Living in the comfort of the modern world, we rarely notice, how many things are carefully planned and designed for our convenience. That’s where the secret lies, everything that is convenient comes unnoticed by people. It works both for real life and the digital world.
Nowadays, it’s a very rare thing that a product is not designed to reflect user behavior, so we live surrounded by user experiences. It means that any modern idea needs creativity and expertise to turn into a good business. Being an expert in your industry, you need user interface design services to bring innovation to your product, so that it can stand out and accomplish your business goals.
However, hiring a UI/UX design agency can be a challenging task for those who do not know where to start, what to look for and what to expect. If you feel like this, a bit at a loss, this article is right for you.
Let’s first find out what is a user interface and user experience.
What Is UI and UX Design?
UI and UX are inseparable like Yin and Yang and often considered to be unable to exist without one another. The first is a visual design of the product interface with proper architecture, layout, colors, icons, buttons, animations, typography, and much more. The second is about the human experience during the usage of the product. User experience is concerned with what a user feels, what actions he should take, and whether everything is simple, clear, and intuitive.
Modern UI/UX designers do their best to enhance user satisfaction through intuitive, simple, and efficient interfaces, but lots of experts take part in this as well, including developers, content writers, and more.
UX can be compared to the backbone of your product, while UI is the flesh, and blood system, and appearance, it’s also more about details, sometimes accessories or makeup… However, coming together all of them create an attractive and plain image of your software solution, which provides meaningful and pleasurable experiences for the users.
By hiring a UI designer, you can expect your solution to be optimized so that it will attract more users and become a success. Being professionals aware of the right methods to use in all the related areas, UI/UX designers are concerned with the entire process of product development, from branding through design to usability.
No wonder, UI UX design services are rather expensive. Let’s check the options to hire real professionals without the risk to make a hasty decision.
In-house Designer vs Freelancer vs Agency
There are 3 major options to hire UI/UX designers:
- In-house,
- Freelance,
- Agency.
Let’s check each one.
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Lots of business owners consider this option to be the best before they carefully analyze the disadvantages of in-house teams.
Still, we are going to start with the bright side – exclusiveness. You get an expert or a team, working on your project and delving deep into it.
However, it’s a costly pleasure, besides the need to pay a full salary, you’ll have to invest in insurance, hard and software, training of the employee, product documentation, and certain legal stuff.
Freelancer
Freelancers are a good source of professional services on a budget. Hiring a freelancer, you only pay for the hours spent on your product design.
You can choose professionals providing UX design services from any part of the world working remotely at a competitive price and, if you are lucky enough, get a great experience. More than that, a freelance contract is more flexible than an in-house one.
Still, there are certain drawbacks to hiring a freelancer. Depositing all design tasks to a single person, you may fail to get different viewpoints on your project and risk not gaining enough perspective to develop the best solution among multiple opinions.
Unfortunately, we should admit, that the risk of getting a negative experience with a freelancer is much higher than with other options. It’s often difficult to settle problems with freelance workers.
Agency
UI UX design company, like Stfalcon, is the best option you can choose, it’s an excellent balance of having the whole expert team working on your project led by a professional designer, yet achieving multiple points of view and excellent perspective.
With an agency, you get diversity and professionalism combined and no headache with new employees' training or any legal formalities. You just get a professional and dedicated team at the same cost as hiring an in-house designer. More than that, pre-selected by the company, you get the very specialists you need with a skill set pre-determined by your project requirements.
Some More Arguments for Hiring an Agency
Expertise
Dealing with multiple projects, they constantly develop and go in tide with all the latest trends in technology, marketing, and business. They look out for new ideas, so you may be sure to get a personalized touch reflecting your brand image and business needs.
Time-saving
Agency designers know their job, they are focused on your project and the ways to realize it best.
Cost-efficiency
Some development tools and kits used by professional teams are not always available for you or freelance designers, due to their price. However, they help to provide exceptional results and agencies purchase them and spread their costs among the workers.
By the way, many free tools are handy, and we share some of them on our blog.
Brand consistency
Your logo, website, app, social media profiles, and images should be aligned to provide the same impression, then your business will be recognizable. Consistency is the key to this effect, providing trustworthiness as well.
Top-notch designs
UI/UX agency responsibility does not end when your solution is created, whenever you need upgrades or fixing, your agency knows how to do it most effectively. So, you have a team of professionals just a call away, but no headache managing it on your own, like when it’s in-house.
Let’s now find out how to find the right UI/UX contractor.
How To Find a UI/UX Design Provider
The most obvious question coming first into mind is where I can get UI/UX contractors.
UI/UX communities
Social networks can work well to help you find employees, you can even find UX design agencies on Facebook and Instagram.
However, it’s better to search in professional design communities—Behance, Dribbble, or Awwwards. These sites provide lots of portfolios full of brilliant visual designs.
It’s also vital to check if the design you like is technically feasible, and not to end up finding a specialist without a strategic mindset.
Freelance markets
If you are just a start-up with a modest budget, and looking for a freelancer, then check out freelance platforms, like Upwork or Freelancer. It will help you choose a designer for your taste and pocket, but be ready to devote some time to micromanagement and control to avoid substandard quality and enhance the reliability of your project.
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This approach is good for those having ties in the development community. You can always ask somebody to brainstorm a few designers and simply reach out. In case a recommended designer is too busy to take up your project, ask him to recommend someone else. Based on referrals, such an approach allows you to find the right expert with relevant expertise and experience.
Development Company
As we have already mentioned above, a company or an agency can become your ideal choice in your search for a designer or a design team. On the one hand, the company takes care of the specialist selection, based on your requirements and designers’ skill-set. On the other hand, working for the company an expert is acquainted with all the tech, marketing, and business trends up to the moment. So, you get an ideal designer for your specific task.
All you have to do now is to choose wisely. Some tips below will hint you at the checkpoints to pay attention to while making your choice.
Tips to Keep in Mind for Hiring The Right UX Design Agency
To find the company that will provide your business with outstanding business opportunities through an outstanding UI/UX, you must keep some checkpoints in mind.
Portfolio
The company portfolio will show you if the team has enough design skills and impressive case studies in some relevant niches.
Besides the recently completed projects and plots, the portfolio should demonstrate an outline of agency strengths. So, you can grasp what beneficial opportunities it’s ready to offer.
Choose the company with the most relevant projects that suit your business goals as well.
Mission
When choosing a team to cooperate with, try to find the touchpoints that will provide you with a common ground.
Every user experience agency reflects its mission on the site, it’s helpful to recognize its corporate values and priorities. However, to understand who is on the other side, it’s vital to communicate eye to eye.
To be an ideal match, your vendor should either be interested in your niche or excited with your project, finding it innovative and interesting to realize.
Experience
Knowledge base matters, your contractor should not only be experienced enough but also aware of the latest and hottest UI/UX design trends.
Find out how they research the target market and how they are going to meet your business goals. What challenges and bottlenecks they had recently managed, and how long they’ve been operating in the market? Preferably, choose a company with 3+ years of practical experience.
References
Nowadays, the most trustworthy way to know the company is to study the client references through first-hand feedback. Naturally, we love to share positive feedback when everything that was promised was delivered. Do not hesitate to contact a minimum of 3 clients. Find out if the customer is satisfied with the received result and the development process if the deadlines were met, and whether the project was delivered in full and supported as was expected.
Communication and collaboration
Professionalism is not limited to UI design services and analytics, but it includes punctuality, respectful communication, and comfortable interaction. Make sure you feel at ease with the agency’s contact person.
Problem-setting and troubleshooting skills
It is vital to effectively identify and solve problems in the course of product development. Make sure your user experience agency conducts the studies of the target audience and business idea research. Your product should base only on objective data.
More than that, a designer should think out of the box, and offer and implement fresh solutions with a well-thought UX logic and top-notch technical realization of a user interface.
The agency you’ll choose should demonstrate business thinking and even exceed your requirements. The experts should be able to add up value to your product through its optimization and implementation of valuable features, grounded on the end-user needs. So the process should be user-centered. Otherwise, your game is not worth playing.
How Much Does It Cost To Hire a UI/UX Design Company?
The most sensitive question ever, because there is no clear-cut answer to it. There are many factors influencing design rates. Some specialists charge hourly rates, while others opt to get payment for a milestone or the whole project completed.
Anyway, the key factors are
Project scope
If you have a very detailed project, it may take tens, if not hundreds of hours. Trying to make a solution as interactive as it’s only possible, a designer will also require testing it as the end user. Therefore, it will be expensive.
It’s vital to have a project brief as detailed as possible in terms of functionality and scope because it will help you on time and resources and make precise estimates of the project budget.
Storyboards and Personas
A competent designer should check how different people will interact with the developed solution. It requires collecting data, interviews with end-users, testing, storyboards, and personas creation to illustrate the factors that influence the users’ decisions.
Scope of Testing
User interaction with the product requires much testing, the stages are as follows:
- User interactions observation,
- User feedback receiving,
- A/B split testing,
- Performance metrics research,
The more testing rounds are required, the higher the overall project cost.
Designer hourly rate
Additionally, UI and UX Designer Services Costs differ from country to country.
You can expect the highest rate in the United States of America, where it ranges between $30 and $125 per hour. A highly experienced US designer may earn up to $150 000 a year.
Canadian experts will charge a bit less, with an average hourly rate of $44 per hour and the most experienced experts’ earnings hardly reach $120,000 per year.
The most affordable rates and the quality-cost ratio is in Eastern Europe, Ukraine in particular. Here you can get a middle UI/UX designer at $30 per hour and the rate of a senior expert would be $45 per hour on average.
Designers may charge differently for different works: wireframing, storyboarding, user research, etc.
Thus, all the factors discussed above determine the whole project cost and your aim is to find an expert team to offer you a reasonable project price.
Our Experience
Hiring a UI/UX designer is a crucial investment, so you should understand where your budget goes. To grasp a more understanding of UX design, you can check our projects. We have been dealing with design projects for over 9 years and seem to know all the up-to-date trends in it.
Nova Poshta
Nova Poshta is a Ukrainian delivery company, leading the market for over 16 years. Nevertheless, it still actively works on the elaboration and enhancement of user-friendly online services.
Our cooperation was intended to substantially improve the current Personal Dashboard of a user to bring the UX to the next level.
Stfalcon’s team dealt with the user stories and test results to alter the interface design. Even at the early design stage, we consulted with customer representatives and took their feedback as to the proposed solutions.
We chose a flexible approach that was fast and effective to create and support new features for end users.
Read the full case study
Smile Food
Stfalcon redesigned an app for Ukrainian food delivery service because the old app duplicated the site and often failed.
So we made a discovery to understand the business and the problems it faces deeply, researched competitors, and interviewed the app users to make customer profiling.
Our experts worked out the order flow’s prototype, wrote User Stories, and estimated the app’s development in two variants: Native Android & iOS or Flutter.
Read the full case study
Later on, we supplemented the team of a Project Manager and a UI/U designer with developers and successfully implemented the following technical aspect:
- Tracking couriers on the map,
- Unique orders formation,
- Integration with the existing clients' database,
- Migration to the new tech stack.
Final Thoughts
Now, as you know all the details and nuances, you can feel confident in your search for a UI/UX Agency to create a functional product with a meaningful experience.
The dedicated team at Stfalcon is sure that only years of real-world design experience can provide customers with outstanding results. We have shown just a few examples, but our team will gladly add up your project to our portfolio. Feel free to contact us to get a CV of your potential designer and see more case studies in your specific niche. We can then proceed to a more detailed discussion.
