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May 28, 2021 - No Comments!

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 related article, "Educational Resources for Talking to Your Kids About Race and Anti-Racism," here.

As Asian Pacific American Heritage Month comes to an end, we wanted to share resources and stories that we’ve enjoyed throughout the month. These resources are dedicated to helping teachers, parents, and edTech product owners learn more about Asian-American history, read more work from Asian-American voices, and better understand our experience.

Below, you'll find books, films, and curriculum guides for discussing the Asian-American experience in the classroom and in homes. We hope that integrating Asian-American history into the classroom extends past May and is adopted year-round. 

As a Filipino-American, I've discovered these resources from talking to members of my own communities. The term "Asian-American"—let alone the entire “Asian Pacific Islander” grouping—is a large umbrella with a complex history. For example, the Philippines alone has 120+ different dialects spoken throughout the country and an uncountable number of cultures among its 7,640 islands.  We've even long debated whether we are Asian, Pacific Islander, or our own ethnic group.

I acknowledge that most of these resources are from the Asian-American community rather than the Pacific Islander community. Any gaps you may notice are my own. We welcome any additional resources from our readers and will continue to add to this list as often as we can!

The recent rise in crimes against Asian-Americans has also sparked many conversations within the Asian-American community about racism. Seeing members of our community on TV as the targets of hate crimes is new and difficult to grasp. Many of us are used to feeling invisible and struggle with asking for help, which can still be seen as a sign of weakness. My friends and I have also talked about feeling guilty about taking attention away from other activist movements like Black Lives Matter. Below, you’ll also find resources that we’ve shared in our previous article about having conversations about racism with students and young children. 

To the Asian-American community, we feel you, we hear you, and we are with you as you continue to navigate these conversations and advocate for your safety.

On a personal note, I hope you are able to find solace in these stories, feel heard, and connect more with our culture. It’s been quite the experience navigating how to best handle everything going on. Many times, I wanted to brush it off to avoid feelings of shame. We are learning together, and I hope that if this is weighing heavily on your heart, too, that you’re able to find moments of self-compassion and joy on your journey. 

You are not alone, and you are enough.

Written by Cassandra Balbas

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Cassandra Balbas is passionate about designing tools that empower and support educators and students. While working at UC Irvine, she worked closely with students to create inclusive visual design, make student resources more accessible, improve mental and physical health, and foster a well-rounded university experience. In addition to working with college students, Cassandra has worked in product design, nonprofit design, and marketing. 

 

When she isn't designing, you can find Cassandra roaming bookstores or prepping Etsy orders for her shop where she sells Fil-Am inspired stickers, “We Are Sun-Raised”. She also volunteers with the Asian Mental Health Project and is happy to discuss any questions you may have about the organization, upcoming projects, and its mission to end the stigma around mental health in the Asian-American community.

 

For Educators:

Curriculum and Lesson Plans from Asian Americans Advancing Justice 

Curated lesson plans to help teach Asian-American History.

 

Creating the Space to Talk About Race in Your School

A series of articles to help teachers create a safe space to have and encourage discussions around racism in their classroom.

 

Grades K-4:

Here are links to purchasing books from AAPI-owned bookstores, including Bel Canto, Arkipelago Books, and Philippine Expressions Bookshop.

 

Eyes That Kiss in the Corners by Joanna Ho

A beautiful picture book that navigates a young girl’s journey to embracing, loving, and celebrating her Asian features.

 

Superheroes are Everywhere by Kamala Harris

The Vice President shares stories from her life to inspire young children to take action and improve the world around them.

 

A Kids Book About… 

We love this series! They have books about Racism, Systemic Racism, Shame, Immigration, and Diversity, just to name a few. 

 

How to Teach Kids How to Talk About Taboo Topics

In this TED Talk from 4th-grade teacher Liz Kleinrock, the educator shares how she teaches kids to discuss difficult subjects without fear.

 

A Unit to Teach Kids About Microaggressions
This lesson plan will challenge your kids to identify microaggressions and stereotypes about Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (or, BIPOC), regardless of how harmless these comments may seem on the surface.

Grades 6-8:

PBS Special on Asian American History

This 6-part docuseries highlights Asian-American history through stories of resilience.

 

I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Gharib

Gharib, who is half-Egyptian and half-Filipino, speaks to the Asian-American experience and how she navigated the all too common question of “Where are you from?” 

 

Grades 9-12:

“Fe” by Bren Bataclan

This graphic memoir explores the dynamic and relationship between a young gay Filipino and his mother. It is so beautifully honest, and I love that the author discusses issues such as hoarding, which is common in immigrant families.

 

Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong

“Chinese is synecdoche for Asians the way Kleenex is for tissues,” writes Hong in her searing essay collection about immigrant identity and the exploration of Asian-American consciousness. Her term “minor feelings” represent the shame, suspicion, and melancholy that she and other Asian Americans feel as they pursue "the American dream" of wealth and success, instead of feeling joy.

 

Good Talk by Mira Jacob

Novelist Jacob catalogs a series of pressing questions about identity from her young son in this moving graphic memoir. 

 

America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan

A heart-wrenching story about Filipino writer Carlos Bulosan’s journey from Binalonan to the US, as he strives for the American dream during the Great Depression.

 

The Making of Asian America by Erika Lee

Explores the history of Asian Americans.

 

The Farewell

This 2019 film from writer-director Lulu Wang chronicles a Chinese-American family as they navigate a tragic diagnosis.

 

Minari

A Korean-American father uproots his family to pursue the American dream in rural Arkansas in this Oscar-nominated film.

 

Organizations To Follow:

Stop AAPI Hate 

https://stopaapihate.org/
Twitter: @stopaapihate

 

Asian American Justice + Innovation Lab 

https://www.aajil.org/

Instagram: @AAJIL_org

 

Asian Mental Health Project

https://asianmentalhealthproject.com/

Instagram: @asianmentalhealthproject

 

Asian Mental Health Collective

https://www.asianmhc.org/
Instagram: @asianmentalhealthcollective

 

AAPI-Owned Businesses:

Bel Canto Books

https://belcantobooks.net/
Instagram: @belcantobooks

 

Arkipelago Books

https://www.arkipelagobooks.com/

Instagram: @arkipelagobooks

Eastwind Books

https://www.asiabookcenter.com/

Instagram: @eastwindbooks

 

Maomi Bookstore

https://www.maomibooks.com/

Instagram: @maomibookstore

 

Townie Books

https://towniebookscb.indielite.org/

Instagram: @towniebooks

 

27th Letter Books

https://www.27thletterbooks.com/

Instagram: @27thletterbooks

 

LibroFM

https://libro.fm/

Instagram: @librofm

 

A Good Used Book

https://agoodusedbook.com/

Instagram: @agoodusedbook

 

Femme Fire Books

https://femmefirebooks.com/

Instagram: @femmefirebooks

 

Giant Robot Store

https://www.giantrobot.com/

Instagram: @giantrobotstore

 

Waucoma Bookstore

https://www.waucomabookstore.com/

Instagram: @waucomabooks

 

Books and Bites

https://www.etsy.com/shop/BookmarksAndBites

Instagram: @booksandbitesroc

 

Other Resources We Love:

American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry

Anti-Asian Violence Resources

‘Model Minority Myth Again Used As A Racial Wedge Between Asians And Blacks

 

Other Action Items:

In addition to sharing age-appropriate resources with your kids or students, consider tackling other action items and activities, like:

 

  1. Supporting Asian Literature
    1. Request AAPI works for purchase consideration at your local library
    2. Add Asian Lit to your local Little Free Library
    3. Tell publishers how much you’ve enjoyed their published AAPI books and want more of these kinds of books
  2. Raising discussions around the Model Minority Myth.
  3. Initiating discussions with your child and asking them if they’ve seen or experienced moments of racism in their schools, friends, loved ones, or within themselves. Encourage them to share any moments when they believed they might have been racist too. Part of the process of becoming an ally is unlearning the unconscious biases we grew up with. Challenge your kids to set goals and expectations to help combat these thoughts. Speaking about racism should not be limited to marginalized communities.


Thank you for taking the time to use these digital resources to learn more about the Asian-American experience. I’m excited for you to enjoy them and thrilled that you’re interested in learning more about our story. 

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May 5, 2021 - No Comments!

6 Easy SEL Features for Remote Learning Products

When you think about online products with SEL features, what comes to mind? Most likely, you picture a popular mindfulness tool, like the Headspace app, or an edTech tool like BrainPOP. (In our user surveys, teachers never fail to mention the online platform's ever-popular "brain breaks.")

While mindfulness techniques and technology breaks certainly help students develop SEL skills at home, teachers use the term "social emotional learning" differently than most product designers. For educators, incorporating SEL into the classroom means helping students build the social and emotional skills they need to participate successfully in learning environments. This covers a wide range of abilities, including developing strong communication skills, setting individual goals, and taking responsibility for one's actions.

Right now, edTech product owners have a unique opportunity to change their approach to online SEL and better serve the needs of teachers. In fact, your student-facing products already have many features or examples of UX text where you can support SEL growth right away.

Don't retrofit SEL into your product or roll it out in the next phase. Save yourself time, money, and hassle by designing with an SEL mindset from the beginning. You'll win over teachers who already support your product, and make a more valuable tool.

How to Design SEL Features That Teachers Really Want

While some UX solutions for SEL features take longer to design and execute, other design and copy changes are easy to implement in the short term. 

Whether you design subject-specific or content-specific apps, incorporating SEL features should be top of mind as you build. You'll be rewarded with higher levels of user satisfaction and more teacher buy-in for your product.

Here are six meaningful ways you can address SEL growth in your products today.

1. Develop a supportive content strategy

Voice and tone can make or break your product—especially in edTech. If your content team hasn't mindfully considered how you communicate potential error cases to younger students, you may even cause unintentional harm. 

For example, overly technical error messages might indicate to an L2 student that their language choices are wrong, even when they aren't. Similarly, unclear directions or directions written for a more advanced reading comprehension level could overwhelm or discourage young students.

In addition to writing more mindful error notifications, consider how teachers communicate with their students. How can UX copywriting reinforce a student's growth mindset in every interaction? Every product touchpoint, from activity directions to highlighting incorrect quiz answers, is an opportunity to provide students with positive reinforcement.

 

2. Design affirmative, warm UI

edTech is only now starting to move away from cold, industrial visual design. Whether you're showcasing student achievements or showing students how far they've progressed through your experience, your UI should be friendly, authentic, and genuine.

In addition to color and design, consider incorporating imagery that channels emotion, complements positive UX copy choices, and reinforces a student user's efforts and achievements. Non-verbal cues, like animating a smiling character after a student completes a task, are strong signals to students that they're on the right path in your experience. These small UI decisions model the link between perseverance, effort, and progress, helping learners develop critical social-emotional skills.

 

3. Anticipate teacher-student touchpoints

In order to help students build self-awareness and self-management skills, teachers often begin their days with an emotional touch base. They also use verbal or non-verbal cues throughout class to help students become more aware of their feelings. By incorporating similar cues and touchpoints into digital learning tools, you can support SEL growth in edTech, too.

Non-verbal cues are especially helpful for students who have difficulty reading emotions. When apps include visual cues that emulate human contact, students see appropriate emotional models for sadness, frustration, and happiness. This tactic is at work in plenty of consumer products already—just think about how happy that DuoLingo owl is when you go on a streak!

4. Improve onboarding experiences

Teachers often onboard students to new products as they learn about the product themselves. When digital tools anticipate the needs of students during the onboarding process, it takes the burden off of teachers and eliminates student frustration or confusion.

If you're designing a product meant for young learners, consider using a visual overlay to help students focus on the most important task on each screen. You might even incorporate a voice-over to provide sequential narration, or use visual cues that follow a student as they move through the experience at their own pace. These UX and UI strategies provide immediate feedback for learners and reinforce their successes throughout the experience.

5. Create synchronous activities for remote learning

Now that so many students and teachers must learn remotely, planning synchronous activities helps create a collective classroom experience. Whether your product collects up-votes in real time or provides space for student-created content, you'll give students more opportunities to develop their social skills in remote environments. Even if we return to the classroom full time, teachers appreciate the added flexibility of being able to shift between synchronous and asynchronous activities in digital tools.

 

6. Help students develop more agency over their learning

Learner agency and decision-making is a crucial component of SEL growth. Product owners can support this by providing students more opportunities to take charge of their digital learning experiences. This might look like giving students the chance to set their own goals within an app or offering a wider range of genres or topics to choose from in a digital reading platform.

From affirmation and error messages to onboarding experiences, you're already building a digital tool with opportunities to strengthen student SEL skills online. Why wait to roll out SEL features in the next design phase? 

Incorporating a growth mindset into your digital tools pays off immediately. When you incorporate SEL features into remote learning tools, you support the needs of real student users—and make it even easier for teachers to adopt your tool in their classroom.

Are you developing SEL features for your new product? Contact us today to find out how we can help.

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March 26, 2021 - No Comments!

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 process for a new product. But what if your internal team isn't the best fit for the job?

Working with a specialized UX design team to conduct a competitive audit will give you stronger recommendations for long-term solutions. Especially when those designers work in fields like edTech, where it's crucial to stay on top of advancements, product rollouts, and other industry updates.

Not only is an outside design firm more aware of your competitive field, they will also ensure that any improvements or adaptations you make on existing products are future-oriented.

Because when it comes down to it, your competitive audit should help you identify better design solutions than your competition. By leveraging better UX solutions that meet the needs of real edTech users, you'll become the edTech publisher to watch.

Find the Right Competitors to Track in the Field of edTech

If your internal product team already has a strong research and testing background, you might be hesitant to contract UXR services from another firm. But hiring a UXR team with an edTech background ultimately gives you an edge during the auditing process—and the resulting design strategy.

With tangible explanations and a heuristic score for each competitor, a UXR team that specializes in edTech puts usability standards at the forefront of their recommendations. But designing edTech tools takes more than a flair for visual design and good UX. It also takes a deep knowledge of the way users teach and learn with digital tools. 

A competitive audit conducted by edTech experts provides a rich snapshot of your product in the context of the industry. You'll immediately discover how your competitors are—or aren't—addressing your user's needs. For example, if you're designing an edTech product with a math-specific mission, your competitive audit should provide a framework for how competitors facilitate similar learning goals through UX solutions.

Because of their familiarity with the world of edTech, a specialized UXR team produces competitive audits that are deep dives into how users experience digital learning products. This extensive overview provides a strong foundation for your strategic decisions. Armed with the right information, you'll set yourself apart not just for your UX design—but for your understanding of the mechanics of teaching and learning.

Prioritize Features by Researching the Pain Points of edTech Competitors

Even popular edTech products have flaws and pain points. The more you learn about these design flaws during your competitive audit, the easier it will be to prioritize your own product's features. 

For example, users might dislike a competitor's search function because they struggle to filter relevant information. Even if your product doesn't include the same feature, knowing what your competitor does or doesn't do well helps you make strategy and design decisions. 

Competitive audits can also help your team refresh features during the product redesign process. If you're stumped about why your product isn't selling, auditing the field ensures that you're leveraging common UX solutions in edTech.

To avoid the same mistakes as your competitors, you'll likely need to conduct deeper user research into common areas of friction. When, where, and why do your users abandon their journeys?

Researchers specialized in edTech know how to conduct extensive user testing in the field to address these issues. They can also frame competitive audit findings in a way that directly supports your product and user journey goals. 

By the end of the competitive audit, you'll understand where users struggle within an experience and emerge with better, more nuanced solutions for improving the usability of your product.

Create a Shared Understanding of the edTech Industry with Product Stakeholders

The findings from your competitive audit are a powerful stakeholder alignment tool. 

Audits address user needs, challenges, and feature priorities—every element your team needs to make design decisions. Before your product team jumps into iteration, however, your competitive audit has provided internal stakeholders with a foundational reasoning for your team's design suggestions. 

With a shared understanding of the design challenge, your stakeholders will now more easily support the thinking and problem-solving of your design team. Ultimately, when audit findings drive strategic design decisions, there's less friction in every step of the process. 

From feature prioritization to rapid prototyping, use findings from your competitive audit to justify design decisions and help stakeholders remember what's at stake for your users.

If you're building an edTech product, don't settle for a competitive audit that looks at UX through a broad lens. 

A specialized approach to the auditing process gives you actionable solutions for addressing the needs of teachers and students through UX. You'll also uncover tactical solutions for solving persistent user pain points and educate your stakeholders on the most recent developments in the field.

Because edTech product design isn't just about creating an exceptional user experience. It's about creating digital learning tools that help teachers ease their administrative burden and ensure students engage deeply with content. Designed well, good UX makes a difference in real classrooms—and that's what matters most.

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January 28, 2021 - No Comments!

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 why wait until after you've designed your product to get started?

Changing your approach to user testing and UXR can help you organize your edTech product strategy, avoid confirmation bias, and build an even stronger product. You'll likely save money in the long run, too.

Even if you've traditionally employed user testing once your product is built, it's not too late to adopt a new approach. Here are three ways you can weave user testing throughout the discovery and design process to build a better product.

Let edTech UX Research Guide Your Design Strategy

When it comes to designing edTech products, the best solutions are generated by getting to know actual users.  By adopting user testing earlier in the discovery and design process, you'll be able to identify the pain points, needs, and frustrations of the real people who will rely on your product to meet their goals. You'll also gain greater insight into your users' needs, instead of what you might assume their needs to be.

If you let it, UXR can guide your overall design strategy. The needs you address through design and feature prioritization will come from real people and detailed interviews. Maybe you've even watched as a student struggled to log in without help from an adult, or as a teacher strained to organize their data using your tool.

When you see users face challenges in real time, you're ultimately able to design a better experience. Instead of isolating an element of user testing to prove what you already believe, or ignoring user feedback that contradicts your original assumptions, you gather user data that makes a lasting impact on your product.

By developing a more nuanced understanding of your users and their challenges, you can guide strategic discussions with internal stakeholders more effectively. If stakeholders come to understand user challenges through the lens of specific interviewees, your company's users will become more real. This process will help your strategic conversations about product design become both more grounded and more productive.

Create More Accurate Personas Ahead of an edTech Product Redesign

If your goal is to redesign a particular feature, you'll want to know why something isn't working.

Test your current product with users in order to identify problems and produce better solutions. You may even want to interview users more broadly about the product by asking them to discuss the things they find frustrating or the ideas they have for improving a particular workflow.

As you observe users engaging with the product, you should be able to identify where a user flow breaks down. You may even discover that the problem you originally identified isn't the same challenge a user demonstrates during testing. All of this data gives you a helpful design benchmark before you ever begin the redesign process.

When you really stop to think about it, executing on real feedback from users doesn't take long—and you'll have built a stronger product in the end. It's a win-win.

Establish Feature Priorities for Your Next edTech Product

Thinking about how to prioritize the features for your next edTech product? The sooner you loop in your users, the better.

For example, if you want the perspective of an administrator or a teacher to guide your feature priorities, set up user interviews as early as you can. Interview 3 or 4 people from your target user group and identify the trends that emerge from those conversations. Even if the interviewees have different roles within your product, their perspectives can help you identify what users really need.

Bring your findings to discovery meetings, long before any real decisions are made about the product or its release. During discovery, you'll learn whether your findings align with the assumptions from other internal stakeholders. Compare and contrast! Which needs are the same? Which are different? Used in this way, UXR results can really facilitate collaboration and help you align with all the stakeholders in your company.

From prioritizing new features to redesigning old ones, UXR works best when it's woven throughout the strategic design process. Not only can you use the results to educate and inform internal stakeholders, but you can also use UXR to facilitate collaboration and accelerate strategic decision-making. In the end, you'll wind up with a better picture of who your users really are. You'll also design a product that truly solves for real challenges faced by teachers and students—a result that's well worth the investment in UXR.