March 2025 product update: A look behind the scenes

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As you use our classroom management tools across your school or district, have you ever wondered how new Hāpara features are born? This month, we sat down with Hāpara Product Manager Meagan Jakubec and Product Owner Logan Duncan to get a look behind the scenes of product development.

Meagan says, “We focus on creating a product that makes teachers’ lives easier, enhances student learning and delivers intuitive yet innovative solutions, all guided by ongoing customer feedback.” 

This March 2025 Hāpara product update will give you the inside scoop on how the product cycle works. 

Your feedback informs all product development

First things first, the Hāpara team reads every piece of feedback. If you send us feedback within Hāpara or share it with a member of our team, the product team ensures that your feedback is logged and read. We really take to heart what the people in our Hāpara schools and districts need and want in our tools. 

Meagan says,

Hāpara Product Owner Logan Duncan shares, “Feedback can direct our decisions on what is on the roadmap. In User Research, it can help us decide where to start with different projects on the roadmap. In User Testing, it can change the direction of design of features and projects. Feedback on a feature can lead to improvements after release. We need to always be listening to our users, otherwise we will build things they don’t want or use.”

As Logan mentioned, when the product team is seeing feedback around an area that is really important to our customers, it’s placed on our product roadmap. This is what the team uses for planning and making decisions that will provide the best outcome for customers. Aside from a new feature or product, they also prioritize upkeep of the existing tools to ensure that everything is up-to-date and secure. These “backend” projects are just as important so that our tools continue to work properly for the administrators, educators and learners who use them.

Here are some of the ways we incorporate your feedback into product development.

Educator ratings and feedback

Within Hāpara tools, educators may see a pop-up asking them to give a score and any feedback they’d like to share. 

Meagan says, “We look at every single one of those. Lots of people just give us a number, but if they give us any kind of message that has feedback with changes or things that they like or don’t like, we will log that.”

School and district feedback

Feedback that school and district administrators or coaches share with a Hāpara team member is also logged and shared with the rest of the team. This feedback is essential to our product planning.

Customer Advisory Board

We’re proud to have a Customer Advisory Board that is composed of customers, including CTOs, technology administrators, curriculum directors and more. This group has become essential to our product development process this year and offers feedback and ideas to help us prioritize. They also meet with our entire product team to give their perspective. 

Meagan shares, “It’s very valuable for the product team to hear from them firsthand.”

User surveys

Part of Meagan’s role is contacting educators who have given feedback about a feature the product team is currently developing. She reaches out to them with a survey to gain a deeper perspective and hear current thoughts and needs.

One-on-one educator interviews

Once a new feature has been designed as a prototype, the product team also meets one-on-one with teachers to have them test out the feature. This feedback informs any adjustments that need to be made. Meagan explains that this is an important step to making sure the technology is on the right path. 

Collaboration on the product team

The product team collaborates deeply at every step to build the tools with educators and learners in mind at all times. Once the team is ready to start collaborating on a new feature or tool, Product Owner Logan Duncan leads the way to develop user stories. This helps the team understand the needs of the user and the functionality that is needed. 

Product Designer Emma Zhao also works closely with Logan as the user stories are developed. She creates wireframes to show the flow that the user will go through for the new feature and ensures that it is consistent with other features in the product. She also designs the clickable prototype the team shows to an educator during a one-on-one feedback interview. The educator will be asked to perform actions in the prototype, helping the team see what is working, what is user-friendly and what needs to be improved. From there, Emma builds a high-fidelity version to show the developers what the final product should look like.

Logan also meets with Venuka Fonseka, Agile Project Manager, as well as the developers to break the project into separate tasks. The developers then work in teams to complete tasks, and Venuka facilitates the process and makes changes where needed. 

As Product Manager, Meagan communicates with customers regarding the feedback process and communicates with the rest of the Hāpara team so that everyone is aware of the steps the product team is taking.

VP of Product and Engineering Nara Chilluvuri oversees all product development and ensures that we create the best product possible for schools and districts.

Product development that makes an impact

This year, the team will continue to work on “backend” projects to ensure our tools continue to run smoothly and with optimal security. There will also be some next-level innovations to share with all of you this year. (Hipi the Sheepicorn is extra excited about these!) 

Logan says, “We wish to provide useful features that allow teachers to be more proactive.” He continues,

Meagan says, “In 2025, the team aims to enhance optionality within the product while streamlining the user experience. We want to put flexible, intuitive tools into the hands of educators so they can focus on supporting student learning.”

Do you have feedback for our team? Reach out to us at community@hapara.com.