New angle on math education: lessons from product design

Or a user interface for learning math

High school is when many students typically first encounter some of the greatest difficulties in learning what forms the basis for learning post-secondary level math. Those are, therefore, some very critical years in a student's math educational career. If it is important to get more students to consider entering a STEM career (and I'd argue it is [1]), then it is important to consider how math can be taught to these students so they'd be more interested in it, and be better at it later on.

The following is a long piece discussing the problems facing designing a better math educational experience, complete with the principles of design that can be used to solve such problems, closing with some guidelines for how to create a better course.  In principle, all of the following can apply equally well to other subjects, like computing science, or English, but math education is tough, so I’m picking on the hardest as an example.

Math course as a product

Just how do students experience of learning math get formed? Rather than looking at it in a traditional teacher's mindset, let's look at it in terms of a commercial product designer's mindset. That means we see students as interacting with a complete, full-fledged math education product that promises students that they'd get what they want.

Pivoting large old retailer - MEC lures new customers, but at what cost?

Or how "Mountain Equipment Co-op" became "MEC", like "Kentucky Fried Chicken" became "KFC", only less greasy.

Over the past 3 to 6 years, it's obvious of MEC that its product line, style, and relationship with its member-customers has changed drastically.  Today, we're going to talk a little about how MEC pivoted its business from serving its (stereotypically) backcountry traveling, alpine mountaineering, co-op members, and instead now serve the gigantic market of people who ostensibly do things "outside", i.e. outside buildings (and sometimes inside them too), like yoga and running.

This is not a rant against MEC, but pointing out references and information about an interesting business transformation.  I feel one day MEC could be a standard business case study of how to pivot an existing business --- and a very successful democratic consumers' cooperative, rather than a standard corporation, no less.

In 1998, Mountain Equipment Co-op showed us the allure of forests as far as the eyes can see, snow capped mountain tops, and people climbing up those mountains --- well, at least as much as web graphics could in 1998.

(I'm sorry to future historians if MEC bans the Internet Archive robots and asks them to delete their old web pages from its history after this. What? Haven't we always been at war with Eastasia?.)

MEC's product line has in the past 6 or so years become less technical, meaning less for functionality, utility, and purpose of backcountry specialized activities (think alpine mountaineering, multi-pitch ice climbing, 6 month expeditions in the middle of nowhere).  Instead, MEC's product line was "broadened" to be more "inclusive", i.e. watered down and retargeted at common popular activities to appeal to the masses.   This means targeting fresh styles, new fashions, and vibrant colors, for jogging, yoga, eating ice cream, etc.  (If you think this kind of talk is "elitist" of me, read on --- we'll see why MEC had intentionally set up the discussion this way.)

You think I'm joking about the ice cream?  These are from MEC's front page today (well, Aug 8th):

In 2016, I too like eating ice cream outside my place.

MEC's company culture changed too, with customer service emphasizing enthusiastic salespeople, instead of deeply knowledgeable outdoors-people who could give expert, experienced advice about the products they themselves have used in the woods.

MEC Products, Services Disappointments: open letter

Below is a slightly edited version of a letter I sent to MEC, Mountain Equipment Co-op, about the problems and disappointments with MEC products and services seen during a visit to a MEC store.  The exact store location is edited out as I don't want to blame any particular team of front-line workers, seeing as I believe the problem is more systemic and a reflection of the top-down corporate culture at MEC.

Interestingly, some of the points raised here applies to software and tech companies too, in how to treat customers and how to design products, if you can think laterally to those areas while reading below.

I don't really like posting these kinds of open letters, but most people in the know who would critique MEC would probably just rather buy their gear elsewhere and spend their time in the mountains instead.  Seeing as the following was already written, it doesn't cost me anything to copy-paste the below, so here it is.

I've read from several sources that MEC has explicitly stated their mission has changed over the last decade or so to try to attract more urban activity people rather than appealing to the technical backcountry crowd.

Fair enough, if that's what the Board of Directors has approved as part of their reading of what the people who voted them in wants them to do.  Who am I to deny the democratic process in this co-op?

But a few things:

1. Products

Pretty please, could you retain at least some design time and some staff who can actually help design MEC clothing or gear that are actually good technical gear at a fair price?

Pants as just one example has turned into a circus of yoga inspired pants everywhere.  The expedition trekking, technical, or light mountaineering pants that were MEC brand kept getting End of Lifed and clearanced, then a new version comes out that's more everyday stylishly wearable --- I guess to attract more customers --- only to be again End of Lifed and clearanced off again.  The cycle repeats as the technical functionalities gets watered out with stylishness.

1.1: Hats

Hats as another and more in-depth example, the original topic that inspired this email as I was looking at the MEC Rover Hat.  You've got plenty of other brands of hats that's like the Rover Hat, all with a mix of flaws and different target audiences.  You had a chance to make the Rover Hat make some logical sense as it currently has no functional sensibility --- and if there's no technical functional sensibility, then why wouldn't I just buy a "better branded" hat of that style?  Here's what I mean.

Manipulative Pricing? FutureShop, WestJet, Chapters, and NCIX

Or perhaps this post should be called: "how not to manipulate price and avoid appearing slimy to customers."

As Canadians who fly a fair bit know, WestJet and Air Canada used to have pretty crazy seat sales, matching each other's prices, prices that change sometimes day to day, etc. Then recently, WestJet said they were getting rid of seat sales, citing customers being "frustrated at the unpredictability of fares" (WestJet scraps seat sales, reduces everyday prices).

That's one way to put it.  Another way would be that customers are frustrated at what appears as arbitrary manipulation of fares.

Skip over to FutureShop, where I was looking at Kaspersky Internet Security 2011. On their web site, they are selling it at $39.99 (which even qualifies for free shipping). Later, I find myself walking into their real-world store and find them selling it on the shelf at around $79.99, or around the price that it sells for from Kaspersky's online store. There is no obvious explanation that the price in the real-world store is going to be different than the price in the online store (and by that much!).

To me, that appears as arbitrary manipulation of the product's price.