Did you know that almost 88% of users said they would not return to a site after a negative user experience? In the tech world, this is why it is imperative to hire UI/UX designers on your team to help convert visitors into customers. UI/UX designers are typically the unsung heroes behind a great application, feature, website, or software product. Not only do they help ensure your tech product is functional and user-friendly, but they also help ensure it looks good.
UI (User Interface) Design explores the macro and micro elements of layouts, interactive elements, and users form an impression of the experience. Conversely, UX (User Experience) Design encompasses primarily the feelings of a user navigating the product. A good UI/UX designer is an essential step to helping you create a product that a user remembers through the UX, usability, and design that resonates with your target audience.
This guide will help you unpack how you can onboard UI/UX designers, including how to define their role and where to source the best-fit candidate for your tech company.
Understanding the Role of UI/UX Designers
What is a UI/UX Designer?
Creating an attractive and user-friendly product involves considerable dedication to UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) design if the product is to be successful. A UI Designer is primarily concerned with how the product looks, meaning the layout, buttons, icons, and all other interactive design features must look appealing. UX is primarily concerned with the experience a user has with the product.
UX design studies how a user uses a product, and specifically requires that you learn how and why a user acts in certain ways (pain points) and what kind of experience the user would like to have. Between them, the UI/UX Designer is responsible for ensuring that both the appearance and functionality of a product meet a user’s expectations.
A UI/UX designer will also conduct research, content, wireframes, mock-up, or specifications, build working prototypes, and interface with developers as needed to test and validate that the design of the application has a positive impact across platforms.
Why Is Hiring a UI/UX Designer Crucial for Your Tech Company?
Hiring a knowledgeable UI and UX designer is paramount. A good designer can make a product successful by creating a great user experience (UX). Users walk away from products, in part or whole, if those products are hard to use or difficult to look at.
Alternatively, if the experience is easy and delightful, a user is far more likely to come back repeatedly, and potentially even recommend it to their friends. UI/UX design is not just for looks; it has to fulfill its intended function. Users may not return for a product with good UI/UX design. However, they will likely return for a product with better consumer satisfaction and/or branded reputation than some other alternative.
How to Hire UI/UX Designers: A Step-by-Step Process
Hiring a great UI/UX designer for your tech company can greatly elevate the user experience of your product. I’ll give you a straightforward way to hire UI/UX designers for your tech company and help you make the right decision for your company.
Step 1: Determine Your Project Requirements
The first step in deciding which designer to hire is to think about what you need. Do you need a UI designer, a UX designer, or some hybrid of the two? Will you need someone for a fixed length of time or someone to be a full-time member of the team? By refining and defining your project needs, you’ll probably accomplish 75 percent of the job of identifying a designer. If your project demands strong user research, you should probably hire a UX designer. If you need to take your UI to the next level with great visual work, you’ll be after a UI designer. The same applies to defining the designer you’ll be hiring and what their skills, areas of focus, and experiences are when you define your needs.
Step 2: Create an Easy-to-Read and Appealing Job Description
Now that you have worked out what your needs are, you should be in a position to write a job description that lists the various aspects of the role you are hiring for. The job description should specify the essential skills needed to perform the role, including the use of common design job tools, e.g., Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD, etc., as well as the key functions involved in the role, e.g., user research, wireframing, prototyping, etc. The job description should also include some desirable skills and experience within the industry.
Step 3: Review Portfolios and Case Studies
A portfolio is the best way to understand a designer’s taste and skills. When reviewing portfolios, consider beyond just aesthetically pleasing visuals and focus on the process behind the project. A solid designer should highlight their problem-solving process from research to prototyping to final execution. Also, think about reviewing case studies that show the designer’s ability to work through complex design challenges and to articulate how their design thinking contributed to the eventual user experience.
If your hiring is conducted remotely, also consider how well a candidate’s portfolio translates across different platforms and devices. A flexible designer will be able to adjust their work to your product’s needs.
Step 4: Conduct Meaningful Interviews
The interview is a great way to discover more about the designer’s experience and their thinking process. Questions about their design process, how they incorporate user feedback into their designs, and their experience with developers and product teams are important. If you can, give the candidate a specific real-world scenario or challenge an exhibit question. to see how they would deal with it. Important! Don’t forget about communication! Every good UI/UX designer has to be able to communicate their design vision and be a good communicator in person and remotely as a team member.
Step 5: Make the Final Hire
After all the portfolio reviews and interviews, you should have shortened this list down. As you consider the final hire, you need to evaluate the designer’s experience and skill level from a technical standpoint, but also consider how they might fit culturally into your team. If your hiring opportunity is happening remotely, consider whether the person has experience working in a remote environment and if they have a comfort level with the virtual tools you expect to utilize to collaborate. Finally, make the best offer you can make based on industry standards and the design candidate’s level of experience.
The Benefits of Hiring UI/UX Designers
Access to a Broader Talent Pool
Hiring UI/UX designers can give you broader options and help you choose from a larger talent pool of designers with various skills and backgrounds, establishing diverse and unique working contributions to your organization. Having different backgrounds creates a pool of diversity in experiences to choose from to find the right fit that meets your requirements and can enrich your product design development.
Cost Savings
Another distinct advantage of having experienced UI/UX designers is the potential cost savings. Quality design from the start can save you costly mistakes later. For example, good design avoids wasting money on costly rework and reduces customer complaints (which can be costly!); as a result, you may suffer reduced development expenditures in the long run when you spend money on quality UI/UX work up front.
Flexibility in Hiring
As a hiring role, the UI/UX designer has a very flexible role in terms of hiring someone when needed on a project basis, maybe for a temporary role, or as a full-time resource. You can flexibly hire dedicated UI/UX designers based on your talent needs, and then adjust when business projects change; that creates a scalable way to bring in resources on an as-needed basis for your team.
Fresh Perspectives
Hiring new UI/UX designers brings new perspectives to your business. With a new designer background or skillset comes new ways of thinking and problems to be solved through a wide array of experiences they bring to the team. This pool of diverse perspectives enhances creativity and helps to design work that is more relevant and useful to users.
Enhanced User Experience
Ultimately, in consideration of all these factors, the user experience will be much better. Creating designs and delivering products to users with talented UI/UX designers on the team will contribute to the final product being more user-friendly, intuitive, easy to navigate, and to use. If user experiences are seamless, users tend to stay engaged. Keeping your customers engaged with your product is crucial to retaining them. Ultimately, ensuring customer satisfaction when engaged with your product is an important part of any tech company’s success.
Where to Find UI/UX Designers for Hire
Below are five sites for sourcing quality UI/UX designers that I enjoy using in my process to find the best designer or team for my project:
LinkedIn is a very useful resource for connecting professionals, posting jobs, and viewing portfolios. It is also a resource for finding in-house or remote UI/UX designers.
Dribbble
Dribbble is a more artistic platform to let UI/UX designers show off their work. This is an amazing place to see portfolios, and you will no doubt find many designers who are a good fit for your style and skill set.
Upwork
Upwork is a platform that allows you to hire remote UI/UX designers, and you can select short-term or long-term project hires. This is an entire world to access talent, and you will find the right profile for your project.
Letremotify
Letremotify allows remote UI/UX designers to join a global community of designers working for tech companies. This is an excellent site for finding designers who may be the best skill-wise and able to work remotely.
Behance
Behance is a great portfolio and case study site for designers. You can easily discover UI/UX designers with very specific design skills and experience.
Final Thoughts
In summary, hiring the ideal UI/UX designer is crucial for your product to not only have great aesthetics, but also provide a great user experience, as focused on user friendliness & user enjoyment. Whether you’re looking to hire UI/UX designers, remotely, or via an in-house engagement, talent can be found on platforms such as LinkedIn, Dribbble, or Letremotify.
The right design will increase user satisfaction, increase user engagement, and provide an overall better path to the success of your vision. So, what are you waiting for? Find the ideal UI/UX designer for your product!