Technology Should Stay Out of the Way; Maybe

I am quite excited about the opportunities that exist for eLearning startups and can think of a collection of projects that I would love to see emerge. But recently I wanted to take a somewhat wider perspective and so I went looking to what various commentators and bloggers had to say about the position of startup opportunities  within the elearning sector and where overall investment might settle over the next few years. Some of the results of that investigation will continue to appear with suggestions and commentary on the Edge Challenge program’s Facebook Page but I wanted to detail some design implications for learning technology that emerged as a result of my exploration.

Ironically, the pursuit of the educational design topic emerged with a somewhat contrarian result that turned up when I was searching about applying technology in the classroom. The article discusses the frustration and failure experienced by other teachers trying to recreate Professor Michael Wesch’s focus on in-class use of technology and the related observation that the many effective and highly regarded instructors do not make technology central to method, but others do so quite successfully. This difference inspired me to wonder what elements of this observation were a fundamental attribute of applying technology and what aspects were situational. It also invites design and optimization questions about “what problem are you solving” with the technology or product.

“What problem are you solving” is a fundamental question that people in the startup community ask themselves and one that potential investors also ask. In the eLearning scenario, at some level the objective is to help learners acquire knowledge or competency. The discussion of excellent teachers in the article (and elsewhere) strongly suggests that the ideas of inspiration and wonder are critical precursors to learning, drawing a line, via engagement, through the objective and on to the actual learning outcome. Technology, then, is a delivery mechanism for strengthening either the wonder and inspiration on the one hand, or the knowledge transfer and competency practices on the other. While focussing on the situational use of technology, I was reminded that learning innovators should be taking great instructional and learning experiences and exploring the problems of delivering those experiences rather than directly trying to change how learning gets delivered (though that consequence may follow).

The idea that you should make small changes to user behavior in your product or technology design (even if you are a startup out to change the world) also has a strong lineage. This idea was popularized by Saheed Bhatia as founder at Hotmail (and documented by Jessica Livingston in Founders at Work): “… don’t try to change user behavior dramatically. If you are expecting people to dramatically change the way they do things, it’s not going to happen. Try to make it such that it’s a small change, yet an important one.”

This often seems like an explicit step in evaluating the potential of tech investments, to consider how rapidly a startup or product can grow in popularity: if it requires a dramatic change in user habits, it may be an undesirably slow opportunity.

My interim conclusion on strategy then?  “New projects will succeed where they focus on technology that adjusts a small element of a proven successful approach with nearly no user impact. The technology needs to get out of the way to be successful.”

This sounds a lot like user-centric design principles, the concept of understanding a user’s needs and designing to meet them with minimal cognitive load. This very effective approach to design fits well with the business practice of a startup or project that proposes success through making “small, important change”. But a value-neutral design is not the only way of designing a product. Effective, impactful designs can also arise occur through a process that acknowledges the influence of design decisions. This important distinction is explored effectively at the FrogDesign’s DesignMind magazine.

Educational innovation does in fact have a history of design with consequence: the history of education in the industrial revolution has been thoroughly explored and focused on the intent of the education system. But back to the contrarian result: What is the conclusion related to technology initiatives of innovators?

I think we are in the formative days of eLearning technology with many opportunities just beginning to appear. In most cases, new projects need to focus on what problem they are trying to solve and to put the technology in the background supporting that objective. Whether we are trying to create technology that is transparent or technology that “has an opinion” the best way to validate an idea is to get out there and build something.

If you are someone who wants to get out there and build something new check out our Edge Challange.

Also checkout our partner program and reach millions of users.