discovery workshop — and get the most from your EdTech team

    When your team decides to build a new feature for your EdTech product, you likely start by holding a discovery workshop. You use the workshop to bring all the necessary stakeholders together, brainstorm ideas, and come into alignment about the underlying user needs and business objectives driving the new feature. The mechanics of putting on a virtual discovery workshop may seem overwhelming. But with a little planning and a few best practices, you’re sure to get the most out of your team — wherever they are.

    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    How to invest wisely in your EdTech product’s UX program for the long haul

    The most successful EdTech companies create products that meet their users’ needs in an evolving fashion. They understand that their users aren’t stagnant — and neither are their needs when it comes to the digital products they use in the classroom. Rather, the most successful EdTech companies nurture their products with ongoing cycles of user experience research and design. The decision to make UX an ongoing priority is a no-brainer. But figuring out how to budget for a long-term UX investment is another story. 

    ARTICLE: Kyle Bentle

    Make your EdTech product indispensable with data visualization

    As an experienced EdTech professional, you already know that technology is transforming the way educators share knowledge and interact with students. But the technology boom is changing more than just the way education is delivered. It is also generating an unprecedented quantity of data — data with the potential to revolutionize the way administrators, instructors, and students manage schools, teach, and learn. EdTech companies are in a unique position in that they are the ones generating and collecting this sort of data.

    Photo of 5 users needed for user testing
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag & Trevor Minton

    How many users do you really need for meaningful usability test results?

    You probably already know that you can conduct meaningful usability tests with as few as five users. This widely-adopted tenet of UX research and design has endured two decades because it’s both surprising and heartening. After all, it shows that UX research doesn’t have to be expensive and time-consuming. To the contrary, it can be quick, accessible, nimble, and cost-effective. That’s good news. And in general, the guideline holds true. However, it’s important to recognize that the “five users rule” is more rule of thumb than rule of law.

    Photo of gears signifying EdTech product team and UX agency working together
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    The paradox of crisis – how a UX agency can help you increase output AND reduce costs

    Many EdTech product leaders are experiencing unanticipated challenges resulting from the pandemic and the related economic downturn. Some describe reductions in new users or engagement with current users while others have seen sudden surges in their user base. In either case, product teams are feeling immense pressure to maintain, or even increase, output to meet user demands while somehow reducing costs to mitigate the impact of the economic downturn. 

    A mom and two daughters using EdTech software during the COVID-19 outbreak.
    ARTICLE: Julee Peterson

    COVID-19 is stress-testing EdTech Products. Will you meet the demand?

    The coronavirus pandemic continues to rapidly change (and challenge) the world in myriad ways. With social distancing a must for the foreseeable future, educators around the globe are scrambling to migrate to online learning. As a product leader at an EdTech company, you are in a unique position to help educators and students in this tumultuous situation. Chances are you’re already doing just that by offering your product free of charge for the duration of the pandemic.

    An EdTech product owner and UX researcher review early testing recaps.
    ARTICLE: Emily Nordwick

    Squeeze the most value out of each round of UX testing with early research recaps

    As an EdTech product owner, you likely know the drill when it comes to UX testing. You work with your UX research team to identify testing priorities. Next, your research team goes off and conducts user tests. A week or two later, you receive research findings. But there’s a better way — a very simple tweak to this process that allows you to be more engaged in user testing, drive more value out of each round of UX research, and iterate more quickly? The solution can be found in what we call “early research recaps.” 

    Photo of UX design system for an EdTech product.
    ARTICLE: Chris Albert

    How to build an EdTech design system that supports multiple products

    Most EdTech companies understand the value of design systems. Comprehensive UX design systems are much more than just a static library of fonts, colors, and reusable components such as buttons. Actionable design systems also establish principles to guide the usage of individual components. The result is improved efficiency, more effective design governance, reduced design debt — and a more user-friendly product.

    A student user experiences haptic feedback in an e-learning app.
    ARTICLE: Lauren DeMarks

    Want to increase product engagement? Expand your UX to include sensory cues.

    Our best experiences outside of the digital world are made up of much more than what we can see. Think of walking in the woods, petting a dog, or eating a warm, flaky croissant. These real-world experiences engage all of our senses — not just sight — to create meaning and elicit delight. However, most digital experiences revolve around just one of our senses: sight. No surprise there.

    A UX designer reviewing new onboarding features for an EdTech product.
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley & Allie Lozinak

    How superior onboarding wins over EdTech users from sales to product evangelism

    Using a new product for the first time is a little bit like meeting a new friend or coworker. In fact, users assess new products in much the same way we assess new people: with personality, looks, and ease of interactions all coalescing to form a positive or negative association. Those initial interactions quickly add up to a powerful first impression — one that can be hard to dispel over time.

    UX researcher reviewing inclusive testing practices
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    Want to create a truly inclusive EdTech product? Start with inclusive UX testing.

    EdTech products must meet the needs of the students, teachers, and administrators they serve, regardless of ability. The goal of inclusivity doesn’t just make sense because it is the right thing to do. Or because it is in keeping with the goals of educators more broadly. It also makes sense because it leads to a better-quality product — for everyone. For all of these reasons, more and more EdTech companies are embracing inclusive design.

    Stressed college student using Edtech software
    ARTICLE: Jacob Hansen

    Want to reduce student anxiety and increase enthusiasm? Great UX is the answer.

    Most digital products, such as social media, budgeting, and news apps, appeal to users on the basis of their utility or entertainment value. Individual users make the personal decision to purchase or download these products because they want to use them. EdTech software, on the other hand, is different. They are undoubtedly useful. But for student users, they may not seem like much fun when they are required to use them.

    Man looking into distance with binoculars
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    2020 Trends in EdTech UX – What product leaders should expect in the coming year

    Being a great product leader requires a constant balancing act between meeting the need to release immediate improvements while simultaneously planning for what’s coming in the next year and beyond. Dealing with today’s concerns, such as Accessibility compliance and onboarding issues, has a way of getting in the way of planning for bigger trends that will have an impact on the success of your product.

    UX researchers and designers preparing for tests
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag & Allie Lozinak

    Are your UX design and research teams working in lockstep?

    The best EdTech products, the ones that instructors, students, and administrators value most, are those that truly anticipate and meet their users’ needs. Developing a product with a superior user experience requires the right UX expertise, of course. But that’s not all. Your product’s usability also depends upon how well your product team coordinates and collaborates during the development process.

    UX designer reviewing EdTech product updates
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Managing your UX investment to protect and nurture your product

    As your product needs evolve over time, the ability to scale your UX resources up or down is crucial to maximizing your product’s growth — and your UX budget’s impact. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we encourage EdTech companies to think of their UX spend as an investment rather than a strict, project-by-project budget. When you invest in UX as an ongoing project (on a quarterly basis, for example), you free up your product and UX teams to work more efficiently and productively as they identify solutions and resolve problems. 

    Image of arrows aligned around common vision
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton and Julee Peterson

    How product leaders can unite EdTech stakeholders and teams around a common vision

    As a product leader, one of your primary responsibilities is to connect the leadership team’s vision of their EdTech product with the actual needs of the product’s users. To do this well, you must execute leadership’s vision responsively. This means modulating the product roadmap as your product team surfaces new information about user needs or identifies risks associated with leadership’s vision. Leadership teams are naturally more future-focused.

    Image of design system elements showing spacing guidelines.
    ARTICLE: Jacob Hansen

    Why a design system should be a core part of your product roadmap

    Within any product, there exists a large set of individual design elements, from buttons and colors to menus and form fields. Together, these individual elements make up the basic building blocks of a product’s design. Design systems are the means by which product teams document those individual components, describe how they behave, and provide usable guidelines for how to build patterns and workflows. Many product teams write off design systems as being superfluous.

    Design debt weighs heavily on a product leader's mind.
    ARTICLE: Chris Albert

    The high costs of design debt – and how to pay it down

    Usability problems can crop up in EdTech products for any number of reasons. An incomplete understanding of user’s needs. Inadequately defined product requirements. Insufficient user testing. The list goes on. Many of these issues can be headed off simply by incorporating UX and user-centered design best practices in the product development process. But no matter how attentive your team is to its users, and no matter how airtight your approach, there’s another usability problem that is sure to materialize with time: design debt. 

    Members of the UX team conducting discovery session for an EdTech product.
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    The purpose of UX discovery sessions – and how to make the most of them

    When we begin a UX engagement with a new EdTech client, our first priority is to quickly learn as much as possible about our client’s product and users. Our collaborative process begins with a phase of research and user understanding that includes an in-person discovery session. The discovery session allows a products’s stakeholders to identify problems, clarify goals and priorities, and align around a shared vision for their product – before identifying solutions. Here’s what you need to know about this critical planning session — and how you and your UX team can make the most of it. 

    An engineer observes a user testing session for an EdTech product.
    ARTICLE: Julee Peterson

    Why your engineering team should regularly attend your user testing sessions

    When your engineering team is in the midst of an agile development sprint, they must be laser-focused on the tasks that comprise the next leg of their work. That sort of tunnel-vision is a good thing. Good, that is, so long as it’s tempered with an appreciation of your users’ needs. You see, unless engineers intentionally approach their work from an empathetic, user-centric perspective, they will naturally prioritize technical limitations and considerations over other factors — sometimes at the expense of user needs. 

    Image of paper airplane going its own way depicts challenge of innovating in EdTech.
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Innovation in the EdTech space: Why it lags behind – and what you can do about it

    Innovation within the EdTech space can sometimes feel painfully slow. That’s especially true when compared with digital products in other spaces, such as social media, finance, and health apps. This innovation drag is felt not only by EdTech companies themselves, but by users, too.  Student users, in particular, are quick to notice when EdTech products aren’t on par with the many other apps they use on a daily basis.

    A student performing tasks on an EdTech product during a user testing session.
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley

    The right people at the right time: Building a best-fit user feedback panel for user tests

    User testing is a critical component of the product development process. You need your users’ feedback to shape your EdTech offering in a way that meets their needs and creates an enjoyable user experience. But when it comes to following the best practices of effective UX testing, not just any users will do. The reliability of your tests depends on your ability to recruit the right mix of users at the right time.

    Investing in UX: How to structure your UX budget for maximum impact
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Investing in UX: How to structure your UX budget for maximum ROI

    When product teams put together budgets for new products or product releases, they often struggle to determine how much money to allocate for UX research and testing. This confusion flows from uncertainty about how to view UX’s role in the product development process. Is UX a one-time project with precise parameters and a predictable scope, like designing a logo? Or is it an ongoing program of activities that ought to be woven through the entire development process?

    An instructor viewing data on a dashboard designed to provide insights about student performance.
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Data visualization design: How EdTech products can tell better stories to meet growing demands for actionable insights

    As EdTech products grow more complex in terms of the data they manage and the analytics they produce, data visualization is poised to become an indispensable tool. To date, many of these products have yet to fully embrace data visualization design in their product interfaces. As the expectations of students, instructors and administrators grow, it will almost certainly be considered a baseline requirement soon.

    Photo of students using educational software
    RESOURCE

    Observe your users in the wild with this downloadable worksheet

    When you’re observing users in the wild, one thing’s for sure – there’s a lot going on. To help you capture key insights, observations and ideas on-the-fly, we’ve created this worksheet you can download and print to make sure you don’t miss any important details when you’re in the field.

    Microcopy is an essential element of good UX design
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley

    Top 10 tips to produce effective, user-friendly microcopy

    Chances are, your product team already pours ample resources into making your products as user-friendly as possible. You work hard to get the user flows and UI elements just right. But what about the verbal components of the interface? 

    If you’re like many EdTech companies, microcopy — or the many verbal cues found throughout your product, from buttons to prompts and instructive overlays  — may be a last-minute consideration. This often means that microcopy is written on the fly, without rigorous guidelines or user testing.

    Photo of UX researchers reviewing user data reports at Openfield.
    ARTICLE: Autumn Gilbert

    Quality reporting is the key to realizing the full ROI of actionable UX research

    Most EdTech companies now understand the importance of UX research in developing products that meet the needs of students, instructors, and administrators. But the thing about UX research is that it’s actually only the first half of the equation. Without thoughtfully prepared reporting, your UX research is really just a pool of data. By adopting effective presentation strategies for reporting research results you can ensure your findings are carried through the rest of the development process.

    Click on image to launch article about third-party integration in EdTech products
    ARTICLE: Chris Albert

    5 tips for integrating third-party applications without sacrificing the user experience

    Over the past few years, the UX of EdTech products has improved by leaps and bounds. That’s true at the individual application level, anyway. But it’s a whole different story when you look at the user experience of product integrations that bridge two or more applications. It’s hard enough to integrate platforms in situations where you have complete control, but it can be incredibly difficult to integrate third-party platforms in a meaningful, seamless fashion.

    UX researcher working on report early in the discovery phase.
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Early and often: The importance of UX research throughout the product development process

    EdTech companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of UX research in successful product development. The numbers bear this out, with industry surveys showing an uptick in companies who identify the need to conduct more in-depth customer research as digital products continue to revolutionize the marketplace. That’s a step in the right direction, for sure. But the reality is that many product teams remain uncertain about when and how to incorporate UX research. 

    UX designers and researchers reviewing design progress at Openfield.
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Hiring guide – choosing the right UX partner for the long haul

    Your EdTech company is thriving. Your product is growing and so too must your team. It’s a good problem to have, of course. But for companies considering working with an outside UX agency, it can be hard to know exactly how to gauge their value. It’s easy to see why this can feel like such a challenging decision. The idea of spinning up an internal team is daunting, but the idea of working with an agency brings its own set of concerns and unknowns that can lead to misinformed buying decisions.

    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley

    All hands on the ball: a collaborative approach to building new product features

    The launch of a new product represents a huge leap, but it’s really just the first big step in a series of many. Over the course of a healthy product’s lifespan, your team will continue to work inside the product for years to come, fixing bugs, pushing out updates, making UX improvements, and adding new features. New features require efforts from UX, engineering, and product teams with each leading at different times.

    UX researchers reviewing quantitative data to discover problems in educational software products.
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    UX research methods (part III): When to use quantitative data to justify product improvement decisions

    Qualitative research may be the bread and butter of UX testing, but quantitative UX research methods have an important role to play in the iterative product design process. There are many reasons product teams should consider using quantitative research, from the identification of existing problems to justifying expenditures in order to get buy-in from stakeholders.

    UX team members meet for daily design reviews to increase collaboration and efficiency.
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Daily Design Reviews: An evolved design review process fit for the complexity of EdTech products

    At Openfield, we found that the same old design review process didn’t quite fit the bill anymore. Instead of formal, infrequent design reviews, we needed to develop a design feedback loop that was as agile and iterative as the development process itself had become. And that’s how we landed on a system of daily design reviews.

    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley

    ‘Good enough’ usually isn’t: Avoiding traps that sabotage MVP success

    Minimum Viable Product. Minimum Awesome Product. Minimum Loved Product. No matter what you call it, your product needs to delight users on the first release and every iteration beyond that, or it will fail.

    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    UX research methods (part II): Unlocking user insights with qualitative testing

    In this article, we’ll dig into qualitative UX research and explain what it is, why it’s important, and how your team should approach it.

    Students being observed using educational software by UX researchers.
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    UX research methods (part I): Avoiding user bias with observational user testing

    User testing is a crucial component of successful product design. Without the insights that on-the-ground testing yields, designers can only guess at how users will actually interact with their products.

    UX designers conducting empathy session as part of inclusive design practices.
    ARTICLE: Julee Peterson

    Inclusive design: why EdTech companies should go beyond compliance

    Truly inclusive product design aims to create products that work seamlessly for all people, in all situations. This may seem like a tall order, but it really should be your company’s goal. Not only is it an ethical imperative, but it’s good for business, too.

    UX team collaborating with EdTech product owners.
    ARTICLE: Luke Sillies

    Avoiding Dependency Hell as product teams scale

    For EdTech companies, the opportunity to develop single, enterprise-wide products is both exciting and potentially lucrative. But with bigger projects come bigger challenges throughout the UX process. With multiple UX teams, product teams and engineering teams all functioning separately within the same project, building products at a large scale opens a web of complex communication issues for the teams involved.

    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    How CX and UX come together to meet users’ needs and inspire loyalty

    A harmonious integration of customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) is especially important in EdTech, where educational IT managers and instructors have become accustomed to not just strong products, but also to comprehensive, personalized service.

    Corporate training staff using EdTech product for career growth.
    ARTICLE: Brian Keenan

    Nontraditional learning: How EdTech tools are different for corporate and personal users

    When most people think EdTech, they naturally imagine students and instructors in K through 12 or higher education settings. But learners and teachers can be found everywhere from boardrooms to living rooms. And while the reasons for learning vary, companies that make learning products for corporate and personal use can benefit greatly from the knowledge of their counterparts who target K-12 and higher ed sectors.

    Product release dates for classroom software.
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley

    Makers of classroom technology must align product releases with academic calendars

    In general product design, frequent releases is accepted as the best way to update products. But in EdTech, timing can be the difference between success and failure. Learn the best practices for product design and development release cycles that consider the natural cycles of academic calendars.

    UX researchers reviewing research report.
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    Are your stakeholders user research skeptics or superfans?

    If you’re an advocate for user research in an organization that doesn’t value it, you might feel like you’re shouting into the wind sometimes. Too often, stakeholders (and we’re talking about executive leadership and even designer/developers) consider research an obstacle to rapidly launching a product or update. Recruiting users to interview, analyzing results and reporting on findings takes time, and in a quick-turn release cycle it may be too late by the time you get the answers you need.

    The Openfield team looks to other industries for best practices that will improve educational products.
    ARTICLE: Trevor Minton

    Borrow cues from search, retail, gaming to improve UX in EdTech products

    From administrative tasks like taking attendance and grading quizzes to features that enable students to learn and succeed, EdTech products have become more and more powerful. But that power can make these tools more complicated for users. Learn how to align tools with common mental models from search, retail, and gaming.

    A user is confused about how to use an EdTech product due to its lack of onboarding features.
    ARTICLE: Annie Hensley

    How onboarding helps users get up to speed on your EdTech products quickly

    Improving the on-ramp to your product makes users confident in their choice and increases their satisfaction. The bottom-line benefit of a better onboarding experience comes from both greater customer retention and reduced customer service.

    Design elements underscore the importance of universal design systems in EdTech products.
    ARTICLE: Jacob Hansen

    Evolving your design system over time improves team efficiency

    Often, design systems are treated as “one and done” initiatives — drafted, agreed upon and set in stone. Many a design team has embarked on a fool’s errand, thinking they could anticipate every design need that may arise in the future. If you instead adopt a continuous release approach for ongoing improvements to guidelines, you essentially mirror the product development process itself.

    A college professor reviews test results as students follow along in a connected app.
    ARTICLE: Sarah Freitag

    Building powerful EdTech tools starts with understanding students & instructors

    Remember that you’re creating products for two audiences with distinct but overlapping needs. Instructors select the tools for their classrooms, so tech companies often develop products with them in mind. But for every one instructor there may be 600 student users, and if something goes wrong with the app, instructors get 600 emails about the problem.