Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Melanie Lindahl: Now I'm gonna go shove in chocolate chips to this cookie. It's probably
gonna break. It's gonna crumble. Meanwhile, you and your soccer team over here standing with
no cookies to eat or they kind of taste gross and they're all like crumbly and falling apart.
Would you ask me to do that again? No. You just lost trust. Is a user going to go and buy your
product again when they can't use it very well?
[00:00:26] Jeff Dillon: Welcome to another episode of the EdTech Connect podcast.
I met today's guest at a recent conference. She's a frequent presenter at conferences where she
talks about user experience strategies and her sessions fill up. Melanie Lindahl is a Senior User
Experience Designer at the University of Texas at Austin where she blends creative vision with
practical strategy to make digital experiences more intuitive, inclusive and effective.
With a Master's degree in Web Design and Development from the University of Denver and a
Bachelor of Fine Arts from Texas Tech University, Melanie brings both artistic sensibility and
technical expertise to her work. She recently captured national attention at the hihead Web
Annual Conference in Albuquerque where her presentation on budget friendly UX strategies for
higher education earned the prestigious REZ Stapler Award for Best in Track and Best in
Conference. Known for her engaging hands on approach, Melanie demonstrates how even
institutions with limited budgets can deliver high impact user centered design.
Melanie's passion for demystifying UX and empowering teams to start small but start now has
inspired educators and designers across the country.
Well, welcome to the show, Melanie. It's great to have you today.
[00:01:51] Melanie Lindahl: Thanks. I'm here.
[00:01:54] Jeff Dillon: Well, I want to start off by asking you a question. Before you dive into the
UX strategy, tell me one quirky or unexpected thing about you that your colleagues at UT Austin
might not know.
[00:02:06] Melanie Lindahl: Actually, this is kind of funny because I feel like I'm enough of an open
book to may not be a whole lot, but some of my colleagues will know like I have triplets and
that's not necessarily not known. But what they may not know is that I used to do a little comic
strip about them. So I've been logging the funny things that they say since they could talk and I
started doing like a little comic strip about it and it's like real crude and quick and that was kind of
the idea, you know, it was during the pandemic and it's fallen off now. But yeah, you could go
look at my Instagram and scroll back in history and see all the silly things that they used to say.
[00:02:46] Jeff Dillon: I love that I'll have to get your instagram I want to check that out. I used to
love comics. When I was really little, I tried to make out my own comics. So that's really
awesome. You've had a pretty fascinating path from fine arts to UX design. How has that
creative foundation shaped the way you approach user experience?
[00:03:06] Melanie Lindahl: You know, the interesting thing is it's almost the opposite. So when I
create art, I create art for myself, right? Unless I'm commissioned. But with UX work, it's the
exact opposite. I actually have to remove myself from that experience and only focus on building
things for other people. So my brain actually has to switch back and forth quite a bit between
doing work for me and doing work for other people.
So it's almost. It almost hasn't shaped it in a way because it's actually the opposite of what it is.
[00:03:37] Jeff Dillon: That's interesting. You just made me remember a guest I had on a couple
months ago. Her name is Tracy Halverson. She's the CEO of Adeia, an agency. And she's. She's
an artist. And that's exactly what she said. I'm an artist for me. And the rest kind of comes out of
that. So that's. I get that. What first drew you into higher ed? User experience. And why have
you stayed in that. That lane?
[00:04:01] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah, Higher ed, it's a unique space, right? It's an interesting space. So I
was already working in higher ed when I got my master's degree, and that master's program
focused on users. And this was actually quite a long time ago. It was kind of a newer approach
to teaching, you know, web development and computer science and those sorts of things. And
so it was easy to get into higher ed because I was already here. And then my first job that I had
sort of doing this work here, I made a comment, I think it was my first week I made a comment
that something wasn't user friendly.
And they said, we don't care. And it was like this Bon Jovi moment where I was like, shut
through the heart. Oh, my gosh. And I started looking around and I was realizing, oh, UX work
isn't really being done in higher ed very much. Okay, how can I change that?
And I'm still trying to change that. That's why I do these presentations, so that anyone will feel
empowered to do this kind of work. Even small amounts of it can add up into something bigger.
You know, they can do it at any time during a project.
[00:05:04] Jeff Dillon: I get that. You made me think of something else, too. I've always felt like
I'm a kind of a jack of all trades, but a master of none. And I've dabbled in web design and
programming and I like graphic design. And recently I started using some of these tools, like
Lovable.
Lovable is one of those vibe coding platforms where you can just kind of prompt something to be
built and even Claude. So I'm starting to use these AI tools a little bit for ux. Have you used any
of these tools, like to prototype anything?
[00:05:36] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah, well, prototyping.
So I love this question because everyone is trying to figure this out, right? And I'll. Okay, so I'll
tell you what I currently do and then maybe what I hope to do in the future. So currently I use AI
mainly to help me ideate. Like, I feel like it's pretty strong in that area, you know, I actually took a
course from the Nielsen Norman Group this year, so specifically about AI in ux and very relevant
for me, it was a wonderful course.
So I can give AI prompts in a certain way, ask it to give me multitudes of answers and ideas
back.
So I do like it. For the ideation on our last project I had, it helped me summarize our user testing
findings into kind of actionable items and sort of like a report structure as kind of that first draft.
And in the near future I'm hoping to spin up my own instance of ChatGPT or some equivalent for
a specific Persona that I can bounce ideas off of. But honestly, I need to test that quite a bit
because I'm a bit wary of that path. I worry that the feedback an AI generated Persona will give
me is a little recursive or a little too like being a sycophant, you know, a little too, like, eager to
please. But we'll see. I'd have to test it and mainly I feel like I just want to be faster so I can get
more work done. But for the prototyping, I've had no good luck with it. Designing anything good?
Yeah, not yet, but the designing is the fun part. Like I want to do that AI, go do my reports for
me, all that stuff. Like, I don't want to go do that.
[00:07:11] Jeff Dillon: Well, you're getting into something where. Here's how I feel. I feel like
there's a spectrum, right? There's hardcore programming over here and there's creative over
here and there's a spectrum. And I feel like UX is kind of in the middle.
[00:07:22] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah.
[00:07:22] Jeff Dillon: And what I'm excited about, like, for you, is that I think your job is secure
for a long Time.
[00:07:27] Melanie Lindahl: Oh good.
[00:07:27] Jeff Dillon: Because like when I use these tools I'm like, I have this idea, it kind of
does pretty well, but I need the final mile. I need to give this to you and then you can be like, oh
yeah, I get your idea, I can make that better. Yeah, like I feel like it's not even close to being a
final product when using these. So yeah, programming wise, like we're not going to need as
many junior level programmers, but I think the UX people are here for a while because you need
to take this output and adjust these little. Because UX is a bunch of little things. Right? It's hard
to.
[00:07:57] Melanie Lindahl: Well, it's human centered design and that can be a little harder for AI to
quite grasp all those idiosyncrasies and little tiny micro interactions that you need a user to do,
you know?
[00:08:07] Jeff Dillon: Right, right. Well, let's get into like what you are becoming famous for as
these talks all over the country where you're talking about user experience on a budget. I mean
this is great for higher ed, you know, like I said in your intro, Melanie is presenting at
conferences and winning awards largely because no one's doing what she's doing. These aren't
common topics. I think at conferences it's a lot of this. Like I jumped into AI pretty early in this
podcast here. But tell me about, like you've said, higher ed budgets for UX are often, you know,
small or non existent. How do you make a compelling case to leadership for user experience
investment?
[00:08:46] Melanie Lindahl: Well, the term investment implies money and that scares a lot of people. It
doesn't go over very well. So I look at UX on how can we help achieve business goals for the
university?
Are we low on enrollment? Are we not attracting the caliber of students we want? Are we
spending too much staff time fielding admission calls because the website sucks? Like whatever
it is, UX can help with those pain points. Like it's here for that through thoughtful research and
identifying issues, requirements, solutions. Like it's here for all of it. So let's just get on board and
take off into outer space so we can make the better product.
[00:09:26] Jeff Dillon: Can you walk us through the budget friendly UX strategies you presented
and at these recent conferences, especially the one where you won the Red Stapler award.
[00:09:36] Melanie Lindahl: So that was a fun event. Hyad Web, which is now called Digicol, is full of
really wonderful people who are so into a dialogue with each other and I love it there. So I told
the folks at the talk, here's the UX activities that are the biggest Bang for your buck. This is what
you could be doing now. They don't take much time, effort, no money. If you don't have it, like,
you know, it really can be as boiled down as just chatting with your users. What a great idea. I
didn't come up with that. I'm just telling people to go do it. Sending people surveys, interviewing
them, doing light testing throughout your design phase.
So kind of the main takeaway was it's cheaper to do UX now versus shoving it in after you
launch and it doesn't have to take much of your time. So let's just start doing more of it because
not enough is being done in higher ed.
[00:10:27] Jeff Dillon: Before I forget, let's give Digital Collegium a plug. Both knowing and I will
be there. She'll be presenting, right? You'll be presenting there.
I'll be doing a different topic, but it's in Grand Rapids, Michigan this year. It's the end of
September, so everybody go check it out. It's probably one of the best, you know, high
conferences out there.
[00:10:44] Melanie Lindahl: I agree.
[00:10:45] Jeff Dillon: So, yeah, do it often. Do it early.
You know what I used to do? Tell me if you do any of this. Like when I was at Sacramento State,
I was a web director there. I was, I started this. We call it the Student Technology Advisor Group.
I'd try to bring in eight students. The trick is getting students to show up. I realized all we needed
was pizza. Yeah, just flip the pizza.
[00:11:02] Melanie Lindahl: It's huge. Yeah, yeah.
[00:11:04] Jeff Dillon: And so show up. It would be more of a focus group.
[00:11:06] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah.
[00:11:07] Jeff Dillon: We did some testing too. The UX testing we did. We just asked them to
find some things, do these things.
And there was huge insights there. That's where we learned like they go to the search bar.
They're not even looking on our page.
[00:11:19] Melanie Lindahl: That's going to be in my talk. I'm calling it the Spicy Click. It's like, why are
they doing that?
[00:11:24] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was really eye opening to just one strategy you
probably talk about is like, just get some students to like talk to you one on one, right?
[00:11:31] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah.
[00:11:32] Jeff Dillon: Can you tell me about like, what's your go to tool set? Like there's so
many tools out there, I get a little overwhelmed. Like I don't even know what to try anymore
these days because there's so many out there.
[00:11:42] Melanie Lindahl: My tool set is my brain. I mean, it's really.
I don't use anything expensive. I've never used eye tracking software. I've never felt like I have a
need for it.
I do my Kind of stuff through that hands on, you know, user approach, talking with them a lot,
user interviews.
I'll just set up a table in the building with some donuts. Kind of known for the. As the donut
person. Person who gives everyone donuts. And we'll just talk and we'll go through pain points.
We send out surveys.
Those top task surveys I talk about a lot because they are huge gold mines for your project and
they cost so little employee time and no money. Right. Like this is things that everyone can be
doing. So when it comes to tooling, it's literally just me figuring out what I need to do and going
and doing it. I use Excel for my notes. Like I can't have AI take my notes for me because it
doesn't know when they missed that thing I need them to test. Or they went and did some spicy
clicks over here and I'm like, what was that? I need a human to take those notes. So I don't have
tools. Like I probably should. Right. Well, I've had plenty of success without tools, but.
[00:12:53] Jeff Dillon: Well, that's refreshing to know like there's no pressure to. There's not a
tool everybody's using or needs to use. If you want to use tools, great.
[00:13:00] Melanie Lindahl: But I mean, I do use Figma for prototyping. We do pay for that. I was
using XD for a long time because it already came with the suite, but it wasn't quite cutting it for
me. So we hopped into Figma and we're definitely more happy with that. But you can get by
without that, you know.
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[00:13:45] Jeff Dillon: Well, let's go back to AI. You know, we talked a little bit about, I told you
how I was using AI and it's directly related to ux. Have you done anything like using AI with
Personas or how do you see AI fitting into more of the UX research and design in the coming
years, especially in higher ed?
[00:14:01] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah. So like I said, I do want to spin up an instance for Personas so I can
start testing to see if it's going to work or not? Because I'm a little dubious. I know some people
have started doing that.
I'm a little bit more of the Gen X. Hey, I'm less likely to adopt new tech until it's proven its worth
because we've been through Quite a lot of tech changes in the Gen X times, but yeah. So I'm
hoping that in the future it will be because I already use it for ideation. So I'm pretty set there.
Although it could always, I'm sure, be better in some way. But the note taking would be so nice
because then I wouldn't have to go bother my coworkers to come and take notes for me during
all these testing sessions. That would be super nice, but I just don't know if it's going to get there
anytime soon. Like, I don't know you.
[00:14:52] Jeff Dillon: We are in the same boat. I think you're on. I think you're right. I think it's a
Gen X thing because I'm a Gen X too. And I like, I have all the not takers set up and they all do
all their, you know, every system I'm is doing, but I never go back to them. I still use my little
notepad here.
So it's like, yeah, we know it's there. But I'm like, you know what's funny is I'm not even a big
app guy. Everything, my kids, Cub Scouts, the soccer team, all this has an app for this and that.
I'm the worst one about downloading and getting the app.
[00:15:20] Melanie Lindahl: It's a commitment. It's a commitment to download an app and give them
my. I go and look at the. What content do you have? Are you keeping about me? Right. Like, if
it's a long list. No, sorry.
[00:15:31] Jeff Dillon: Well, I just can't even filter through. I feel almost embarrassed that I start
talking about this. But even like the soccer team people are telling me, did you get that
message? Did you get my email? I'm like, I can't. My personal email box is kind of a mess right
now. I'm waiting for someone to scream at me that you missed something. I'm like, oh, okay.
[00:15:46] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah, like bubble up, right?
[00:15:48] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, yeah, Little. Little sidetracked. But yeah, some similarities there. I
feel you, Melanie.
[00:15:54] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah. I think a lot of us are in the same boat with AI and it's. It's some kind
of weird race, but we don't know where the finish line is.
[00:16:00] Jeff Dillon: So I love that. That might be my sound bite for this.
[00:16:04] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah, there you go.
[00:16:06] Jeff Dillon: What are some myths about user experience, especially in higher ed, that
you love to bust?
[00:16:11] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah. There's one in particular that I think people who are trying, they're
not me, they're not a UX designer. They're just somebody who wants to do good. They want to
do Right. By their users and they're trying to get that permission or whatever. The myth that it
takes longer and it's more expensive to do ux, it's totally the opposite. There's so many things I
could say, but it actually costs more.
[00:16:34] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, we don't have time for that. Is not. Is not the right answer, right?
[00:16:37] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah, yeah, it costs more. It'd be like, okay, Jeff, if you were like, melanie,
I. You bake. I don't bake cookies, but let's pretend like I bake cookies. And you said, I need a
dozen chocolate chip cookies for some party, my soccer game, whatever. Okay. And then I
baked them and I let them cool. And then I realized, oh, Jeff needed chocolate chip cookies. I
didn't do that. Maybe I didn't ask you what you needed. Now I'm going to go shove in chocolate
chips to this cookie. It's probably going to break. It's going to crumble. Meanwhile, you and your
soccer team over here standing with no cookies to eat, or they kind of taste gross and they're all
like crumbly and falling apart.
Would you ask me to do that again? No. You just lost trust. Is a user going to go and buy your
product again when they can't use it very well? No. It's not in your best interest.
So doing UX throughout the project ensures that the user's needs are met, ensures the trust is
provided.
[00:17:32] Jeff Dillon: Right, Right. It makes so much sense now that we talk back and look
back and even to anyone out there would probably say, oh, yeah, yeah. But when it comes down
to it, when leadership comes to you and says, this has to be done in two months, you look at
your project timeline. The first thing that's going to get cut, cut, cut, cut is the front end work, like
every time almost. So I totally hear you. It makes so much sense. And we, you know, one thing I
would recommend and tell me if what you think about this, this helps you down the road too.
When you go back and you have this room of baby boomers that are trying to make a decision
on what Gen Z wants and they think they want this and this and this. And you have, look, I have
data here. You're wrong.
[00:18:08] Melanie Lindahl: UX does not do well with assumptions. Right, Right.
[00:18:11] Jeff Dillon: So you got to do it for that too, because you know you're going to fight the
consensus. Like when we dumb down at the end of the very lows coming to Domrator, when 20
people that are in leadership want to get what they want, but you have the data saying our
students Want this?
[00:18:23] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah.
[00:18:24] Jeff Dillon: Maybe that'll help you justify it in the beginning.
[00:18:26] Melanie Lindahl: Well, and also, like a normal project, life cycle includes iterative feedback
from your users. So why would I ask permission to do a project the correct way? Is it a budget
thing? Well, there's plenty of things we can do with little time and little money, so that doesn't
hold water. Yeah.
[00:18:43] Jeff Dillon: Well, I think a big part of it is, like, in any job, I guess. Like, I think why I
first really wanted to get you on this podcast is because when people are in their job for a while,
they build this confidence. Some people have confidence, built, confidence built into their
personality. But once you've been in a job for a while, you love your job. You're the one that
people are going to start looking to. You probably have a little more sway in your role than other
people in theirs because you like, I know how I'm going to do. I'm going to. It's not going to be
like an ass. It's going to be like, this is how we're going to do it.
[00:19:12] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah.
[00:19:13] Jeff Dillon: So when you're new to your role, it's kind of hard to do, but I think try to
have that confidence Melanie has going in saying, this is just the way we have to do it.
[00:19:20] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah. Don't ask for permission, like, why it's the better thing to do. Just
work it into your project and that's the way you should have done.
[00:19:27] Jeff Dillon: Let someone else cut out the project. Like, you're really going to have to
fight me on this one because we need it. We need it bad. Please be that in higher ed, it's so
easy to sit back and just, yeah, yeah, we can do that. And I realized late in my career, I was kind
of like, oh, yeah, you really. Is this a battle I want to fight or not?
[00:19:42] Melanie Lindahl: So, you know, I'm pretty feisty. I'll fight most of the time.
People can hit me up on LinkedIn. We'll come up with some dialogue.
[00:19:51] Jeff Dillon: What about institutions that don't have a dedicated UX person on staff?
What are the first small steps they can take to integrate it into their work?
[00:20:02] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah, most people don't have me on their team. But the good news is,
again, there's lots of UX things that you can do in your projects. And the best small step, I mean,
I don't know if it sounds corny. It's just do something. It's better than nothing. Just go talk to
users about your pain points, about their pain points. Like, you could do that. Just start asking
Questions get the dialogue rolling with your users. Because seriously, when you start doing that,
you do not stop. Like it's like a Pringles pop can. Like you don't stop, it just keeps feeding. And
then your leadership starts seeing the results of that really juicy feedback and then it just kind of
continues to grow like a snowball.
[00:20:42] Jeff Dillon: Is UT Austin set up where you're really siloed and there's departments
everywhere and like other areas, divisions might have their own, maybe not UX person, but their
own web team that kind of does their own thing.
[00:20:54] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah, there are services, like overarching services.
I believe they're paid for, you know, in certain ways. So. So if you don't have a dedicated person
or you know, they've set up a Drupal kit so people can do kind of the basic stuff. But our team at
the law school is very lean. But we're very effective. Cause the law school, a lot of law schools
have to build and maintain their own tools. Cause we don't fit into main campus, even like a
course schedule. We don't even fit into the course schedule. Cause our, our times are wacky.
But yeah, so we have, we have to have this really robust team. But we're super small for what
we do. Like we're very mighty, but we're very small and lean. But for people starting out, just get
the ball rolling. Right. Try one little thing and then do the next thing and just kind of keep working
on those little steps.
[00:21:41] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, it's something that's often left out. You just got to do it.
[00:21:44] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah.
[00:21:45] Jeff Dillon: I have one for you here that I kind of am really interested in. Do you have
any time where you thought of you've had a small UX change that had a surprisingly big impact
on a student or staff experience?
[00:22:00] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah. This is interesting because the work that I do for the law school is
mostly project based. So it's like a whole project would have had an impact and reflecting.
There's lots of wins. We have lots of wins all the time because of the work that I do. And it's
wonderful and the students love it and the staff love it. Faculty are kind of, you know, always sort
of never pleased, so you never really know about them. But we built a student dashboard years
ago where law students can do pretty much everything they really need to do from there. And we
have a list of important dates in this kind of side panel mainly so they don't have to go look stuff
up all the time. Like when is the last day to drop a class, you know, and we had the final exam
week listed. This is a very small thing. We had the final exam week. It's like a week, right? So
we decided to change it. We have the students data, we know when their final exams are
because we know the registration.
So we ended up changing it out and swapping the final exam week for their specific final exam
dates. So in that important dates list now, it says, your business, law, whatever, class, here's
your exam date for that. Here's your exam date for that. So it's more meaningful to them. And
the students were really happy to have that change because again, it was one less thing they
had to go look up. So that's just like a tiny thing, like a tiny little nugget that students end up or
anybody, you know, benefits from that UX that you do because you realize like, oh, oh yeah, we
can just do this one thing. And it's actually kind of a bigger impact because it saves people time
or mental load.
[00:23:36] Jeff Dillon: And I can't remember if you were in. You and I sat in some of the same
sessions at Edu Webb a couple months ago. One of them was revealing some research and
what came out was that a lot of research on personalization and that how you don't have to
personalize as much as you think.
[00:23:52] Melanie Lindahl: Yes, I was in that one.
[00:23:53] Jeff Dillon: Were you in that one? I was like, yes. Thank you. Do you. How do you
look at personalization with UX in general?
[00:24:00] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah, there's a balance. And I, I'll be honest, I haven't figured it out yet.
So we have tons of student data. Right. And the things that we build, the tools that we build for
them, we try to make sure they have to do the least amount of work. So a lot of times it's. It is,
you know, personalized. Like the course schedule. Of course. Course it's personalized. Let's
display that instead of something else or, hey, we already know what textbooks you need for this
class. Can we just go ahead and put that on there for you? So it's more about helping. So for, for
people who are already in the system, it makes sense. For people who are outside the system,
like a prospective student or parent or a donor or whoever it is, I guess a donor is not really
outside the system, but it was at the session that talked about the creep factor. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. I like that a lot because it is, it's so true. You're like, well, you don't want to come across as
like breathing over people's necks in some weird way. So we haven't figured that out yet. We
had a website redesign a couple of years ago, and that was something we talked about, was, is
there any personalization we could do? We ultimately decided, well, we don't have enough time
because our launch date got accelerated. But also, I'm not sure we're ready for that because
we're not sure how to do it effectively. Effectively. Like, what goals? I always go back to goals.
What goals do we have? What needs do we have as a university that requires us to do that? Are
we just gathering big data to have big data? Like, what are we doing here? So I'd like to know
what we're doing so that we can effectively give the user the experience they need. Right.
[00:25:28] Jeff Dillon: It always goes back to the why. Yeah, I feel like with personalization, it
shouldn't. You shouldn't feel like personalization. Like, you look at Netflix or Amazon, you know,
it doesn't feel like anything. Feels like, wow, there's no idea. Like, maybe your first name's up
there. But to tell people what you know about them is not the idea. It's more like, yeah, yeah, use
it to serve up what they need in that moment. Like, why are we doing this? What is this page
for?
[00:25:52] Melanie Lindahl: What they need. But also it marries with what we need them to do. Right.
So, yeah, right.
[00:25:57] Jeff Dillon: We have to guide them. It's really hard. I talk about why it's so hard in
higher ed for so many reasons. Like, right, we're in this really complex digital ecosystem
because of all the silos we have. We have core digital governance in general because we have
hundreds of people publishing content, which is not normal compared to other private sectors.
And then we have all these Personas, like all these. Like, whether they're students and all the
different flavors of the students, or we have donors, community members, faculty,
administrators. They can go on and on. So it's just. I think it's the most complicated, really
vertical I've ever worked in.
[00:26:30] Melanie Lindahl: And I. Yeah, because you're not selling one product. You're selling.
You're selling a lot of products for people. It could be a degree, it could be a plaque on a wall.
Like, it could be all kinds of things.
[00:26:40] Jeff Dillon: And we have less money. Right.
[00:26:42] Melanie Lindahl: And we have no money to do it.
[00:26:44] Jeff Dillon: Yeah, we have less money. And so now we're compared to a Netflix,
which has one goal, to get you to watch a show. And everyone has the same goal. It's
completely. Of all the money, it's completely different.
[00:26:54] Melanie Lindahl: Yeah. It's not like if we were Apple, we still. It's technology products, right
there's your product. But no, we have so many products that we're trying to give people people
or have them work with us and it is very hard. I haven't really thought about that a whole lot. I'm
going to think about that some more.
[00:27:12] Jeff Dillon: Well, I want to ask you one more question and it's kind of the same thing
I've been asking in a different way here. But if you could give one piece of advice to any higher
ed team wanting to improve their website or digital experience tomorrow, what would it be?
[00:27:24] Melanie Lindahl: I think talking to your users about their pain points and I mean diving in
there, understanding them.
That's where a lot of your solutions are going to start coming from and that's where you'll be able
to alleviate those pain points and have their experience become less painful and more
meaningful. That's definitely something that our team is always trying to do is like, where's the
problem and how can we fix it? So if you can just start talking to your users about pain points
that they experience and it doesn't have to be in the digital space, right? It could be literally, oh,
the sidewalk is non existent over here and I have to walk over, you know, whatever it is. But just
start talking to people about their pain points. That's a great starting place.
[00:28:05] Jeff Dillon: Great advice. Love it. It's often overlooked. So yeah, don't skip your UX
everybody. I'm going to put links to Melanie's bio and UT Austin's website in the show notes. And
Melanie, it was great having you on.
[00:28:21] Melanie Lindahl: Thank you Jeff. I loved it. I love talking about all of it so much.
[00:28:24] Jeff Dillon: Well, you're good at it, so keep doing it. And everyone go see Melanie at
digitalcollegium or she has a lot of recordings out there too, so bye bye bye.
[00:28:35] Speaker D: As we wrap up this episode, remember EdTech Connect is your trusted
companion on your journey to enhance education through technology.
Whether you're looking to spark student engagement, refine edtech tech implementation
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[00:29:12] Jeff Dillon: Tech reviews, trends and solutions.
[00:29:14] Speaker D: Until next time, thanks for tuning in.
