Sup!

Home

About Me

Notes

Speaking

Consultation

Resume

Let's talk 👋

Sup!

Sup!

Back to Notes

UX Research • 3 min

A Day on Campus: Watching Students Use Our Learning Screens

var(--variable-voqs_qf8I)

In product design, there is one habit that quietly spoils good work: designing for a student you have never actually sat next to. Our Figma files look clean. Our dashboards look healthy. But a dashboard cannot tell you that a student squinted at a cheat sheet, or gave up on a coding question after the second error.

So after releasing a few features, our Content and Learning Outcomes pod did the old-fashioned thing. We went to college. For one full day, we sat with students at Chaitanya Deemed University in Hyderabad, one of our NIAT partner universities, and watched them use our learning screens.

This is a short note on why we went, how we ran the day, and what we carried back to the team.

What our pod designs

At NxtWave, I lead design for the Content and Learning Outcomes pod. We run many products: NIAT (a four-year degree with partner universities), Academy, Intensive courses and Launchpad. Each has its own learning portal.

Inside those portals, the screens where students spend most of their time belong to our pod: coding practice, MCQs, cheat sheets, exams and assessments. These are not side features. They are the classroom. If a student struggles here, no onboarding or marketing can save the day.

One day, one laptop, many eyes

var(--variable-jDTa0fLA8)

We kept the setup simple. No lab, no formal interview room. Students sat in their own classroom, and we opened the home page, coding practice, MCQs and the other learning screens. The only ask: use it like you normally do, and speak your thoughts out loud.

Look at the photo. Five students around one laptop, some sitting, some standing, all leaning in. That is how learning really happens in our colleges: shared screens, shared doubts, shared confidence. It reminded us that a screen is rarely used in complete silence by one person.

One day, one laptop, many eyes

var(--variable-jDTa0fLA8)

We kept the setup simple. No lab, no formal interview room. Students sat in their own classroom, and we opened the home page, coding practice, MCQs and the other learning screens. The only ask: use it like you normally do, and speak your thoughts out loud.

Look at the photo. Five students around one laptop, some sitting, some standing, all leaning in. That is how learning really happens in our colleges: shared screens, shared doubts, shared confidence. It reminded us that a screen is rarely used in complete silence by one person.

What we were really looking for

var(--variable-jDTa0fLA8)

Students are polite. Ask "how is it?" and you will hear "good sir, good madam." So we stopped asking for opinions and started watching behaviour: where the eyes go first, where the cursor hesitates, what gets skipped, what makes someone say "wait, where is it?"

We looked through four lenses. Clarity: does the student know what to do in the first five seconds? Effort: how many taps to reach practice, a cheat sheet, or the last question they attempted? Confidence: after a wrong answer, do they feel guided or judged? Reality: slow networks, smaller laptop screens, shared devices.

What we were really looking for

var(--variable-jDTa0fLA8)

Students are polite. Ask "how is it?" and you will hear "good sir, good madam." So we stopped asking for opinions and started watching behaviour: where the eyes go first, where the cursor hesitates, what gets skipped, what makes someone say "wait, where is it?"

We looked through four lenses. Clarity: does the student know what to do in the first five seconds? Effort: how many taps to reach practice, a cheat sheet, or the last question they attempted? Confidence: after a wrong answer, do they feel guided or judged? Reality: slow networks, smaller laptop screens, shared devices.

Good things count as much as bad things

We noted down what worked with the same seriousness as what did not. If you only collect complaints, you end up "fixing" the exact things students were quietly relying on.

Every observation went into one of three buckets: keep (it works, do not touch), fix (it confuses or slows the student) and explore (an idea we had never thought of). That one habit kept our next design round honest.

What we carried back

var(--variable-jDTa0fLA8)

At the end of the day we took a photo at the entrance, a little tired, notebooks full. Three lessons came back with us:

Go to the learner's place, not yours. A student behaves differently in their own classroom than in a call with us.

Watch more, ask less. Behaviour is the honest answer. Opinions are the polite one.

Share it raw. Photos, small clips and exact student words travel to the content and engineering teams faster than any polished deck.

Dashboards tell us what is happening. Sitting in the classroom tells us why. We plan to do this again, at more colleges, more often.

What we carried back

var(--variable-jDTa0fLA8)

At the end of the day we took a photo at the entrance, a little tired, notebooks full. Three lessons came back with us:

Go to the learner's place, not yours. A student behaves differently in their own classroom than in a call with us.

Watch more, ask less. Behaviour is the honest answer. Opinions are the polite one.

Share it raw. Photos, small clips and exact student words travel to the content and engineering teams faster than any polished deck.

Dashboards tell us what is happening. Sitting in the classroom tells us why. We plan to do this again, at more colleges, more often.

‹ Previous note

Want to work together?

Feel free to reach out for collaborations, inquiries, or just to say hello.

Let's Connect! →

Let's Connect! →

Let’s Be Friends

Feel Free to Hit Me Up!

I always enjoyed product discussions and If you’re a startup founder or PM/Growth person and interested to chat! Hit me up on any social media platforms.

LinkedIn

Work Experience

Medium

Articles & Case Studies

X (Twitter)

Random Thoughts

Dribbble

Design Experiments

Instagram

What I'm Upto

Email

guruprakash43@gmail.com

Crafted with ❤️ on Framer, All Rights Reserved © 2026 Guruprakash.