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Top UI UX Design Agencies

Simple-to-use and user-friendly design is the key to any digital product. When a mobile or web UI is easy to understand, product adoption is much smoother for new users. Having an experienced in-house UI/UX designer, or hiring an outside user experience design agency or a company makes a lot of sense.

The internet is full of different ‘listicles’ of top 10 design agencies or best UI/UX companies, most of them are basically SEO-optimized paid listings with terrible design. We think that the quality of the websites/articles is very low because most of the really good digital product design agencies are not even listed there. So we decided to add our 5 cents to that and provide a list of great user experience design agencies and companies who (based on our research) deserve much more attention.

Make sure to check their portfolio, their social profiles, and feedback from their customers to feel confident for hiring one of them for your product. Their prices are pretty high though, but there is a good quote by CEO of Jaguar about it:

Digital product agency: Web, Mobile, UI/UX

📍San Francisco, CA 🇺🇸

Digital Product Agency

📍Portland, OR 🇺🇸
📍Brooklyn, NY 🇺🇸

👤Top clients
Facebook, Virgin, Target

UX Design and Development Agency

📍Chicago, IL 🇺🇸

👤Top clients
Pepsi, Intuit, United Airlines

A design and technology ideas company

📍London, UK 🇬🇧
📍NY, TX, CA 🇺🇸

👤Top clients
Google, Gap, Warner Bros

Digital agency that designs products, content and campaigns across platforms

📍CA, NY 🇺🇸
📍UK 🇬🇧

👤Top clients
NBC, Google, American Express

Some of the common questions people ask while looking for an agency

Q: How much does UI/UX design cost?
A:
All design firms are unique, they focus on different types of clients (startups, enterprise), use different engagement models (fixed price, project-based, performance-based, time&materials, etc.). User interface is a part of a digital product that evolves and requires constant iterative improvements. That’s why we think that the best option is to consider an external agency more like an extension of your product team, rather than a one-time engagement. We’d recommend setting aside a budget at least $75k+ for hiring a U.S. based user experience agency.

The basic steps don’t change a lot, except for the labels and a few techniques for executing them.

The important themes in all the major methods are iteration and user input.

What’s the problem?
This first phase is usually called something like “discovery.” It’s all about figuring out the goals of the product or web site you are building. Is there a task your users can’t easily do on their own or with another tool? Are you looking for a better way to do something? Boiling it down to a simple problem statement clarifies and helps focus on the real purpose of your project. This phase is all about the scope and intent.

During this phase you use tools including; brainstorming with stakeholders, marketing teams, and your design team; conducting interviews with potential users and subject matter experts; research into the competition and current trends.

At the end of this step, practitioners of Lean UX develop a hypothesis that summarizes the problem and a possible solution. It includes the feature, user type, what it will achieve and how they can measure success. Other artifacts of the discovery steps may include personas, stories, workflows, or other documentation related to how

What’s the problem?
This phase is often called “definition” or “ideation.” You take all the work you did in the first phase and start thinking about the best ways to accomplish whatever task the user needs to do. This is a great time to bring your team together to collaborate in whiteboarding, mapping things out with sticky notes, and generally brainstorming solutions. Look for themes and surprises in your data and information. You are trying to generate lots of ideas and possibilities that can be run by real users and either thrown out or refined.

Your artifacts at this point are sketches, low fidelity wireframes, draft content, and architectures.

How to make it happen?
In the first couple of phases, the intent is to explore the breadth of the project. At this point, it’s more about digging deeper. The best one or two ideas from the previous phase get fleshed out. Every detail is examined and refined. User testing iterations are a big part of this phase. Wireframes become higher fidelity and then evolve into prototypes. The content and graphical assets are also created and delivered at the end of this phase.

This is also a great time to touch base with your stakeholders or clients to ensure you are all on the same page. Have them look at and play with the user interface prototypes. Concerns and suggestions can be addressed during earlier iterations rather than later when it’s harder to change directions.

How to bring it to life?
Finally, the final design from the previous phase is handed off to the development and testing teams. It should be a full flown user experience at this point. All specs, high fidelity wireframes, prototypes, text strings, and other assets are handed off. You aren’t completely done though, it’s always a good idea to work closely with the dev team making sure you can answer questions and clarify points of confusion.

What are your thoughts?
Iteration, user involvement, and open minds are key ingredients in any flavor of UX design methodology. Which methodology do you use?

Q: What are the most popular user interface (UI) prototyping tools?
A:
Depending on fidelity of an interface prototype, there are a few most popular interactive prototyping tools for designers: InVision, Flinto, Marvel and some others.

Q: What makes a good UI & UX Design portfolio?
A:
There are few aspects that define good ux portfolios:

These are very basic but important signs of a UX design portfolio.

Q: What information is necessary for an agency to start working a UX project?
A:
The agency may require the following details:

Working with an onshore company opens up the options for finding and selecting the right team, and could save you money over a local agency. However, most interaction will be conducted remotely so if in-person meetings are your preference, local may be a better option. Onshore companies are located in the same country as you, and will likely speak the same language, have access to a similar population for user testing, and be within a couple of time zones of you.

Nearshore and offshore agencies are outside your own country and can offer significant cost savings. Those near your home country may also share a similar time zone like onshore agencies. If you are located in the US, these agencies may be located in South America. Offshore agencies are often in India. Agencies in these locations will have more difficulty in testing your product if you intend to market it within your own country. If you intend to sell abroad, a team in the location you intend to market in could be a great advantage as they know the culture and language, as well as having access to the target user population. The biggest obstacles in working with offshore companies are communication, but established agencies will have tools in place to streamline meetings and communication.

Q: Beyond the list above, how to find and hire user experience designers online?
A:
One of the options would be to find them at design community websites like Bēhance (by Adobe), Dribbble, Google Search.

Your company is building or revamping a product with a user interface but you don’t have a UX team. You are going to need to hire a professional UI/UX design agency. Selecting a UI/UX design agency may sound daunting, particularly if you don’t have much experience working with UX or agencies in general. How do you know where to start with researching companies? Our team suggests considering these key aspects in your search:

There are different types of UI/UX design agencies, including:

Whether boutique or enterprise, agencies may specialize in a particular type of user experience:

Look for a company that suits your working style, and has completed projects similar to yours in the past.

You have many options when it comes to agencies, they can be local, “onshore”, “nearshore”, or “offshore”.

Local companies will offer the ability to easily visit your company, and vice versa. This can help to establish your working relationship and ensure a personal touch. Depending on where you are located, this could limit your options and impact your cost. Larger urban areas will offer more options but may cost more.

Working with an onshore company opens up the options for finding and selecting the right team, and could save you money over a local agency. However, most interaction will be conducted remotely so if in-person meetings are your preference, local may be a better option. Onshore companies are located in the same country as you, and will likely speak the same language, have access to a similar population for user testing, and be within a couple of time zones of you.

Nearshore and offshore agencies are outside your own country and can offer significant cost savings. Those near your home country may also share a similar time zone like onshore agencies. If you are located in the US, these agencies may be located in South America. Offshore agencies are often in India. Agencies in these locations will have more difficulty in testing your product if you intend to market it within your own country. If you intend to sell abroad, a team in the location you intend to market in could be a great advantage as they know the culture and language, as well as having access to the target user population. The biggest obstacles in working with offshore companies are communication, but established agencies will have tools in place to streamline meetings and communication.

Once you’ve identified a few candidate agencies that look like they meet your needs for size, specialty, and location you’ll want to do a little deeper digging, and then need to interview them.

You can start by reading the client reviews. Most agencies also have websites with information about their culture, staff, and past work. These are good sources for assessing past successes and potential issues.

Just like hiring a direct employee, meeting or jumping on a Zoom call with potential vendors can give you a good understanding of who they are, beyond what they have listed on their website.

Before you or your top pick agency fully commit, you may consider doing a discovery phase or exploratory engagement together. If an agency you are considering doesn’t require nor offer a discovery phase or exploratory (e.g. 1 month of commitment-free work), that may be a red flag.

A discovery phase gives you an opportunity to see how well you work together and verify that this is the right team for your project. Discovery phases could include things like:

Once this phase is complete you will usually receive a more detailed estimate for the remainder of the project. You can then, usually, continue the project, or take the research and deliverables provided and look for another UI/UX design agency. If you are happy with the UI/UX design agency’s work, price, and communication after this preliminary work, you can be more confident in hiring the agency.

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