How To Create A User-Friendly Edtech Product?

Technology is like a superhero, upgrading every industry through its continuous innovative advancements. It is turning traditional sectors into smart, efficient, and interconnected hubs. Just like technology is penetrating every other field, the academic sphere is also deep-rooted with various Edtech product features, making the learning process easy, exciting, and efficient.

It has been estimated that K12 Edtech companies have increased tech usage by up to 99% since 2020, and it is expected that over 70% more colleges will introduce one or more online undergraduate programs in the coming three years.

Moreover, the benefits of Edtech are not limited to learners or educators. Edtech companies can also take advantage of this thriving industry by creating innovative Edtech products to cater to the diverse needs of individuals in the education realm.

However, this field is also drenched in excessive competition, which means that you will have to develop an edtech product that does not only offer functionality but is also user-friendly. Are you worried about how to achieve that? Relax, as in this blog, we will uncover practical steps and tips to create a user-centric Edtech UX platform to improve the learning game.

Let’s dive in.

How Do You Create Edtech Products That Users Love?

Are you experiencing unusually high bounce rates on your Edtech platform? Or are you receiving several bad reviews of your Edtech apps and sites? If this is the case, then your Edtech product is falling flat because it fails to offer a user-friendly interface and visually appealing design.

In order to prevent or fix this issue, it is essential to follow constructive Edtech UX steps for creating an educational product that goes easy on the eyes and fulfills the diverse needs of students. Let’s have a look at them.

 Step 1: Understanding user needs

The first move is to deeply study the user of your Edtech product so that you can understand their unique needs. This will help you develop a UX Edtech design that aligns perfectly with the learner’s preferences. It will also enable students to face and effectively deal with their educational challenges. Understanding user needs will result in products directly relevant to their teaching or learning needs.

• To better understand your users, you can:
• Take surveys and interviews
• Create user personas
• Analyze existing data
• Observe user behavior
• Engage in focus groups
• Collaborate with educators and institutes
• Utilize social media and online communities

Step 2: Defining Your EdTech Product

Next, start defining your Edtech product so you can get a clear vision and direction. This step is no less than laying the foundation of your development process. To give purpose to your design process, it is crucial to:

• Set your goals
• Identify your target audience
• Recognize the user persona

Doing so will achieve high product engagement and success as it will fulfill the immediate educational needs and gaps of the learners and teachers. You will also be able to develop a user-centric design in the competitive Edtech industry.

Step 3: Researching Existing Solutions

Research is one of the most crucial steps in your development journey, as this will either make or break the success of your Edtech platform. Research-backed personas are essential to keep your design team aligned towards a common goal: catering to the specific needs of teachers and students.

Effective Edtech UX research can be done by:

1. Analyzing features of successful products: Collect data on existing products in the market to explore their goals, planning, strategies, implementation, and mode of action to gain inspiration or direction.

2. Identify market gaps: While going through the Edtech design market, look for gaps to tap into areas where no one is working to gain users, engagement, and retention.

Step 4: Designing User-Centric Features

After gathering essential data, conducting analysis, and brainstorming, start designing user-centric features for your Edtech apps or products. This is one of the crucial steps as you start creating designs that step up the UX of Edtech products. As a result, stay vigilant so you do not miss out on any necessary features.

Here is how you should approach the design process.

1. Create essential features: After deeply understanding the user needs, list the features. This would ensure that you do not miss out on any missions or goals of your project.

2. Prioritize features: Go through all the features you have listed and start prioritizing them based on the highly demanding needs of your target user. It is evident that not all UX design elements in education are equal. It is on you to decide which ones to include in your product to give the user maximum value.

3. Add Feedback: Adding feedback simultaneously throughout your design process is what makes an exceptional Edtech product. Come up with effective ways to collect, analyze, and incorporate constructive feedback in the designing stage.

Step 5: Prototyping and Wireframing

This step involves creating effective prototypes for your Edtech product to present your vision. Use highly functional tools for prototyping. Some of these tools include:

•  Adobe XD
• Figma
• Axure RP
• Webflow
• Sketch
• Invision

This is followed by creating a visually appealing, top-notch user interface that enhances the overall user experience. Additionally, don’t forget to refine your design by adopting an iterative design approach.

Step 6: Visual Design and Branding

Next, start working on the visuals if you want to develop one of the best Edtech platforms. It is believed that 23.8% of marketers believe that their advertising strategy is useless without visual content. Hence, visuals hold an important place in the marketing and conversion of any product or service.

Here are some ways you can up your visual game in your Edtech products:

•   Creating a design that is organized, attention-grabbing, and the one that goes easy on the eyes.
• Come up with color scheme choices that steal the attention of the user.
• Make sure the topography of your product makes navigation easy.
• Keep the aesthetics on point
• Don’t forget to align the design with the overall brand identity.

Step 7: Development

Start investing your time and efforts in the efficient development of your Edtech apps or platforms so that the product is ready to impact students’ learning process worldwide positively. Here are some things to remember while you are developing your UX design in education products.

•  Pick the right set of technologies: It is vital to choose the right technology infrastructure while developing the product so that it is flawless and resonates with your audience’s needs. To achieve this, you can go through potential drawbacks, challenges, benefits, best practices, and other considerations of your tech tools.
• Join hands with developers: Start collaborating with developers to implement the innovative UX of Edtech in your products so that your vision turns into functional models that make learning effective and engaging.
• Implement agile development methodologies: Adopt a project management approach and break the development process into different phases so the team can collaborate, improve, and implement their strategies. This will develop user-centric Edtech products that will hook the students.

Step 8: User Testing and Feedback

After developing the Edtech products, it is important to start user testing them to ensure they give users a smooth and engaging experience. Here are some ways to ensure their top-tier quality.

Test for the product’s functionality by running through the interface and looking for things like the platform’s security, performance, cross-browser and cross-device compatibility, content accuracy, accessibility, and more.

• Address bugs and issues.
• Make sure that the users get a seamless experience

Step 9: Launch and Marketing

Your work does not stop after creating and testing an Edtech product. In fact, you step into one of the most crucial phases of Edtech UX product development, which is the product’s exceptional launch and branding. It has been estimated that 64% of consumers purchase a product after viewing a branded video, photo, or ad campaign.

Therefore, it is essential to do solid advertisements for your Edtech tools and platforms. Let’s have a look at some ways to do this.

• Create a successful marketing plan that sparks anticipation and generates interest.
• Build a well-structured website with on-point SEO to talk about your product.
• Utilize social media to connect with your target audience.
• Do events and promotional campaigns to create buzz and generate user engagement.

Step 10: Gathering Post-Launch Feedback For Continues Improvement

Once everything is set and users are using your Edtech product, it’s time to gather real-time feedback to refine your product further. Here’s what you need to do if you want your product to be listed under the best Edtech platforms

• Collect feedback from users who are interacting with your application or platform
• Use analytics tools to extract actionable insights from the collected data to track user engagement, preferences, and improvement areas.
• Plan for continuous improvement
• Stay adaptable to technological advancements and educational trends. 

Things To Keep In Mind While Designing Your Edtech Product

Although following the practical steps to create an Edtech product pretty much sums up the entire process, there are a few things to keep in mind if you want your product to transform from a good one to an iconic masterpiece. Let’s have a look at them.

Focus On Learner’s Needs

One of the essential things is to keep the user’s needs in mind throughout the development process. This will provide you with direction and keep you on track towards your actual goal, which is to cater to the user’s needs. This approach will help you build a product that satisfies the user, increasing engagement.

Personalization

Long gone are the days when professors used to give generic lectures due to time and practicality concerns. They could not cater to each student’s unique needs and educational requirements. However, technology has made it possible to personalize the educational experience by designing a ground-breaking UX of Edtech. Students can set their own learning style, pace, paths, and guidelines according to their interests.

Relevancy

Relevancy significantly matters when it comes to creating an e-learning platform. Ensure the content is updated regularly to prevent students from bouncing off your Edtech platform due to outdated educational material. The K12 Edtech companies and institutes should specifically ensure that their content is as fresh as a daisy as their syllabus frequently changes.

Non-synchronous Collaboration

In today’s busy world, not everyone has the same schedule. As a result, it is important to create Edtech products that learners can access from anywhere at any time. This way, students can obtain learning materials whenever they have time and study at their own pace. This not only offers flexibility but also eases the lives of users.

Integration Of AI In Edtech

The use of Artificial intelligence in the Edtech industry is a hot trend these days, as every other company is doing it. It has been estimated that the AI market in Edtech is expected to reach $21.52 billion by 2028. You should also use innovative AI elements like automatic grading, data integrations, and generative AI in your Edtech products to make the educational experience fun and engaging for the user.

Accountability

A major aspect to include while designing your Edtech product is accountability. While a teacher or examiner cannot physically supervise or invigilate the students, this does not mean there will be no accountability. Incorporate features like attendance and user activity tracker, progress reports, time management tools, user authentication, authorization, and feedback mechanisms.

Rich media and AR

Don’t forget to use rich media in your Edtech product designs like VR to steal the users’ attention phenomenally. Since our brain interprets visual data quickly, educating learners through high-quality visuals is best. Moreover, use AR technology that further spices up the academic experience by combining audio, text, and visuals.

Interactivity

The traditional educational content sometimes felt monotonous due to a lack of interactivity. However, the innovative world of UX Edtech allows us to include features like quizzes, polls, presentations, sessions and polls, interactive walkthroughs and questionnaires to make the learning journey interactive. Not only does this make educational content easy to consume, but it also excessively engages the user.

Takeaway

Creating an edtech product that is functional, visually appealing, and user-friendly is a major win. By following every step with careful consideration and planning, you can easily design a UX Edtech product that understands your users’ needs and functions accordingly. However, a crucial aspect to keep in mind is that even after creating your product, don’t abandon it.

Make sure to keep collecting feedback and the latest data to continue improving your product. This user-centric approach will significantly notch up your edtech product, leaving your competitors behind.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)