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Dec 15, 2025
7 Trends in edTech Product Design You Should Know for 2026
From the rise of AI product integrations to alarming upticks in chronic student absences, 2025 gave us...
Oct 31, 2025
A Product Owner’s Guide to How Generative AI is Changing Education
When we first surveyed educators about their use of generative AI tools in 2024, teachers were lukewarm...
Sep 26, 2025
What Teachers Want: How Tailoring edTech Features to Educator Workflows Boosts Product Adoption
For edTech companies, the consequences of poor UX and disconnected tools are clear: if educators can’t...
Aug 31, 2025
How Teacher Content Creators Are Changing edTech
Digital platforms where teachers create content and connect with one another about lessons are scooping...
Jul 30, 2025
Using UX Design Prototyping at Every Stage of Your edTech Product
The design prototyping stage for a learning tool is exciting. You start to envision how students will m...
Jun 30, 2025
How User Research Findings Guide edTech Product Strategy
User experience research, or UXR, is the key to understanding your primary users without losing valuabl...
Jun 12, 2025
The Power of Simplicity: Making Learning Design for Everyone
When it comes to building edTech products, it can be challenging to design a complex product with an el...
May 30, 2025
How to Leverage Design Thinking in Education Products for Better Learning Outcomes
As edTech product designers, we have a unique window into empathizing with the teachers and students wh...
May 16, 2025
Best Practices for Onboarding Users to Your edTech Product
It’s happened to all of us. You’re in a product planning meeting, discussing features for your digital...
Apr 18, 2025
Designing a Better Learner Experience in edTech: How to Reflect Pedagogy through UI
Menus and navigation systems are easy to overlook in edTech products. If you want to design a better le...
Apr 04, 2025
How to Identify Market Gaps & Drive Product Strategy with Competitor Analysis
You’re ready to develop a new learning tool, and you’ve pulled inspiration from consumer platforms and...
Mar 20, 2025
Working with Authors as edTech Product Stakeholders
Creating a new edTech product based on original print material from an author or publisher is a complex...
Mar 07, 2025
4 Failproof Ways to Improve User Engagement in Your edTech Product
It can happen to any edTech brand. Your learning content is helpful and effective, but users bail on a...
Feb 21, 2025
How We Improve edTech Usability for Teachers Year-Round
Teachers are notoriously busy, which means perfecting product usability should be a UX priority. In our...
Feb 07, 2025
7 Best Practices for Testing Digital Products in Schools
Conducting user experience testing for your digital product in a classroom setting is exciting. You fin...
Jan 24, 2025
How User Experience Goals Change in edTech Products with Alternative Inputs
When SoapBox Labs launched in 2013, they set the bar for speech recognition in learning tools. By train...
Nov 15, 2024
8 Accessibility Best Practices for edTech Products with Alternative Inputs
Whether you’re designing a learning tool that uses voice recognition or you’re planning the UI for a st...
Nov 08, 2024
How to Develop Effective edTech Personas
If you’re used to glossing over persona work because you haven’t seen a return on investment, think aga...
Oct 04, 2024
3 Product Planning Tips for Alternative Input Devices in edTech
We all want our edTech products to be accessible. But strategic planning for edTech products that use...
Sep 25, 2024
4 Tips for a Flawless edTech Product Development Timeline
How do you get an edTech product over the finish line on time—and on budget? Why, develop an incredible...
Aug 30, 2024
Design System ROI: The Value of Building a Design System in edTech
When you design an edTech product for the first time, part of the fun is developing the visual styles y...
Jul 26, 2024
5 UX Design & Business Challenges edTech Companies Get Wrong—And What to Do About It
Editor’s note: This article is based on a recorded conversation between Sean Oakes and Jessica Millston...
Jun 27, 2024
The Value of UX Discovery Sessions in edTech Product Design
If you want to create an edTech product that learners love and teachers love to adopt, UX discovery ses...
Jun 03, 2024
Designing edTech Products with Digital Literacy in Mind
Digital literacy can mean the difference between a student using your edTech product to fidelity or fal...
Nov 09, 2023
How UX Research Findings Can Shape Your Fall MVP and Maximize Your Budget
When members of our Teacher Council welcomed students back this fall, they weren’t necessarily excited...
Jul 12, 2023
User Journey Mapping in edTech with Illustration and Infographics
When you design a new edTech product, you know how important it is to start with research. In particula...
Jun 30, 2023
UX Strategy: How to Create More Inclusive and Effective Designs
As the first billion-dollar edTech product, Scholastic’s Read180 is often cited as one of the most succ...
Jun 15, 2023
How edTech Can Support Educator Burnout: edTech UX Tips Vetted by Teachers
There’s a crisis brewing in education: teacher burnout. In fact, in a 2022 survey conducted by Gallup,...
May 31, 2023
Why UX Design Strategy Is Important for the Success of Your edTech Product
You already know that deep discovery into the needs of teachers and students sets your edTech product u...
Mar 29, 2023
Design for Education: How to Optimize UX and UI for Better Learning
It takes a lot of planning, research, and skill to design an incredible edTech product. In addition to...
Mar 13, 2023
Finding the Balance: Prioritizing User Needs in edTech Product Design As You Meet Business and Curriculum Requirements
Even if you love the idea of incorporating learning science techniques into your digital learning tool,...
Feb 27, 2023
Using edTech Research and Trends for Smarter Product Design
The edTech industry is growing rapidly, and competition for investment, product development, and school...
Feb 24, 2023
Accessibility and Inclusion in edTech UX Design
Inclusive design draws on the experiences of people from many different backgrounds to make products st...
Dec 07, 2022
How Human-Centered Design Creates Better edTech Products
In industrial design, considering how the human body interacts with objects has led to incredible, intu...
Oct 28, 2022
A Teacher’s Take: How edTech Can Help Us Close The Learning Gap
It’s one thing to read about the learning gap in news and media outlets, but it’s another thing to expe...
Sep 23, 2022
Designing edTech for the Long Term By Staying Ahead of Trends
Trends in education don’t always stick around. That’s why they’re trends! From debates about the best w...
Sep 02, 2022
3 Effective Ways edTech Products Can Support Professional Development
So many digital professional development offerings are very linear. Teachers take courses, watch video...
Aug 16, 2022
Beyond Reports: Better Ways to Use Data in edTech Products
Because of pandemic learning outcomes, now is a crucial time to use data in your edTech products to ref...
Jul 27, 2022
Designing Interactive Educational Technology for Better Learning Outcomes
One of the most important principles of learning science is to move away from more “traditional” modes...
Jul 07, 2022
8 Tips for Planning Your edTech Tool Like a Pro
Whether you’re leading your company’s entire product division or managing a specific product, you know...
Jun 17, 2022
Not Just for Kids– Gamification is For Teachers Too
In edTech product design circles, we often talk about gamification as a way to reach young learners. Af...
May 19, 2022
How UX Design Wireframes Solve Creative Problems in edTech
In UX design, wireframes are considered a product “blueprint.” Think about a traditional blueprint for...
May 05, 2022
Why User Flow Testing Matters—and When to Use It
We always want to know if the learning tools we design for teachers and students will work for them. Do...
Apr 03, 2022
Using Wireframes to Power Decision Making and Your UX Design Strategy
Product wireframes are one of the first strategic milestones of the design process. Designed intentiona...
Mar 31, 2022
User Research Findings are the Key to Designing More Adaptive edTech
As teachers returned to in-person instruction this year, they reported unprecedented learning gaps betw...
Mar 24, 2022
5 Innovative Trends in Educational Technology that are Changing the Game
As much as we’d all like to be “post-pandemic,” reality says otherwise. Teachers understand this better...
Feb 25, 2022
Defining and Designing for the Parents User Persona
The rise of parents as an edTech user persona represents a major shift for edTech companies, and there...
Feb 04, 2022
How to Develop Smarter edTech Tools for Collaboration
When it comes to “smart” edTech tools, we tend to think of artificial intelligence and powerful algorit...
Jan 24, 2022
Better Teacher Personas Lead to Better Product Design
If you’re still designing edTech products based on user research conducted before the pandemic, it’s ti...
Jan 11, 2022
UX for Kids: Designing Inclusive, Engaging edTech Experiences
As the edTech market becomes more competitive, your digital learning tools have to tick a lot of boxes....
Dec 13, 2021
Design for Education Toolkit: Why User Needs in Higher Ed Are Changing
The market for edTech in higher education is changing fast, and edTech product owners can do more to su...
Dec 01, 2021
4 Tips for Designing Content in Your Learning Management System
Whether your LMS helps users review videos, work through interactive experiences, or read .PDF resource...
Nov 17, 2021
How to Level-Set with edTech Product Stakeholders throughout the Discovery Process
You’re about to design a brand new edTech product, and you know the first step is to align internally w...
Nov 11, 2021
How to Run a Design Thinking Workshop for edTech Products
EdTech is in the middle of a major transitional moment, and the stakes for education have never been hi...
Nov 09, 2021
Outsourcing Your edTech UX Design: Everything You Need to Know
Weighing the benefits vs. challenges of outsourcing UX design is an important part of developing and la...
Oct 11, 2021
15 Ways Universal Design Improves User Experience for All Students
This fall, most schools are back to in-person learning. But the rise of the Delta variant means virtual...
Jul 28, 2021
UX in Education: Why UX Designers are the Learning Engineers of the Future
When it comes to designing UX in education, a generalist approach to product design and user experience...
Jul 27, 2021
What Shifting Back to In-Person Learning Means for EdTech
Fall 2021 is still up in the air as school districts around the country consider whether to permanently...
Jul 09, 2021
A Guide to Turning Your Successful Print Product into a Digital Learning Tool
Your company has a successful print product on its hands, and you’re on the hunt for ways to turn that...
Jun 10, 2021
Translating Teacher Suggestions into edTech Product Features
When you work in a specialized industry like edTech, you get comfortable with the lingo. Product owners...
May 28, 2021
Educational Resources for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month & Beyond
This is part of an ongoing series about edTech industry shifts in at-home learning. You can read our re...
May 21, 2021
How Good UX Design Provides a Safe edTech Environment for Online Student Interaction
We all saw how challenging it was for teachers to keep their students engaged during remote learning. I...
May 14, 2021
Two Ways to Support User Journeys in edTech Products
As we begin to apply lessons from remote learning to new product roll-outs, edTech product owners have...
Apr 14, 2021
Team Spotlight: Pantea Parsa
Welcome to our Team Member Spotlight! Every month we interview a member of our team and highlight their...
Mar 26, 2021
Why an edTech Specialist Should Conduct Your Next Competitive Audit
You’ve likely asked your product team to conduct a competitive audit before kicking off the design proc...
Mar 10, 2021
4 Benefits of a Rapid Approach to Innovative Prototyping Product Development
Agile product development can be an efficient way to design and produce edTech products, but it leaves...
Feb 24, 2021
Team Spotlight: Monica Sherwood
Welcome to our Team Member Spotlight! Every month we interview a member of our team and highlight their...
Feb 12, 2021
Change Your Approach to edTech Product Design with Persona Resonance
No matter who your digital tool is for, that tool should reflect your user’s environment. This includes...
Jan 28, 2021
How to Pivot Your edTech Product Directly to Consumers
As an edTech firm, you’ve already seen the push for learning products that work in the home. Does that...
Jan 28, 2021
Three Ways to Leverage UXR Before You Build Your edTech Product
You know how important it is to get feedback on your product from your users during user testing. So wh...
Jan 19, 2021
How to Integrate Your Development Team into the Creative Process
As remote learning becomes the norm, your UX design and development teams need to be even more thoughtf...
Dec 07, 2020
Why You Should Invest in Accessible and Adaptive edTech Tools Right Now
With limited access to their teachers and peers, the shift to remote learning is especially disorientin...
Nov 24, 2020
20 Years of Insights from the Front Lines of edTech
For the past 20 years, Backpack Interactive has partnered with museums, universities, publishers, and m...
Nov 09, 2020
How to Build and Launch an Online Course in a Crowded Market
When we work with brands to develop an online course from existing content or from the ground-up, we kn...
Oct 05, 2020
Introducing Backpack Interactive’s Teacher Council
At Backpack Interactive, we love teachers. In any user experience research (UXR) we conduct, teachers f...
Sep 29, 2020
What’s Your Baseline? How to Make UXR More Valuable for Your Next edTech Product
UX designers in the edTech space are specialists who participate in a community of educators. To design...
Sep 11, 2020
How to Design Impactful Digital Experiences on a Small Budget
Nonprofit and community organizations are already working hard to support their communities with few re...
Jun 18, 2020
Parents Are edTech’s Next Big Users
We were 10 minutes into a Zoom call with my 13-year-old daughter’s school when her teacher asked us for...
May 15, 2020
Where Does Your edTech Product Fall on the UX Threshold?
If you’ve ever tried to sign your child up for a PlayStation or Nintendo Switch account, you know how c...
Mar 19, 2020
Build Something Better: The Real Value of a Scalable Discovery Process
If your company has adopted Facebook’s “move fast and break things” approach to product development, yo...
Feb 17, 2020
What Are You Selling? UX Solutions for SaaS in edTech
When it comes to designing software-as-a-service, or SaaS, it can be difficult to decide where your mar...
Feb 06, 2020
Addressing Design Feedback: How to Keep Your Project Moving Forward
Seeing the visual direction for your edTech product for the first time is nerve-wracking. After all, yo...
Jan 15, 2020
User Testing: When Technology Insights Solve UX Problems
Systematic user testing is a key part of developing any user experience strategy. Everyone on your prod...
Jan 14, 2020
How to Incorporate SEL into any edTech Product
Over the past decade, the education world has embraced the idea that respect, social awareness, and rel...
Dec 11, 2019
Visual Design Strategy: How to Make Stunning edTech Products Users Will Love
Strong visual design strategy is crucial for creating an effective edTech product that engages your use...
Dec 03, 2019
EdTech Product Design: How Smart UX Saves $$ on Technology & Creates Efficiencies
We know that adding a UX or UI team into the mix at your company can be scary, even if you have lots of...
Oct 01, 2019
The edTech Designer's Creativity Toolkit: Deep Listening
“Deep listening” is a process of engaged inquiry and openness crucial to design work. When you truly li...
Sep 26, 2019
How Intuitive Onboarding Can Replace Costly Teacher PD & Support
Onboarding systems — which help users understand how to navigate your product — can be the difference b...
Sep 19, 2019
How to Design the Best Data Dashboard in edTech
Student data is an extremely powerful tool for educators. But training educators to use complicated edT...
Aug 07, 2018
LINK App for Learning Ally Gets Top Rating
EdTech Round Up, the industry’s premier source for educational technology news & reviews, honored t...
Jul 25, 2018
Personalized Digital Rewards Are the Future of EdTech
“I’m missing basketball,” a student called out, interrupting our demonstration. I was with my design te...
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