How to Choose the Best UX Designers to Hire?

Wondering how to choose the best UX designers to hire? You have come to the right place!

You certainly need the right people to make your company successful in the tech industry. Companies that successfully launched their digital products with the help of DevTeam.Space can attest to that.

Let’s see how to find the best UI/UX designer.

1. Decide whether you need co-located or remote UI/UX design designers

Do you need a co-located UX/UI design professional? Alternatively, can you execute your project with remote UI/UX designers? This factor influences what your hiring managers need to do.

Take a close look at your project requirements. Will the UI and UX design parameters change frequently?

This requires the UI/UX designer to work closely with the business stakeholders, and you need a UI/UX design professional in your location.

On the other hand, your existing and potential business users might have already spelled out their requirements clearly.

The user experience design professional just needs to study the requirements and implement them. The UI designer doesn’t need too many face-to-face meetings with users, and you can manage with a remote UI/UX designer.

2. Choose a hiring approach for hiring competent UX and UI designers

Experts observe that UI/UX designers are in great demand. Hiring competent UI and UX designers will take some effort, therefore, choose the right approach first.

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Companies sometimes look to hire freelancers. This approach might work for simple projects, however, you need a different approach for complex projects.

There are several freelance platforms. You might be able to hire a UI/UX designer at a low hourly rate on these platforms. However, these platforms don’t provide any management support.

You might find it hard to manage a complex project with part-time freelance UX designers. The challenges will increase if you have a remote freelancer.

If the freelancer leaves the project mid-way, then you need to find a replacement.

We recommend you hire from a trusted UX design agency instead of hiring a freelance UX designer. These companies offer full-time UI/UX designers.

Reputed software development companies offer management support. These companies provide replacements in the case of turnover.

Hiring developers and designers from trustworthy software development companies is especially helpful if you have a complex project.

3. Create a job posting for hiring UI/UX designers

You now need to create a job posting. It should include the following:

3a. Company description

Introduce your company. Provide facts about the company, however, make the introduction interesting. Describe the growth journey of your company and its future potential.

Talk about the career growth opportunities you offer. Describe the organizational culture and working environment in your company.

Explain the professional development opportunities in your company, and talk about the compensation and benefits.

3b. UX designer job title and job descriptions

Provide a clear job description. Explain how the UI/UX designer will contribute to your organization. Describe the organizational structure and the kind of projects you execute.

More importantly, explain how the UX designer job fits your organization.

3c. UX designer roles and responsibilities

Describe the roles and responsibilities of the UI/UX designer. These might include the following:

• Understanding the project requirements and user feedback;
• Developing user-centered designs;
• Building user flows;
• Creating prototypes using standard prototyping tools;
• Designing wireframes;
• Creating mock-ups;
• Creating style standards and design patterns specific to your organization based on the requirements;
• Designing elegant user interfaces;
• Creating different UI elements;
• Developing graphic designs;
• Analyzing and identifying UX issues;
• Troubleshooting UX issues;
• Participating in usability testing;
• Enhancing the UI design by incorporating user feedback, usage metrics, and findings from usability testing;
• Collaborating with your larger team.

3D. Key skills that you want in a UI/UX designer

Specify the UI/UX design skills required for the desired tasks in your project. Look for the following:

• In-depth skills and experience in UX research;
• Knowledge of creating wireframes;
• Deep knowledge of information architecture;
• Considerable experience in creating user flows;
• Knowledge of adaptive design and responsive design;
• Understanding of competitive analysis;
• Sound knowledge of prototyping;
• Experience in using prototyping and design tools like InVision Studio, Figma, Adobe XD, Origami Studio, Sketch, Justinmind, etc.;
• Knowledge of interaction design principles and how users interact with an app;
• In-depth understanding of how to conduct user research;
• Experience in conducting user research;
• Knowledge of creating user personas;
• Deep knowledge of style standards and style guides;
• Considerable experience in UX writing;
• Sound knowledge of the UX design process;
• Knowledge of visual communication;
• Good understanding of prominent field research methods;
• Knowledge of mapping a user’s journey while using the app;
• Sound knowledge of visual design and visual communication;
• In-depth understanding of usability testing;
• Robust knowledge of UI design elements like input controls, navigational components, etc.;
• Sound knowledge of using analytics;
• Familiarity with concepts like the “Human First” way of user-centered interaction design.

UX design is a multidisciplinary field. Designers need considerable business acumen to create an aesthetically pleasing UX.

We recommend you look for UI/UX designers that have attended an acclaimed UX design course.

Examples are courses taught by Don Norman, an authority in UX design and among the most famous UX designers. Some other names include:

• Andy Budd, a UX leader at Clearleft, a digital marketing expert, and a contributor to the pioneering web standards movement;
• Yael Levey with over a decade of experience in UX design with a famous Youtube channel sharing useful UX tips;
• Wroblewski Wroblewski, a software developer and an expert in micro mobile interactions;
• Elizabeth Churchill, UX director at Google with an extensive research background in artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction.

Look for top UX designers that are familiar with popular UX design case studies. Such case studies provide excellent design ideas. The UX design case study involving a new coffee machine is an example.

Read our other guide on hiring a UX consultant.

3E. Other software engineering skills that UI/UX designers need

Competent UI/UX designers need several other software engineering skills in addition to skills in the UX design process. They should have knowledge of the following:

• Important software development methodologies like Agile;
• Understanding of software review;
• Familiarity with software testing;
• Good understanding of DevOps processes, methods, and tools.

3F. Competencies that UI/UX designers need

Creating user-friendly and elegant UX design solutions requires much more than UX design and software engineering skills. UX designers focus not just on the technical parameters.

They need to deeply understand the end-user needs. The target users of your product don’t just use a web or mobile app. Your service design should be such that users get tangible and sustained value.

You can’t do that simply by focusing on UX design theories. You need to understand the real users.

Great UI/UX designers don’t create a winning design solution in just one submission! They might need to make multiple attempts to understand the real user.

Other team members might have a better understanding of the user needs, therefore, the UI designers might need to learn from them.

All of these require a set of competencies. These are key elements for the success of a UX designer, and these aren’t transferable skills. Look for the following competencies:

• Communication skills: A UI/UX designer needs to communicate proactively and effectively with a larger team.
• Empathy: UI/UX designers need to create user personas. They need to map the user journey, and they need to understand the pain points of real users. Empathy plays an important role here since UI/UX designers need to understand the perspective of the end users.
• Collaboration: UI/UX designers need to work closely with many stakeholders like the product owner, scrum master, developers, testers, etc. Teamwork and collaboration play important parts here.
• Passion for excellence: Creating a UX design solution that stands out from the crowd can take hard work!
• Commitment to the project objectives: If you have complex projects, then you will face scenarios that adversely impact the project objectives. A competent UI/UX designer should prioritize the customer and navigate the complexities.

4. Interview the UI/UX designers

You have created a job posting, and you have received resumes. It’s time to interview the candidates. Keep the following in mind:

• Focus more on the relevant experience than the theoretical knowledge of UI/UX design.
• Ask the candidates about the processes and tools used for creating a user persona.
• Find out their practical knowledge of information architecture.
• Examine how they map the user journey.
• Ask the candidates about the tools and processes used for user research.
• Check with them about the complex projects that they have worked on. Find out how they resolved complex UI/UX design problems in those projects.
• Explain your project requirements to the candidates. Ask them how they would approach your project, and how they would create a design solution. You should expect specific answers.
• Find out about their hands-on experience with popular prototyping tools.
• Ask how they designed different UI elements.
• Evaluate how well they understand the concept of responsive design.

5. Onboard the selected UI/UX designer

You have selected the UI/UX designer you want. Now, you need to onboard the designer effectively. Follow a systematic approach.

Provide the required project documents to the UI designer. Explain the project requirements in detail. Introduce the new UX designer to your larger team, and explain the relevant roles and responsibilities.

Provide access to the project’s technical environment. Explain the project plan and milestones. Establish a communication mechanism so that you foster accountability.

A note about the larger software development project

You have onboarded a competent UI/UX designer, which is great. The success of your software development project depends on several other factors, and you should focus on them. These are as follows:

• Project management: You need a competent project manager (PM) to manage the project from end to end. The PM should know about the relevant PM best practices.
• Technical solutions: You need an experienced software architect, who should formulate an effective software development approach. As a part of defining the technical solutions, the architect should choose a suitable software architecture pattern.
• Technology stack: The architect should choose the appropriate technology stack and software development tools. You could use JavaScript and Node.js for web development. We recommend native Android development with Java. For iOS development, we recommend native development with Swift.
• Information security: Depending on the nature of your app, it might process sensitive personal information. The architect in your team should design and implement a robust information security solution.
• Cloud computing: You can significantly expedite your project by using a cloud computing platform. The architect should choose the appropriate cloud platform based on the project requirement.
• Developers, testers, and DevOps engineers: Last but not the least, you need competent developers, testers, and DevOps engineers. Our guide to finding the best software developer can help you.

Final thoughts

We described how you can hire the best UI and UX designer. Launching a digital product successfully requires more than a good UI.

Top companies invest in smart software developers in addition to great UX professionals. You might need to do that too, therefore, contact DevTeam.Space. A dedicated account manager will explain how we can help you.

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