Distinguish product users from purchasers and recruit representative users through school-like community settings¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The article's lessons learned advise education teams to be "clear about who your customers are," because "there's often a gap between the person using the product (teachers, students) and the people who purchase products at scale (administrators, directors)" — plan your strategy for the right audience. Second, be creative with recruiting: since representative users are hard to reach, community programs such as after-school and credit-recovery, tutoring sessions, and camps work as "school-like" settings for lightweight testing.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Teams must identify whether the audience is the user or the scale purchaser before planning testing strategy

Constraints¶

• Measuring student learning gains can require large studies over long time periods, so small-scale iteration should use interim learning metrics

Target Learners¶

• teachers
• students
• education R&D teams

Target Learning Goals¶

• representative user testing in education contexts
• audience-appropriate product strategy

Affordances¶

• Five Phase Ux Design Loop

Related Strategies¶

• Conduct ed-tech pilots by articulating the instructional need, setting clear product-review criteria, involving educators in planning, supporting educators throughout, gathering data from all users, deciding from data, negotiating purchasing options, and sharing results
• Recruit early in the spring, communicate clearly with parents, keep enrollment open, and require commitment to clear program expectations

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Gartrell, J. and Johnson, E. (2026). ATS Field Note: The UX Design Loop. In ATS Hub Field Note Series. https://doi.org/10.51388/20.500.12265/299