K12 teachers as UX designers
When the true insiders of EdTech products get their hands on the design tools
“Take a picture of your work.” In an age where most people have cameras in their pockets, one would hope that this could be a simple task. As a middle school science teacher during the stay-at-home order of COVID-19, I experienced firsthand how this exercise got tricky really fast.
In my corner of the world in Southern California, it seemed like overnight that K12 (Kindergarten through 12th grade) students and families were required to utilize Google Classroom as their primary Course Management System (if they did not have another system in place) and conduct most of their assignments and communication through the website or app. Thankfully, my students had already been using Google Classroom throughout the year for certain digital assignments, though not on a daily basis.
How Do I Turn This In?
Google Classroom allows for a variety of attachments to be “turned in” on an Assignment post, including the ability to take a picture with your device’s camera right on the spot. This is helpful for work that requires handwriting, sketches, experiments, and demonstrations.
What I found to be remarkable was how evasive the camera step was on the app. The subtle grey “swipe-up” arrow is present at the bottom, but for many people, that symbol did not alert them to pull the next screen up for attachment options. If they had touched on the little grey arrow, they would have seen an option for attachments.
The word “attachment” made sense for many but not all. Most would think they needed to already have the picture or document on hand (device) in order to attach it, which may have caused them to hesitate. If they pressed the “+ Add Attachment” button, they would have seen all of the obvious options they were initially hoping to find.
At first, I noticed my students scanning and turning things in a wide variety of formats. Some looked like they literally used a scanner (not a phone scanning app) and used the black and white image. I reached out to parents and heard several methods were being used besides the phone camera.
In my own personal circles, I witnessed parents from elementary schools taking about ten pictures of each page in their kid’s packet with their phone, then physically plugging their phone into their computer, uploading all of the pictures and attaching them individually to the assignment post on the Classroom’s website. When I showed one parent how to simply take a picture with the app, they were amazed and so grateful. We were done with the turn-in process in under a minute.
I’ll save the rest of my tales on the hiccups, bumps, and valleys of experiencing Google Classroom for another time. Simply put, Google Classroom and all of the auxiliary synced up programs (EdPuzzle, Flipgrid, Quizizz) had a variety of positive and downright frustrating experiences for teachers, students, and parents that were only exasperated during the COVID-19 stay-at-home order.
Enter Adobe XD
As timing would have it, I simultaneously picked up Adobe XD and followed some tutorials to learn the basics. I was fascinated by how simple it was to use and how quickly I was able to make clickable prototypes.
It dawned on me that if teachers learned this tool, the EdTech world would be a better place. Even more exciting to think about was if the students learned this tool, the EdTech world would be a more enjoyable and effective learning space. Teachers and students could build wireframing concepts and clickable prototypes to their favorite tools and continually iterate on what would serve their needs the best. Maybe EdTech companies could invite the education community to make changes on the UI Kits and prototypes that they provide.
With this in mind, I didn’t stop with Adobe XD. I quickly started reading every UX beginner’s guide I could find online. I consumed LinkedIn Learning courses, started taking a MOOC course, and got familiar with what designers were talking about on Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit. My epiphany has been that I absolutely must get involved in this UX space as it relates to education and learners. Classroom teachers are “designing” on a daily basis, and I believe taking another step in this direction will allow me to help even more students and educators. My career vision is to design better ways to facilitate learning. User experience design and educational technology is the crux where I am working out this vision.
7th & 8th Grade Student UX Workshop
It has to be one of the most ideal situations when the users can become the designers because they are so familiar with the products at hand and the scenarios in which they will be used. I recreated the Google Classroom app assignment pages in XD and I knew immediately that I would have to try this out with students. I decided to wait until our school year ended to make a proposal for a pilot program.
A group of middle school students were invited to my 3-week online workshop to learn and practice several things:
- The basics of UX principles (including research)
- How to get started and use Adobe XD
- Practice modified UX Research with several teachers, parents, and students
- Redesign and prototype the Google Classroom turn-in pages
- Wireframe their own unique EdTech app concept
- Start their Portfolio
To some degree, I wished that I could have more time to grow my expertise but I thought this was an ideal moment for us to design improvements on the pain points that teachers, students, and parents experienced during March — June 2020. The endeavor has felt a little ambitious given our remote learning situation for the workshop, but I knew we would make progress and the workshop could improve over time. Plus, teaching a design tool to youth is just asking for them to take off and run with their imagination and ideas.
Education Community + UX = Better Learning World
The democratization of prototyping tools like Adobe XD is ushering in a whole new era of experience design. I recently read an article by Michal Malewicz that discusses this phenomenon in the broader context of product design and the client’s relationship with the designer. He states:
“I first noticed it happen about 4 years ago, when one of our clients (Hi, Lewis!) sent in some wireframes and mockups of new features. They were in Sketch and they looked pretty great! Obviously he needed a bit of help and guidance, but he also managed to significantly speed the design process. Instead of trying to get the concept out of him, he sent us the concept to refine.”
I am not a design expert and I know just enough to see how much I do not know. Still, I know my classroom and my students and our needs in the age of COVID-19. I now know a wireframing and prototyping tool and feel that I can learn the design principles used behind such tools. I have very personal incentives to come up with solutions to EdTech problems and I have been delighted to discover how the principles of user experience design can help with this. I am studying this all voraciously.
Khoi Vinh, Principal Designer at Adobe, responded to the criticism that the popularized “design thinking” process receives and it’s democratization. He states,
“So when I consider design thinking, it matters less to me whether it leads to a lot of bad design or not. What matters to me is whether it helps broaden the language of design, if it helps expand the community of design, if it helps build a world that values and understands design better than it does today. If design thinking is making us more relevant to the world at large, leading non-designers to embrace the way designers think, then the net effect strikes me as positive.”
Agreed. The net effect can be especially positive for our youth in school!
Student Workshop Updates
We are currently starting our third week of the workshop that includes a virtual field trip with a creative EdTech agency, Backpack Interactive. This agency describes themselves the following way:
We are all about equipping our clients in the EdTech space with the tools they need to create better digital products: strategic insights, product ideation, design and UX.
What a perfect match for our workshop.
I look forward to reporting back on all that was accomplished with my 7th/8th-grade-UX team and also offer more details for teachers who would like to try something similar. Let me know if you would like to stay in the loop or collaborate in any way!
