Portrait of Nate Irons

👋🏻 Hi, I’m Nate.

Sr Product Designer with 6+ years of experience.

I currently lead design for teacher and student facing experiences at Seesaw Learning, including integrated and generative AI. In the past, I have designed consumer and enterprise products across cloud computing, healthcare, logistics, and education.

Located in Fishers, IN

Selected Work

Reach out if you’d like more details on any of these projects. Email or LinkedIn me to connect.

AI Generated Activities (2025)

Problem
Teachers are required to use mandated curriculum that is commonly delivered as static PDFs or worksheets. Interviews showed that, under time pressure, teachers routinely worked outside Seesaw by printing materials and grading by hand. This meant Seesaw was absent from core instructional moments, directly contributing to reduced product adoption and declining year-over-year retention.

Impact
  • About 35 minutes saved per activity. Teachers estimated activity creation now takes ~10 minutes instead of 30–45 minutes manually.
  • Strengthened Seesaw’s AI positioning in EdTech that aligns with new governemnt funding.
  • Implemented new usability testing methods and documentation to quickly validate with AI prototyping + unmoderated usability tesing.

Solution
I designed Activity Assistant, an AI-powered tool that supports generating activities from uploaded curriculum or from a simple prompt. The experience prioritizes speed, clarity, and editability.

View Case Study
Generate Activity Tool — image 1

Generate activity with AI landing page

Generate Activity Tool — image 2

First step in converting a resource

Generate Activity Tool — image 3

Example output of generated activity

Redesign of Student Activity Experience (2025)

Problem
Students struggled to move through multi-page activities with confidence. In moderated testing, 9 out of 12 students could not identify how to move to the next page without assistance, and teachers reported frequent interruptions during class time.

Impact

  • Students across grade levels completed multi-page activities without navigation-related prompts.
  • Teachers reported smoother classroom flow and fewer interruptions during independent work time.
  • Support tickets related to incomplete or mis-navigated activities decreased after rollout.

Solution
Simplified activity cards, persistent bottom navigation with clear Next/Back controls, visible progress indicators, and smart prevention/recovery checks that guide students to incomplete pages without teacher intervention.

Student Activity Nav Updated

Streamlined Student Activity Experience

AI Reading Fluency Assessment (2024)

Problem
It can be very challenging, manual, and time intensive for teachers to perform reading fluency assessments for each individual student.

Impact

  • three months post launch, this was adopted by 10% of monthly active teachers
  • Direct feedback highlighting how much time this has saved teachers
  • 15% increase in total sales, showing clear impact for both teachers and the business

Solution
An easy to use reading formative assessment creation and reporting experience. The reporting view allows teachers to easily see what students need help and which are on track. It also gives quick insight to which exact words or phrases the class struggle with as a whole.

For students, an easier to use voice-recording interaction so it's clear and easy for them to complete assessments without teacher support.

Generate Activity Tool — image 1

Student interaction for recording voice

Generate Activity Tool — image 2

Class level reporting

Generate Activity Tool — image 2

Student level reporting

Generate Activity Tool — image 3

Common errors with bulk corrections

Older Work