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A great deal of digital ink has been spilled over the years describing the art and science of designing enterprise products, and while many of these articles are informative and useful, they are premised on a binary — that any product experience can be classified as either enterprise or consumer — which is not always so clear cut. This distinction can be particularly confusing for us in EdTech, where to design effectively we must incorporate the tools and techniques of both. Our work entails navigating that ambiguity, figuring out when to dip into which bag of tricks, and understanding when we need to follow one set of rules or the other (or both… or neither).

In this two-part series, we’ll look at some of the ways the tension between these approaches to product design can play out, and see what specific challenges we face as a result. Here in Part 1, we will look through this lens to examine:

• who decides which products to purchase, and who uses them, and how that distinction impacts product decisions
• which types of design skills and motivations are needed, and when

In Part 2, we will turn our attention to:

• how product planning can be affected
• what is reasonable to expect around learnability and professional development

Let’s dive in!

Users vs. Buyers

Let’s start with a jarring fact about enterprise software: the vast majority of the people who use it do not do so by choice. A hefty financial commitment from the organization combined with the need for large-scale collaboration dictates a top-down approach in which someone with a fancy title in a dedicated technology department gets to decide — for all of us — whether we use Gmail or Outlook, Jira or Rally, UKG or Workday. You get the idea.

One buyer, many potentially angry users (source)

EdTech as enterprise: the purchasers are not the users

Lots of EdTech products fit this description, in that the students and teachers who make up the vast majority of users often have little say into which products their district leadership purchases. In other words, the spectrum of influence is a negative image of the spectrum of impact: students have the least influence over which products are chosen, yet are likely to spend the most time actually using those products, while administrators, with their lion’s share of influence, may log in to many of these products infrequently, if ever.

It’s usually a matter of incentives not being fully aligned. While administrators of course are invested in the satisfaction of teachers, students, and families, they are also beholden to an arcane and complex set of requirements and pressures that must also be satisfied. Those concerns tend to weigh heavily in purchasing decisions.

EdTech as consumer: the users have choices and voices

And yet, there are ways in which teachers, students, and families have more leverage to exert choice than most users of enterprise software. For one thing, given the (perhaps temporary) flood of funding for EdTech products, many teachers now are faced with an overwhelming number of product options that the district has purchased for them.

In fact, it is now common to see districts purchase largely redundant programs, and leave it to schools or teachers to decide which to use. If you have any doubt that this is the case, sit in on a user interview with a teacher, and observe as they navigate a Clever dashboard that resembles an app store in its own right.

This is a very consumer-like scenario! Any product which the teacher is not specifically mandated to use must stand out or perish, because when it’s time to review the software budget, the apps that aren’t being used are likely to find themselves on the chopping block.

Any product which the teacher is not specifically mandated to use must stand out or perish…

Even in cases in which teachers and students are required to use specific programs, they likely have some recourse beyond what is available to the typical office drone. While the poor sap who wants nothing more than to switch from Google Sheets to Excel is likely screaming into a void, the disgruntled teacher or parent may actually be screaming within earshot of a human who is compelled to listen, whether in public forums or by contributing to a groundswell of complaints.

While the system is far from perfect, there does tend to exist some level of accountability to which these decision-makers are held by their constituents. So although a teacher may not be able to switch products on a whim, like you or I might from Headspace to Calm when we want to switch up our meditation practice, they are not altogether powerless.

Our challenge: don’t let the requirements overwhelm the value

As designers trying to navigate this mess, our challenge is to figure out what the true minimum set of features is to make our products eligible for purchase, and then which of those are actually useful to the daily users of the product. In a perfect system, there would be a large overlap; in reality, not always.

Once we’ve made this determination, the mission is to prioritize what’s useful, keeping the inconvenient requirements out of the way as much as possible while still providing cover for those responsible for meeting them. The goal is to stand out in our ability to maximize the ways in which we make life easier, more efficient, and more productive for our users, and shield them from the unnecessary complications.

The ongoing tug o’ war between enterprise and consumer design in Ed Tech (source)

Skill Sets and Motivations

While we like to think we’re prepared to tackle any design problem, the truth is that most of us, based on our unique experiences, interests, and self-perceived strengths, tend to develop a somewhat specialized skill set. In becoming specialists, we also learn to derive motivation and satisfaction from our specialties.

EdTech as enterprise: take satisfaction in efficiently solving problems

When we work on enterprise products, we develop a mindset that relishes problem solving, both at a high level and in the weeds. We live to find ways to logically support the completion of complex tasks. We love logic puzzles and systems thinking.

EdTech provides a plethora of these enterprise-type challenges. As companies acquire or merge with others, they tend to amass unwieldy product suites, which grow into an intricately interconnected web of systems. The designer’s task is to ensure not only that each system is internally coherent and valuable, but that the connections between the systems that make up the complex superstructure make sense and amplify the value that each individual component provides.

For example:

• How might we connect assessment scores from Product A to personalized reading practice goal recommendations in Product B, while making it clear where the data is coming from and why it results in these specific recommendations?
• How might we ensure that Product B still functions and provides value in the absence of Product A, while still communicating to users how much more powerful the two are when used in combination with each other?

As we work on these experiences that solve real, thorny problems for teachers, we learn to derive a deep satisfaction from our progress. While it has been ingrained in us that our goal as designers is to delight our users, we find our motivation instead in alleviating their pain and easing their burden, knowing that for many, the experiences we design constitute a significant chunk of their daily existence.

EdTech as consumer: create an engaging experience

As designers working on consumer products, we get to let our hair down. Where the enterprise designer looks to make life easier for their users, the consumer designer looks to make it joyful. The goal here is to create an experience that is engaging, fun, and sticky.

Don’t think for a minute that we don’t get to join in the excitement just because we work in education! The success of many products relies on user engagement that is driven by classic consumer design methods. For student-facing daily practice products especially, we use compelling-yet-friendly visual design, ethical gamification, and personalization (for example, by grade band) to motivate and delight.

While designers in EdTech with a consumer focus can feel warm and fuzzy about bringing joy to our users, we can also take satisfaction in the fact that we do so in service of a greater goal. If our products truly aid in the learning and growth of students, then we maximize that outcome by creating experiences that make users want to keep coming back.

While it has been ingrained in us that our goal as designers is to delight our users, we find our motivation instead in alleviating their pain and easing their burden, knowing that for many, the experiences we design constitute a significant chunk of their daily existence.

Our challenge: reflect, improve and specialize

There are two challenges implied here — one for the individual and one for the organization.

On an individual level, we can strive to develop a well-rounded skill set, taking an honest assessment of our own strengths and weaknesses, and then taking steps to improve. For those of us who work in smaller teams and organizations, being a jack-of-all-trades may be a necessity.

A moment of honest self-reflection (source)

On an organizational level, the challenge is to build up a team that is well-rounded enough to handle whatever types of design problems are likely to emerge, which usually means planning for some level of specialization. Analyzing your team’s strengths and weaknesses requires its own type of honest self-reflection. We can’t effectively fill in these gaps without first identifying them.

Coming Up

We’ll continue our exploration of EdTech in the gray area between enterprise and consumer design in Part 2. See you then!

About the author:

Josh Singer is a Principal UX Designer and former Math Editor at Renaissance Learning. He has previously written for UX of EdTech about making student assessment data useful.

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