The Core Tool Stack
Learn in this orderThese are the tools that UX and product teams use daily. You don’t need to master them all, familiarity with the vocabulary and basic use of each is enough to speak the language confidently.
🔵 Jira, Engineering Backbone (Atlassian)
Used by: Instructure, Udemy, edX, Pearson and most EdTech product teams
Free Tier
Month 1–2
What teams use it for: Writing user stories, managing project backlogs, running sprint boards, and tracking progress. Jira is how UX and development teams coordinate work, understanding it helps you speak the language of teams your students will join.
How to learn it: Create a free Atlassian account at atlassian.com/software/jira. Set up a personal project. Practice writing 5 user stories for a feature you wish Canvas had.
Key vocabulary: Epic (big feature), Story (user-facing requirement), Task (engineering work), Bug, Sprint, Backlog, Acceptance Criteria, Velocity (story points completed per sprint).
How to learn it: Create a free Atlassian account at atlassian.com/software/jira. Set up a personal project. Practice writing 5 user stories for a feature you wish Canvas had.
Key vocabulary: Epic (big feature), Story (user-facing requirement), Task (engineering work), Bug, Sprint, Backlog, Acceptance Criteria, Velocity (story points completed per sprint).
User Story FormatAs a [user type], I want [goal] so that [reason].
Acceptance CriteriaThe specific conditions a story must meet to be marked “Done.” Defined before design begins.
SprintA fixed 2-week work cycle. Teams select stories from the backlog and commit to shipping them.
Backlog GroomingYou refine and re-prioritize stories before the next sprint planning session.
🟣 Figma, Design & Prototyping (Industry Standard)
Used by: Every serious UX and product team. Industry standard for wireframing, prototyping, and design review.
Free Plan
Month 2–3
What designers and teams use it for: Wireframing, prototyping, design review, and developer handoff. Industry standard for UX work, directly relevant to retooling your DMA curriculum around modern UX workflows.
How to learn it: Create a free account at figma.com. Search Figma Community for “EdTech” or “LMS” to find existing design files you can inspect. Free tutorials on figma.com cover the basics well.
Key vocabulary: Wireframe (low-fidelity layout sketch), Prototype (clickable mockup for testing), Frame (a screen/page in Figma), Component (reusable UI element), Dev Mode (how engineers inspect designs), FigJam (whiteboard companion for brainstorming).
How to learn it: Create a free account at figma.com. Search Figma Community for “EdTech” or “LMS” to find existing design files you can inspect. Free tutorials on figma.com cover the basics well.
Key vocabulary: Wireframe (low-fidelity layout sketch), Prototype (clickable mockup for testing), Frame (a screen/page in Figma), Component (reusable UI element), Dev Mode (how engineers inspect designs), FigJam (whiteboard companion for brainstorming).
🟠 Confluence, Docs & PRDs (Atlassian)
Used by: Teams already on Jira. Confluence = the company’s shared brain.
Free with Jira
Month 1–2
What teams use it for: Writing design briefs, project documentation, decision logs, and release notes. Confluence integrates with Jira, together they form the documentation backbone of most UX teams.
The Design Brief / PRD: The document that kicks off any UX project. Describes: the problem, the users affected, success metrics, proposed solution, and what’s out of scope. Teaching students to write these is a direct curriculum upgrade from traditional graphic design briefs.
Practice: Write a one-page PRD for “Add AI-generated study guide button to Canvas quiz results.” Use the free Confluence template. This becomes a portfolio piece.
The Design Brief / PRD: The document that kicks off any UX project. Describes: the problem, the users affected, success metrics, proposed solution, and what’s out of scope. Teaching students to write these is a direct curriculum upgrade from traditional graphic design briefs.
Practice: Write a one-page PRD for “Add AI-generated study guide button to Canvas quiz results.” Use the free Confluence template. This becomes a portfolio piece.
💬 Slack, Where Everything Else Lives
Already using this at GCC? Great. EdTech companies run on Slack channels + Loom async video.
You Know This
Note the Patterns
How PMs use Slack differently: Product channels (#product-feedback, #roadmap-updates, #sprint-14), pinned announcements, Jira/Figma integrations that auto-post when tickets move or designs update. Loom video links replace “let’s schedule a meeting”, PMs record 3-minute walkthroughs of roadmap changes and post them async.
Also worth knowing: Linear (newer, developer-loved, faster than Jira, some startups use this instead), Notion (documentation alternative to Confluence, more flexible, used at smaller companies), Monday.com (project management, sometimes used by non-engineering stakeholders alongside Jira).
Also worth knowing: Linear (newer, developer-loved, faster than Jira, some startups use this instead), Notion (documentation alternative to Confluence, more flexible, used at smaller companies), Monday.com (project management, sometimes used by non-engineering stakeholders alongside Jira).
📊 Amplitude / Mixpanel, Product Analytics
Used by: EdTech companies to understand how students and faculty actually use features.
Free Tier
Month 5–6
What teams use it for: Tracking how users move through a product, which features they use, where they drop off, which design variant performs better. UX designers increasingly need to read this data, not just hand off to analysts.
How to learn it: Sign up for the Amplitude free plan and watch their demo videos. Key metrics to know: NPS (Net Promoter Score), churn rate, and “health score”, standard KPIs for EdTech product teams.
Key metrics to know: DAU/MAU (Daily/Monthly Active Users), Retention (% still active after 30/90 days), Conversion (trial → paid), Feature Adoption Rate, Funnel Drop-off.
How to learn it: Sign up for the Amplitude free plan and watch their demo videos. Key metrics to know: NPS (Net Promoter Score), churn rate, and “health score”, standard KPIs for EdTech product teams.
Key metrics to know: DAU/MAU (Daily/Monthly Active Users), Retention (% still active after 30/90 days), Conversion (trial → paid), Feature Adoption Rate, Funnel Drop-off.
UX Terminology
The vocabulary shiftYour Don’t Make Me Think instincts are exactly right, you just need to update the vocabulary to what’s current in 2025–26 UX practice.
🎯 Jobs to Be Done (JTBD), The Biggest Framework Shift
The framework behind modern UX research, how design teams decide what to build and why.
The core idea: People don’t buy products, they “hire” them to get a job done. The job has functional, emotional, and social dimensions. The drill analogy: you don’t want a drill, you want a hole in the wall, and really you want a picture hanging in your living room.
In EdTech: An instructor doesn’t want “a better quiz tool”, they want to feel confident their students are actually learning. That reframe drives better product decisions than any feature list.
JTBD Statement format: “When I [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [expected outcome].”
vs. User Story: JTBD is used early in discovery to understand why. User Stories are used in delivery to specify what to build. Teaching students both frameworks gives them vocabulary for UX roles.
In EdTech: An instructor doesn’t want “a better quiz tool”, they want to feel confident their students are actually learning. That reframe drives better product decisions than any feature list.
JTBD Statement format: “When I [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [expected outcome].”
vs. User Story: JTBD is used early in discovery to understand why. User Stories are used in delivery to specify what to build. Teaching students both frameworks gives them vocabulary for UX roles.
DiscoveryFiguring out what to design. User research, prototyping, JTBD interviews. UX researchers and designers lead this phase.
DeliveryBuilding it. Sprint planning, Jira tickets, engineering. Designers stay involved through handoff and QA.
Opportunity Solution TreeTeresa Torres’s framework: outcome → opportunities → solutions → experiments. See Continuous Discovery Habits.
Empathy MapDocuments what a user thinks, feels, says, and does. Used to build user understanding before writing JTBD statements.
🔬 UX Research Methods, The Current Vocabulary
Refresh from Don’t Make Me Think-era language to current 2025 UX practice
Usability TestingSame as always, watching real users attempt tasks. In 2025: done in Figma prototypes via UserTesting or Maze before a line of code is written.
Contextual InquiryObserving users in their natural environment. For EdTech: sitting with a faculty member as they grade, not asking them what they want.
User Journey MapVisual document showing every step a user takes to accomplish a goal, including emotions and pain points at each stage. PMs build these in Miro.
Persona → JTBD PersonaTraditional personas (demographics) are being replaced by JTBD personas that focus on the job being done, not who the person is.
A/B TestingRunning two versions of a feature simultaneously to see which performs better. Measured in Amplitude. Standard practice across EdTech and SaaS products.
Miro / FigJamDigital whiteboards for user journey mapping, design sprints, and retrospectives. Miro is the default at most EdTech companies.
Design SprintA 5-day structured process (Google Ventures method) to go from problem to tested prototype. Phases: Map, Sketch, Decide, Prototype, Test.
LoomAsync video tool. PMs record 3-min walkthroughs of roadmap updates instead of scheduling meetings. Standard at distributed EdTech teams.
♻️ Scrum Ceremonies, What You Actually Do Each Week
Your Scrum PO cert covers the theory, here’s the lived reality at EdTech companies
Monday (Sprint Planning): You and the team select user stories from the backlog for the next 2-week sprint. You’ve prioritized these, the team estimates effort in story points.
Tuesday–Thursday (Standup + Writing): 15-min daily standup. Then you write new user stories, review Figma designs, answer engineering questions on Slack, review data in Amplitude.
End of Sprint (Review + Retro): Sprint Review, demo what shipped to stakeholders. Retrospective, what went well, what didn’t, what to change. Then you groom the backlog for next sprint.
Your edge: You’ve been running structured faculty development as a “product” for years. Sprint planning = course design. Backlog grooming = curriculum revision. Stakeholder management = faculty + administrators. The language is different; the work is the same.
Tuesday–Thursday (Standup + Writing): 15-min daily standup. Then you write new user stories, review Figma designs, answer engineering questions on Slack, review data in Amplitude.
End of Sprint (Review + Retro): Sprint Review, demo what shipped to stakeholders. Retrospective, what went well, what didn’t, what to change. Then you groom the backlog for next sprint.
Your edge: You’ve been running structured faculty development as a “product” for years. Sprint planning = course design. Backlog grooming = curriculum revision. Stakeholder management = faculty + administrators. The language is different; the work is the same.
Practice Projects
Build your portfolioThese are hands-on exercises that produce real portfolio artifacts. Do them in order, each builds on the last.
Month 1–2 · Jira Practice
Create a Free Jira Project, Write 5 User Stories for a Canvas Feature
Sign up at atlassian.com (free). Create a project called “Canvas AI Enhancement.” Write 5 user stories for a feature you wish existed, e.g., “AI-generated feedback on student submissions.” Include acceptance criteria on each. Screenshot the board. This is your first portfolio piece.
Month 2–3 · Confluence/Notion Practice
Write a One-Page PRD, “AI Study Guide Button in Canvas”
Use the free Confluence template or Notion. Structure: Problem Statement, User Persona (JTBD format), Success Metrics, Proposed Solution, Out of Scope. This is the most important artifact a PM produces. When done, share the link in your LinkedIn profile bio.
Month 3–4 · Figma Practice
Create a Free Figma Account, Annotate an Existing Canvas Screenshot
Take a screenshot of Canvas’s quiz results page. Import it into Figma as a frame. Use annotation tools to mark 3 UX problems you’d fix and describe the JTBD behind each. This shows PM-style design thinking without requiring design skills. Save and export as PDF.
Month 4–5 · UX Research Practice
Conduct One JTBD Interview with a GCC Faculty Colleague
Pick a colleague who uses Canvas daily. Ask: “Walk me through the last time you felt frustrated grading student work.” Then ask “why” five times. Write up the JTBD statement you derive. This is real PM research, and it’s your CoP proposal proof-of-concept showing you can listen before you build.
Month 5–6 · Analytics Practice
Sign Up for Amplitude Free, Explore Their Demo Product Analytics
Amplitude has a free plan with demo data. Explore the “Funnel Analysis” and “Retention” charts. Practice the vocabulary: DAU, MAU, churn, cohort analysis. Write a 1-paragraph “data story” describing what you see, this is what PMs do before every roadmap meeting.