A Comprehensive Guide on How to Hire a UX Designer

The users get through an endless amount of information every day. Therefore, the essential criterion for evaluating a site or app becomes the user experience while dealing with the product’s launch. According to the survey, 90% of users are less likely to return to sites with poor UX. Companies understand the importance and value of quality user experience, so there is a growing demand for good UX designers. So, it appears more and more new designers. So, a logical question for employers arises: what principle should I use for hiring a UX designer, and how do I choose a professional? That’s why we prepared for you a comprehensive guide on how best to approach the selection of a UX designer.

UX is the path a user takes in an app or website during all interactions. A professional UX designer can analyze your target audience and understand techniques to interpret what your clients want and what needs to be changed to improve the user experience.

But what are the fundamental reasons for hiring a UX designer? First, UX designers can assess the overall picture, and out of complex and confusing processes, find an easy and understandable solution. They work systematically, putting everything together piece by piece to get a visible result. Second, professional UX designers do not just make you a pretty picture. They make it work efficiently. For this purpose, there are different UX research methods to know the company’s target audience or find out the problems in the existing website or application for further fixing. And the UX designer makes your product accessible and convenient for all potential users.

Also, user behavior often depends on their emotions. So, suppose the product evokes positive emotions, for example. In that case, it has straightforward navigation and doesn’t confuse the user. It leaves pleasant feelings, which means that the user will come back. A UX designer can understand users’ presumed emotions to build an app or website based on the user’s reaction to the product.

Some big corporations have individual departments which work only with user experience and hire a team of UX designers. But small companies can hire UI/UX designers who will make your website functional from a UX point of view and work on the visual part — UI design.

Read more about the difference between UI and UX design in our blog.

UX design is the art and science of creating positive emotions through interaction with a product. To make a quality UX design, the users should be the main point of reference from the beginning of the design. Thus, the first stage of designer work on the product will be the research of the target audience. One way to build an accurate map of your customers is to collect personas. Personas are the general portrait of your customers by surveying the company’s target audience.

Read more about How to Make a User Persona in our blog.

UX is how people feel when they use a website or app. First comes the user, and then comes the interaction. So you have to study the user, motivations, and emotions before developing a product.

Let’s say you have a job opening for a designer, to which many people responded, how to make the selection to hire a UX designer who will meet all your criteria. First, decide on these criteria. For example, what stage is your product at? What are your company’s goals concerning this project? What needs to be done, and what skills should the future employee have? Don’t rely on your intuition and gut feeling, but act systematically and thoughtfully. Always use an interview stage, which includes completing a test assignment to understand the designer’s skill level.

What other questions can you ask yourself to make sure you choose the right candidate?

• What experience does the candidate have in UX design?
• Are candidate skills enough to effectively and efficiently perform the assigned tasks?
• Can the candidate identify a problem and solve it correctly?
• Is the candidate user-centered or not? How does he interact with them? Does he base his design thinking on the user’s opinions and needs or personal persuasion?
• Does the candidate have a systemic mindset? Can he understand all the intricacies and nuances, and will his design be as effective in reality as he’s painted himself?
• Can the candidate offer new ideas and look for new solutions for each project separately?
• Does the candidate follow new trends, and is he constantly on the lookout for trends?

Part of the answers to these questions you will find in the candidate’s portfolio and test assignment, as well as a personal interview. Don’t forget to pay attention to UX designers’ communication skills. As designers directly relate to clients, they should be good listeners and can change clients’ minds and explain constructively why a solution or design would be correct. It’s also worth paying attention to how they work in a team. Because work on the project is a team effort, UX-designer must communicate with developers and other team members to implement the accurate design. And one more point, can the candidate take responsibility for their work and lead the process?

Read more about What Does a UX Designer Do During the Product Development Lifecycle in our blog.

The most popular platforms for finding and hiring UX designers are:

• Dribbble — it’s a platform that allows designers to create portfolios and share their work with the public. But it’s also a place for employment and recruitment.
• Behance — is a popular social platform among designers and illustrators, owned by Adobe, where people from all over the world share their projects, promote their creativity, and look for work.
• LinkedIn — is a social network for job hunting. Here, registered designers and many companies and their HR specialists are engaged in recruiting employees.

However, suppose you want to hire a professional UX designer. In that case, it’s better to apply to an agency or a design studio, as they will provide you with high-quality services, for instance, mobile app design services. When looking for a freelancer, you can’t rely on his reliability and professionalism, and you will need more than a month to find a suitable candidate and make sure of his skills. Design agencies offer timely and reliable service, handle the quality, and have a multi-skilled team, so you get a comprehensive approach to your project.

Hiring new employees is always accompanied by a lengthy process and attendant troubles. When hiring a UX designer, this isn’t only about creative work, but also about analyzing and making decisions that will take society and communicate with customers. So let’s explore the most common mistakes to avoid them.

Looking for all skills in one person

Sometimes companies want to save money or just find an option for all occasions, so they are looking for someone who can do UI/UX design, take care of product development and marketing. This multitasking can cause your product to be of poor quality. If you want your app or website to work for results, it’s better to go to a specialist.

Considering the considerable amount of works in the portfolio, the specialist is better.

A portfolio is a prerequisite for hiring a UX designer to get a preliminary look at the specialist skills. A common misconception is that having many works isn’t a guarantee of success. So, a specialist with only 3-4 positions in his portfolio took them seriously and spent more time implementing them and showing the process. The result will be more qualified.

Expect instant work and results.

The UX designer’s job is to improve the user experience and increase conversions. To achieve the result, designers need to do over one user experience research to identify gaps in the product or build UX from scratch. Even if the designer has many years of experience, he can’t do this too quickly. Or the quality of the work done will suffer. So it needs to give the designer enough time to work on the project.

Hire a UX designer only for the product audit

Often, companies hire a UX designer very late or just for a UX design product audit. Since a UX designer’s job is a long process that involves user research and creating a better user experience, hiring a UX designer for a product audit just to edit it isn’t profitable but possible. In that case, consider hiring a UX consultant to audit your product.

If you have a scratch project or are just in the initial stages of work, it’s time to hire a UX designer. This is a very demanding job, so hiring a professional is essential. Unfortunately, finding the right candidate on freelance isn’t always the best idea because you can’t be sure of the quality of the provided services. It’s better to turn to a design studio, where you get high-quality services and support from the idea to the product’s launch. Gapsy Studio is responsible for the quality of its services, and the positive feedback confirms this. Contact us and be sure you’re in safe hands.