Alicia Quan and Sarah Mondestin interview Alex Darrow, Principal Designer at Microsoft Education.
Alex discusses his journey from a childhood love for gaming to leading the design of innovative reading tools at Microsoft. He shares his experiences working on reading products, including the development of the Reading Coach and Reading Progress tools that have become essential in classrooms, especially during the COVID pandemic. Alex highlights the importance of observing children's learning processes and emphasizes creating engaging, gamified educational experiences.
The episode also features a special guest, Alex's daughter Zoe, who provides her perspective on her dad's work and shares valuable advice for designers creating educational tools for kids.
Chapters
01:13 - Early Gaming Influences
03:04 - Career Journey and Academic Background
05:07 - Transition to Microsoft and EdTech
10:02 - Voice User Interface Design
12:11 - Hackathons and Product Development
19:17 - Reading Progress and COVID-19
27:01 - Future of Reading Coach and Gamification
31:34 - AI Hype vs. Panic: Where Do You Stand?
32:21 - The Role of AI in Education
33:57 - Advice for EdTech Designers
34:14 - Personal Literacy Journeys
38:01 - The Impact of Reading Progress and Flipgrid
42:02 - Lightning Round: Quickfire Questions
49:03 - Special Guest: Zoe's Perspective
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UX of EdTech is a design studio that cultivates learning, creativity, and play.
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This might be our most giggly conversation yet. Alicia Quan and Sarah Mondestin interview Annabel Blake (they/them), Principal AI Design Researcher at Canva.
The three discuss connections throughout Annabel’s career and life, touching on various topics like research, kids, play, AI, ethics, toys, authorship, and advice for designers and researchers working the spaces of education and AI.
So much gold in this one!
About Annabel
Annabel works on conversational interfaces, generative experiences for education and on early R&D. Annabel’s work lives at the intersection of research, design, and play and includes studying how young people experiment with AI recreationally and how they use it for fun, comfort, and creativity. Annabel also writes “strange little books for children, like a book you wear on your head or a story about a robot goat… that comes with a chatbot goat (called Sardine!).”
Annabel’s Links
Center for Humane Technology
Chapters
00:00 - Annabel's Squiggly Career Path
03:14 - Olympic Journey and Injury
04:42 - Reflections on Career Squiggles
06:07 - Intersection of Research, Design, and Play
08:38 - Kids and AI: Restoration and Exploration
12:46 - Children's Books and Technology
17:39 - Young People and AI: Surprising Uses
21:39 - Designing for AI vs. Traditional UX
28:17 - Co-Design and Early Access Testing
32:48 - Educators and AI Tools
36:22 - Innovative Teachers and Their Challenges
39:24 - The Importance of Playfulness in Education
46:11 - AI in Education: Balancing Innovation and Ethics
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👋The UX of EdTech Studio teams up to support companies with product design, UX research, and UX writing.
UX of EdTech is an engine for broader impact through its growing community, podcast, and newsletter dedicated to advancing design in education. Follow to find talent and opportunities.
Alicia Quan and Sarah Mondestin hang out with Michelle Lee, Partner and Managing Director of IDEO’s Play Lab. This convo is so delightful and fun! So much inspiration to go around. Listeners will be enriched.
Michelle discusses her unconventional career journey from mechanical engineering to toy design, and eventually to leading kid-focused projects. She emphasizes the importance of play in learning and its application beyond childhood, highlighting her work with companies like VTech, IDEO, and Sesame Workshop. Michelle shares insights into designing engaging and meaningful digital experiences, such as Elmo Calls and the Space Explorer Bus project. She also explores the application of playful design in unexpected areas like smoking cessation and robo-investing.
Michelle provides valuable advice for designers and researchers in the EdTech space, encouraging them to observe, learn, and engage with the target audience, particularly children. The conversation also touches on balancing digital and real-life learning experiences and includes personal stories of learning new skills and bonding through play.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction; from Aerospace to Toy Design
06:25 Balancing Digital and Real-Life Learning
14:21 Designing for Preschoolers
21:11 Incorporating Play in Unexpected Places
24:49 The Role of Play in Learning
27:26 Balancing Seriousness and Play
29:41 Advice for Designers and Researchers
34:36 Curiosity and Inspo
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👋The UX of EdTech Studio teams up to support companies with product design, UX research, and UX writing.
UX of EdTech is an engine for broader impact through its growing community, podcast, and newsletter dedicated to advancing design in education. Follow to find talent and opportunities.
Alicia Quan and Sarah Mondestin interview two key figures in the development of Google's Learn LM.
Julia Wilkowski is the Pedagogy and Learning Sciences Team Lead, ensuring Google products adhere to learning science principles and best practices and have a demonstrable effect on learning.
Hayes Raffle is a Principal Designer on Google's LearnX team, where he makes Google Search, YouTube and Gemini more helpful for learning.
Both guests share insights on their paths in learning design, the challenges of integrating rigorous learning science into fast-paced tech development, and the role of user research and testing in creating effective educational tools.
They highlight recent advancements announced at the Google I/O conference, emphasizing the importance of multimodal learning and the potential of AI in personalizing education and making learning more interactive and engaging.
Chapters
04:42 - Formative Moments in Learning Design
09:14 - Designing for Diverse Audiences: Sixth Graders to Astronauts
12:53 - Impact of Tangible Media on Digital Learning
15:40 - Challenges in Measuring Learning Outcomes
20:01 - Integrating Learning Science into Product Development
26:05 - Recent Google I/O Developments and Announcements
29:26 - The Unique Approach of Learn LM
31:02 - Exciting Developments in Google Glass
32:10 - Real-Life Applications of AI in Education
37:23 - The Role of Designers in AI-Driven Learning
44:12 - Future Trends in Learning and UX
48:33 - Lightning Round and Closing Thoughts
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👋The UX of EdTech Studio teams up to support companies with product design, UX research, and UX writing.
Beyond client work, UX of EdTech is an engine for broader impact through its growing community, podcast, and newsletter dedicated to advancing design in education. Follow to find talent and opportunities.
This is the story of a print-first EdTech product and it's packed with nuggets about UX Research with teachers.
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Ethan Pierce, founder of Adaptive Reader, shares his personal journey from struggling with literacy in his early school years to founding a company dedicated to enhancing reading accessibility for students of varying developmental and linguistic backgrounds.
He discusses the iterative process behind Adaptive Reader, focusing on extensive user research that led to a print-first approach due to educator preference and practical in-classroom usage.
Alicia Quan and Sarah Mondestin also explore Ethan’s thoughts on the role of technology in education, the importance of user research, and his vision for making literature accessible worldwide through adaptive texts.
Chapters
00:00 - Introduction and Personal Story
01:20 - Founding Adaptive Reader
02:01 - Journey into Startups
03:30 - Creativity and Career Paths
06:00 - Challenges in Literacy and Education
07:10 - Designing Adaptive Reader
11:56 - User Research and Insights
18:42 - Balancing Print and Digital in Education
29:27 - Future of Adaptive Reader
35:45 - Closing Thoughts and Contact Information
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👋 UX of EdTech is a design studio helping EdTech and education companies with their product design and UX research. We also facilitate a community of product designers, UX researchers, UX writers, learning designers, and educators.
Find talent and opportunities in design and research through our job postings, Podcast, Community Publication, and Newsletter.
Designing for K12 EdTech? Take a moment to linger in the world of this teacher.
Alicia Quan and Sarah Mondestin listen to second-grade teacher Danielle Rivera, as she shares her perspective on growing through EdTech’s various iterations. She also gives her personal perspective on this question: What do veteran teachers want from AI?
Chapters
00:00 - The Joys and Challenges of Teaching
06:08 - Transitioning Back to Teaching
08:42 - Leveraging EdTech and AI
22:04 - Future Aspirations and Reflections
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UX of EdTech is a design studio and talent finder—tailored for EdTech.
Alicia Quan introduces our new podcast co-host, Sarah Mondestin!
Ever wondered how to collaborate with UX of EdTech? This episode should point you in the right direction.
The hosts discuss Sarah's diverse career journey from educator to UX content designer and her involvement in various UX of EdTech initiatives. The conversation covers the structure and goals of the UX of EdTech Community and Studio, highlighting their focus on networking, showcasing work, and supporting EdTech companies with specialized UX teams. Don’t miss the end where they highlight what is inspiring them lately.
Chapters
01:26 - Sarah's career journey
06:50 - The Community
15:54 - The Studio
20:53 - This week’s curiosity and inspirations
Worth Noting
Sarah Mondestin is a former educator and principal. She’s a UX Content Designer and Strategist who helps companies consider their overall UX content strategies. Sarah has served as the Editorial Lead and Content Design and Research Advisor to support UX practitioners in our industry. She’s now the Director of Design Operations and Partnerships for UX of EdTech. Follow Sarah on LinkedIn or visit her website for more ways you can collaborate.
Sarah’s previous podcast episode: EdTech UX Writing and Content Design: A Journey
Sarah’s article series: UX Writing in EdTech
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The Community application is available on our website.
UX of EdTech is a design studio that cultivates learning, creativity, and play.
How can UX practitioners upskill in game design for a learning context? And why is this important in EdTech?
Alicia Quan chats The Sims, cheat codes, and moving past the “Big 5” of gamification (points, badges, leader boards, levels, progress bars) towards something more with:
Worth Noting:
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What is the current state of inclusive EdTech products and what are some resources to grow in this area?
Alicia Quan chats with:
Worth Noting:
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Alicia Quan chats with two members from the Khanmigo team at Khan Academy:
They discuss:
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Music by Sleep Still
Alicia Quan chats with several members from the team at ETS AI Labs:
They discuss:
1. Cross-functional approaches to product development
2. The role of LX Design
3. Educational contexts and use cases for AI
4. Designing with explainable AI in mind
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Music by Sleep Still
Alicia Quan chats with Dr. Rachel Schechter, who founded Learning Experience Design (LXD) Research at Charles River Media Group, acting as Principal Investigator and Chief Research Advisor to companies large and small. Rachel helps guide the use of data and evaluation to support product improvements, build evidence of efficacy, and strengthen customer implementations.
They discuss:
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Music by Sleep Still
Alicia Quan chats with two members from Duolingo about their work as an early launch partner with OpenAI’s GPT-4 model:
Edwin Bodge, Principal Product Manager
Megan Bednarczyk, Senior Product Designer
They discuss how they launched Duolingo Max, including:
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Music by Sleep Still
Alicia Quan chats with Yuan Wang, the Head of Design at Maven, aka the university of the future. She is also a leadership coach (CPC) and an adjunct professor at California College of the Arts. She previously led design at Airbnb, Twitter, and Mozilla.
They discuss:
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Music by Sleep Still
Alicia Quan chats with a few members of the team who worked on Quizlet’s Q-Chat, the world’s first AI tutor built with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It is modeled on research demonstrating that the most effective form of learning is one-on-one tutoring.
Eli Kariv, Sr. Product Manager,
Pranavi Javangula, Product Designer,
Ling Cheng, Director of Machine Learning
They discuss:
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Music by Sleep Still: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0wEV3QCeKk62F3w2x3zo5I
Alicia Quan chats with the team at Backpack Interactive. Backpack is a strategy, UX and design company focused on the EdTech space.
On this episode, we hear from:
- Principal and Creative Director, Sean Oakes
- Director of Creative Operations, Milagros Montalvo
They discuss the benefits of when companies design to outsource their UX design work and also the flip side when there would be factors that could make this route challenging.
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UX of EdTech Newsletter
LinkedIn Page + UX Job Opportunities
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Article: Outsourcing your EdTech UX Design: Everything you need to know
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Music by Sleep Still
Alicia Quan chats with Nicole Gallardo, Founder and UX/UI Director of the program, Founders Who UX.
They discuss why UX work is important and valuable for EdTech and education companies. They talk about the biggest barriers startups face in hiring UX support, the options they have, and what their next steps should be.
They also touch on what’s next for UX of EdTech this year.
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Music by Sleep Still
Alicia Quan chats with Jessica Millstone, a venture capitalist, angel investor, and co-founder and managing director of Copper Wire Ventures, an early-stage fund focused on investing in women-led technology companies, primarily in the education space.
Prior to the investing world, Jessica’s career spans deep and wide in EdTech and UX. She now brings her growing UX mindset to her current work with startups in the future of learning and work.
They cover several topics, including:
If you are interested in hiring fractional and part-time UX support for your EdTech or education company, please reach out to Alicia Quan to get connected.
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Music by Sleep Still
Alicia Quan chats with a former educator and principal, and now UX Writer at BrainPOP, Sarah Mondestin.
Sarah has served as the Editorial lead at UX of EdTech and has helped build an amazing mound of written resources to support UX practitioners in our industry. Be sure to check out the publication that she has been leading.
They talk about going from the classroom to an EdTech role and the transferrable skills and circumstances Sarah has leaned on.
They also discuss the tricky question of differences between UX Writing and Content Design. Sarah digs into her 3-Part blog series on UX Writing in EdTech and why this role is so crucial to the success of businesses.
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Music by Sleep Still
Alicia Quan chats with a Senior Product Design Manager at Coursera, Justin Morken.
They discuss how to approach moving the needle from design as a service to design as a thought partner. Justin explains in very practical ways how to shift people’s perception of what a designer does for the organization and the people it serves.
This is Part 7 and the final episode of the Design Maturity Series (2022). How do leaders build design maturity in their teams and across their EdTech company? What are the challenges and what benefits are in store? Be sure to check out our previous episodes.
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Music by Sleep Still