Link Education League

Evidence-Led Product Strategy for a student portfolio app

UX Research | Accessibility Standards | Cognitive Load Reduction | Product Strategy

Overview

We partnered with Link Education League to ground an early iPad learning product in real classroom behavior. Through research with educators and leadership, we clarified feasibility constraints, reduced cognitive load, and shaped a product foundation aligned with how students and teachers actually work.

Context

Link Education League set out to replace a patchwork of Google Slides templates with an iPad app designed to help students ages 6 to 14 capture classroom work. While the vision was strong, the team needed clarity around real classroom rhythms, cognitive demands, and how much complexity teachers and students could realistically support.

We partnered directly with leadership to validate assumptions, align the product with classroom realities, and establish a research-backed direction before deeper development.

Outcome: clearer task structure, reduced cognitive load, and a research-backed foundation ready for confident design and development.

Research focus

Our research focused on:

  • Understanding real classroom rhythms, including shared devices, short time blocks, and frequent interruptions
  • Identifying cognitive and accessibility needs across younger and neurodiverse learners
  • Clarifying how much structure students required to stay oriented and confident
  • Determining where teachers needed support versus where tools became overhead
  • Defining which constraints should shape MVP scope to ensure realistic classroom adoption

What we delivered

We supported the product from strategy through early design shaping, including:

  • Interviews with educators and organizational leadership
  • Classroom context research across usage patterns, device sharing, and environmental constraints
  • A synthesized framework for cognitive, accessibility, and developmental requirements
  • Strategic recommendations for flow structure, task sequencing, and feature scope
  • Ongoing design guidance to the in-house team throughout prototyping

This ensured the product was not only polished, but grounded in real educational environments.

Impact

The research and strategy work gave Link Education League a clear, evidence-based foundation for product decisions. Design direction became more focused, accessible, and realistic, with stronger alignment between classroom constraints and product intent.

As a result, the team moved forward with clearer guardrails, reduced cognitive overhead for students, and a product direction educators described as intuitive, calm, and attuned to classroom realities. Grounding the work in real behavior strengthened long-term viability and ensured the product could genuinely support diverse learners.