Improving classroom EdTech: What teachers mean when they say, “make it user friendly”
At the end of just about every product discovery or user research session I've facilitated, I've asked the person to share any advice they have for the design and development teams working on the product. The invitation gives participants a chance to freestyle beyond the bounds of the study and offers me a chance to hear about latent needs.
In the dozens of research sessions I've held with K-12 teachers about digital textbooks and similar learning platforms, I've heard recurring themes. To lend a hand to those of you who are doing the good work of building software and learning content for K-12 classrooms, I share the most common bits of advice I've heard from teachers—plus a few ideas to help your team move forward.
Theme 1: “Make it easy for me to get started.”
If you’re working on a software platform for teachers and their students, an important factor to keep in mind is that teachers are almost always short on prep time. While they appreciate the fresh content new software can offer, many teachers have expressed how frustrated they feel when the software doesn’t offer a quick and intuitive on-boarding experience.
As first-time users, they expect to grasp the overall structure from a quick glance and find the starting point they’re looking for. (This easy experience, after all, is what we all expect when we use a digital product for the first time.)
Here’s advice to product teams from Madeline, a 4th grade teacher:
“As you’re designing it, keep in your head that teachers aren’t going to get trained in how to use it. Every single time I’ve used the e-textbook [from a major publisher], I’ve been given the access code the day before I start teaching [for the year]. So I had to navigate it myself. And I think if you know that as the designer and developer, then you know that perhaps you need to make certain sections a little more obvious. I think that a lot of times people assume that we’re going to be trained, and instead I’m learning during my 50-minute plan times along with everything else.”
Theme 2: “Make it easy to navigate.”
On a similar note, one of the main reasons products aren’t adopted by teachers for daily classroom use is that they’re too difficult (and thus too time consuming) to navigate.
Content is bloated with extra layers. Hierarchies aren’t clear. Complex tools are lumped together under ambiguous catchall labels like “resources” or “settings.” Teachers and students simply can’t find what they need.
Although they don’t typically use these words, teachers are asking teams to carefully design the information architecture of the platforms and e-books they’re building. Chunk content thoughtfully. Align hierarchies to specific user journeys and flows. Streamline categories and simplify the labels through user research. Prioritize effective search capabilities.
Here’s some advice from Matthew, a high school science teacher:
“Simplify things as much as possible. The drawback from the [now abandoned e-textbook] was just that it became too complicated to use, so it didn’t become a resource. The whole class time was just about navigating, not about the content itself. So I wasn’t even helping kids with chemistry. I was helping kids with navigating the website, which to me, was like totally not a productive endeavor… If tech-savvy kids were having difficulty with it, there obviously was an issue.”
Theme 3: “Remember that our infrastructure is part of the experience.”
While no design team can control the tech infrastructure at customers’ schools or homes, your team can be mindful of the various contexts customers are in and can build your products accordingly.
Because connectivity can be unreliable, teachers are asking teams to untether learning solutions from a single mode of delivery, making some of the content available online and off.
Here’s what Heather, a high school English language arts teacher, has to share:
“I think one of the most helpful things to have in an e-book would be offline access so that my kids can download the e-book and we can still work with it when the Internet’s down. Because, really, that’s one of my main frustrations with the e-book. If the internet is not working for whatever reason that day, it’s really frustrating to plan a whole unit and then find out that the students don’t have access to it. So that, for me, has been highly frustrating to the point that sometimes I’m like, I’m not even dealing with the e-book. I’m just going to go with what I know I can have in my classroom today.”
Theme 4: “Innovate. (And remember that digital and innovative aren’t synonymous.)”
Teachers are asking learning companies to release themselves from old metaphors and consider offering something new. Turning print books into digital books or delivering content through videos can increase access to what already exists, but these formats aren’t necessarily “innovative” in many teachers’ minds.
Many teachers are seeking content, tools, ideas, and activities that will allow them to engage their students in completely new, modern, and culturally responsive ways. They acknowledge the importance of digital technology but remind us that the substance of the content, not its digital delivery, is what most inspires students.
Erin, a middle school math teacher, says this:
“Technology is the future of education. I absolutely get it. However, the novelty of [digital] technology is no longer there for our students because it’s everywhere for them. So that extrinsic motivation, that key interest, keeping them engaged—it’s really something that needs to be visited because what used to do it before doesn’t do it anymore. Just having a computer is not enough to keep them engaged anymore. It’s really about what are we asking them to do and the way we’re asking them to do it. We kind of have to put the student back into the teaching, you know?
I think the dependency on technology is really taking away from learning, so that would just be something that I would encourage [learning companies] to think about. The kids aren’t excited by the games and the graphics and the videos anymore. They watch that all day, every day. So a new way to engage, a different platform for engagement, I think, is really the key to reaching students.”
What can your team do to help?
Embrace human-centered approaches.
To address these requests, the first step is advocating for a human-centered/user-centered design approach to be adopted among your product development teams. This means starting by learning what’s truly needed or desired rather than racing to build an extra attention-grabbing feature.
Human-centered design is not the same as graphic design or creative direction, nor can it be owned by any one team; it’s a systems-level approach to developing strategy and products, and it begins with discovery.
Of course, shifting delivery models is easier said than done—and requires stellar leadership—but your product team can begin by investing in qualitative research to understand your customers in context and by prioritizing development efforts based on what would bring customers the greatest value on a daily basis.
You might discover, for example, that the greatest value you can offer classroom users is cleaner code that makes their software system respond more quickly.
Partner up to slay Franken-features.
K-12 product customers often convey their needs during marketing field visits, when sales-focused trainers or consultants check in with teachers and gather feedback on behalf of a company.
When a customer conveys a request without a user experience specialist there to observe the interaction and interpret the underlying ask, the feature request might go straight into a development backlog as a literal ask: add a button here, put an extra tool there, for instance. Then, when it’s developed, the feature is layered onto the platform like an extra appendage.
This common practice is one of the many reasons that students and teachers get lost in so many digital spaces: each platform has the stitched-together feel of a Frankenstein’s monster constructed with literal, additive feature requests. Features aren’t designed and strategically integrated; they’re just developed and delivered.
To honor your customers’ deeper needs for user friendliness, consider pairing researchers and designers with the trainers when they go into the field. Ensure there’s at least one person present who has expertise in observational research methods, whether ethnography or human-computer interaction. Whenever possible, budget for true (recursive and value-based) agile development, which allows for refactoring when new features are implemented and can promote a more seamless feel.
Make IA your friend.
For navigation issues, invest in user-centered information architecture (IA): the planning of content and platform structure, navigation, hierarchy, and tagging so that things are easy to find. An investment in information architecture isn’t very splashy, but it’s high value: teachers and students will return to your products because the content they need will be easy to find.
Designing user-centered information architecture typically involves mapping lifecycle customer journeys as well as task-based user journeys, conducting card sorts and tree tests with your customers, and ensuring your content platform is built for their mental models and language rather than your company’s organizational silos. (Hint: What many platforms label “assignments” and “resources” are different from what teachers call “assignments” and “resources.” These two sections are good places for your team to start the simplification process.)
If you start from a place of robust discovery and user needs, you’ll likely notice that your levels of information architecture will deliver the most value when they correspond to your customers’ and users’ journeys, each at the right level of zoom.
Think big picture. Co-create.
Assuming you have qualitative research to draw from, invest in user-centered strategic design, service design, and UX strategy—the “big picture” relatives of user experience design—to innovate and craft the end-to-end experience.
If you’re part of a large company with multiple platforms and legacy systems, consider mapping your customers’ journeys through your product ecosystem, noting the touchpoints and contexts of use. Provide development teams access to this research so that there’s shared understanding. Avoid designing and building in solios, and co-create instead. Use a systems approach to create a “seamless” experience for the contexts your customers will be in.
In short, empathize.
Whenever possible, seek to understand customers’ mental models and contexts before simply building more features. Sometimes teachers and students need companies to streamline the experience by removing the old stuff that’s in their way rather than by adding more. Encourage your team to play with new possibilities and stretch in new directions.
Teachers and students deserve your highest creativity, and your business will benefit when user friendliness and thoughtful design are strategic priorities.
A special thanks to the teachers quoted in this post. Their quotes were included with permission. Originally published in 2017. Updated in 2023.