When should education end? After high school? After one — or multiple — college or university degrees?
Faculty of Arts & Science alumni Alec Levin and Maggi Mitchell believe learning should never end.
“A lot of the time, we think about learning like it ends when school does,” Levin says. “But the world is always evolving around you. There's an infinite number of things to learn.”
Levin and Mitchell are co-founders of Learners, a free e-learning platform dedicated to user experience (UX) research, product and design. The couple launched Learners out of a shared belief that everyone should have access to learning and professional development without cost barriers.
One of the biggest things we can do to level the playing field and make opportunities more accessible to people is to give them the resources they need to grow their own human potential. And that starts with making education accessible.
“We were originally charging 12 bucks a month. The goal was to make something affordable, but for many people, 12 dollars is a lot of money. We felt we had to find a way to make it free. It was very important to make sure there was equal access to the learning materials,” Levin says.
“One of the biggest things we can do to level the playing field and make opportunities more accessible to people is to give them the resources they need to grow their own human potential. And that starts with making education accessible.”
From accessibility how-tos to effectively communicating research findings, subscribers can find answers to their questions in the platform’s 15- to 30-minute in-depth learning videos or its recently introduced two- to three-minute “Thought” videos.
“We'll still be producing longer form foundational learnings, but we've moved into these snackable pieces of content as well,” Mitchell says. “We're looking to make professional development frequent and fun.”
“We're trying to help people build habits around learning,” Levin says. “We think this will be a good way for people to make a habit around learning a couple new things every day.”
They’re also tailoring the content to different learning styles. Earlier this month, they launched a Learners blog to appeal to people who learn best by reading.
Though they launched Learners in February 2021, Levin and Mitchell first met years before as undergraduates and members of St. Michael’s College in the life sciences program at U of T — a program they both credit for their strong work ethics.
“It was very competitive. It was good for me to have to have that kind of a challenge,” says Levin, who studied human biology and physiology, earning his honours bachelor of science in 2013.
U of T was fundamental to who I am now. It teaches you about your boundaries and what you can achieve if you work hard enough. It taught me about who I could be.
“U of T was fundamental to who I am now,” says Mitchell, a fellow 2013 grad who studied neuroscience and physiology. “It teaches you about your boundaries and what you can achieve if you work hard enough. It taught me about who I could be.”
When they graduated in 2013, Levin began working full time at a start-up that was building software for biomedical scientists, where he was responsible for getting feedback on the product. Over the next four years, he held a few user researcher roles, even running his own research start-up, Steadfast, from 2015 to 2017.
Mitchell spent the first few years of her career in operational jobs in the public and private sectors before being drawn to service design and UX research out of a lifelong interest in human psychology.
The story starts in 2017 with UXR Collective, which began as a small meetup of people in the UX research community who wanted to share what they were learning. It soon grew into a small Toronto-based conference, then a large one. In 2019, UXRConf drew 1,000 attendees.
By March 2020, the event had grown so large that both Levin and Mitchell were working full-time on the conference. They were on track to host 1,500 attendees at the 2020 conference — until COVID-19 hit. They pivoted quickly and moved UXRConf online, determined to create an exceptional experience despite the change in format.
“‘How are we going to turn this into something that still feels magical and brings people together, that still has great insights and valuable content?’ That was the most important thing,” Mitchell says.
Backed by event sponsors, they hired a producer, coordinated pre-recorded sessions with dozens of speakers and dramatically lowered the price to attend.
Tickets for in-person UX research conferences typically cost hundreds of dollars, but when UXRConf became the fully remote UXRConfAnywhere in June 2020, Levin and Mitchell dropped the ticket price to $99 and offered an unlimited number of “pay what you can” tickets.
The enthusiastic response confirmed they were onto something. While they had expected 1,500 in-person attendees last year, the online conference drew 3,000 in 2020 and 4,000 in 2021.
“A lot of people who normally would never be able to attend our conference came,” Levin says. “People from halfway around the world — the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia — stayed up all night just to be able to learn with everyone else.
“We found that very inspiring, and we wanted to build something that would make professional growth and learning more accessible to everyone. That was the genesis of Learners.”
Moving the conference online not only illustrated the need for a free learning platform; it also offered the flexibility for Mitchell and Levin to provide one. Though the in-person conference had generated most of their revenue for the year, it had also been a huge expense.
“Without renting halls and having food, you can bring the cost down a lot,” Mitchell says. “That’s the whole idea behind tech. It's building things online that are scalable for millions of people for a fraction of the cost of a traditional brick-and-mortar building.”
For U of T students interested in product, design and UX research, the first piece of advice from these alumni comes as no surprise.
“Check out Learners,” Mitchell says. “There's lots of content for people who are just breaking in.”
“Don't wait. If you're interested in this, now's the perfect time to start exploring,” Levin says. “Treat every day you have as a valuable resource and invest that resource into trying new things and connecting with people in the field.”
“Don’t be afraid to reach out to people,” Mitchell adds. “There's a huge feeling in tech about paying it forward. Find someone who just got their first job. Lots of people will take half an hour for a call to give advice. The whole reason Learners exists is this idea of paying it forward, to teach people and see others succeed.”