How Openfield gets quick wins while tackling long-term solutions for strategic EdTech product growth

Regardless of your team's size, your internal bandwidth is limited. When unexpected issues crop up or new opportunities emerge, additional tactical and strategic support can help your team stay on track to meet established roadmap priorities and business goals. Our clients always benefit from having a combination of internal and external support. Our external perspective provides an impartial view of where your EdTech is and where it needs to be. And when it comes to embedding with your team, we ensure everyone hits their highest potential.

Proper documentation ensures you retain knowledge regardless of whether your UX team is internal or external. Openfield ensures you retain the product of the work we do together by thoroughly documenting all research, design, systems and processes — regardless of team structure.

We don't see ourselves as a replacement for internal staff. Whether you have no internal UX staff or a very small team, Openfield is a compliment that allows you function at the pace of a much larger team without committing to the sizable long-term investment that comes with building a larger internal team. Solo UX hires can’t possibly cover all of the various skill sets that your product may need. That includes certified accessibility professionals, data dashboarding experts, design and illustration, and specific coding expertise for prototyping and handoff to engineering. Openfield offers scalable talent that can be leveraged as needed without straining your staff or budget.

It’s important not to underestimate the costs associated with full-time employment. Onboarding new staff takes time — meanwhile, projects remain on hold, and opportunities to meet business goals suffer. Not to mention that finding replacements is a drag on your internal managers. Instead of supporting your business strategy, they're preoccupied with onboarding new staff.

Openfield evaluates new client opportunities based on fit — not size. We’ve worked with all manner of EdTech companies, from viable startups to multi-billion dollar, multinational corporations. We will work with you to establish a right-sized budget and scope that meets your needs while fitting within your means.

While generalists and agencies with a handful of EdTech served up as verticals may say they’ve "seen it all," they don't mean they've seen it all in EdTech. We have — and we know better than anyone that understanding the nuances of users in the context of learning is critical. It takes years of experience with EdTech product teams and thousands of hours talking to students and educators to gain the expertise you need to best serve companies like yours. It’s why long ago we decided to commit ourselves fully to serving the education market and nothing else.

Whether they work internally or at an outside agency, your UX resource isn’t necessarily in it for the long haul. What happens when your internal UX hire leaves after a year? Finding, vetting, hiring, managing and mentoring internal staff is no small endeavor. And replacing outgoing staff is taxing for managers and takes their focus off advancing agreed upon business goals. With a partner like Openfield, you benefit from a larger team that self-heals more quickly if someone leaves.

Our clients, large and small, are often preoccupied with the question of whether to hire internally or externally. We find the answer is usually a little from column A and a little from column B. We can support you as you think through the right mix of new internal hires and more involvement by our team.

Definitely not. The truth is most of our long-term clients began with smaller engagements to fix specific problems. With each solution, we achieved results and built trust. We can support your team no matter the size of your problem.

About 50% of our work is dedicated to solving specific problems with well-defined scopes that last anywhere from one to six months. The other half of our client list runs on six to 12 month contracts to staff an Openfield team on an ongoing basis to address both short-term tactical issues as well as long-term strategic initiatives. In many cases, it’s both. Clients who have long-term strategic UX research and design contracts also engage us to quickly tackle specific low hanging-fruit.