| Sumario: | Background: Learning analytics (LA) aim to support informed decision making based on educational data but often fail to align with students' realities, especially when designed to be used across multiple courses (e.g., interactions with feedback from multiple educators). The notion of human‐centred learning analytics addresses this in part by encouraging the involvement of stakeholders in the design process to incorporate lived experiences and enhance technical and pedagogical interactions. Design Thinking, an iterative, human‐centred approach, is particularly relevant as LA tools must not only process data but also support students' evolving needs. Its non‐linear nature allows continuous refinement through user feedback, yet its systematic, full application in LA tool development remains under‐explored. Objectives: This paper illustrates the non‐linear iterative use of design thinking phases to conceptualise, design, develop, deploy and evaluate a LA tool, to be used across various courses, with continuous involvement of students. This is to ensure the tool effectively addresses their evolving needs and real‐world learning contexts. Design thinking is applied within the context of the well documented educational challenge of capturing students' interactions with feedback (traceability), specifically to capture, analyse and visualise students' interactions with feedback (i.e., feedback traceability). Methods: Throughout the design process of the tool, various design thinking phases were conducted, revisited or repeated, involving a total of 86 higher education students across various phases through a participatory approach. A range of design and research activities were employed at each phase, including focus group discussions, design sprints, prototype validation and interviews. Results and Conclusions: This paper contributes to human‐centred learning analytics by providing a detailed account of the application of design thinking in the development of an LA tool. It illustrates the non‐linear use of various design phases to identify and translate six key student requirements to 8 design decisions for tool development. Students perceived the tool as helpful in consolidating and analysing feedback, planning next steps and improving grades by understanding common strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, the paper presents the resulting LA tool, which enables feedback traceability and documents its journey from ideation to full deployment and evaluation in an authentic learning environment. The paper concludes with key recommendations for managing student and research needs in LA tool development, along with strategies for balancing research and design tensions and offers insights to guide other researchers and designers. Lay Description: What is currently known about this topic? ○The design of existing learning analytics (LA) Tools is not always aligned with students' actual experiences within educational contexts (e.g., how students interact with feedback).○Human‐centred learning analytics advocates for involving educational stakeholders throughout the whole design process, especially in ideation and evaluation phases. Yet, the literature lacks a systematic approach to incorporating stakeholder input throughout all phases of development.○Design Thinking is a human‐centred, iterative approach potentially ideal for LA design, aiming to ensure solutions are practical and aligned with stakeholder needs through rapid feedback cycles, bridging data insights with real‐world educational applications.○The non‐linear, iterative application of design thinking phases throughout LA‐based feedback tool development from ideation to deployment and evaluation remains under‐explored.What does this paper add? ○This study showcases empirical findings of the non‐linear, iterative application of design thinking involving students throughout the design process, in the context of developing and evaluating a LA tool that captures student interactions with feedback.○Repeating the phases of design thinking can allow research teams to continuously collect student ideas and make adjustments to the design of the tool.○Evaluating the designed tool in authentic learning environments aids researchers to verify and update their assumptions and identify new requirements the tool needs to address.○Design thinking is being applied for the first time to tackle challenges in feedback traceability, where capturing students' interactions with feedback remains difficult.○The paper presents the resulting LA tool developed through a design thinking process involving students, detailing its journey from ideation to full deployment and evaluation in a real‐world learning environment.Implications for practice or policy ○Design thinking phases need to be repeated or revisited in LA tool development to ensure a deeper understanding of student needs and to address the gaps in knowledge effectively. Practitioners and policymakers should therefore encourage flexible, repeatable design processes to adapt tools to evolving educational contexts.○LA designers must carefully balance tool objectives, available knowledge, student needs, research goals and resource constraints when applying design thinking. This highlights the need for training and guidelines to help LA designers navigate these complexities, ensuring tools are both human‐centred and aligned with broader educational goals.
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