When you’re looking to develop digital products, understanding how your user experiences it — the UX or user experience — is the driving force behind its success or failure upon official launch.
If your company doesn’t have an in-house UX design team, or even if it does but they lack some experience, then UX consultancy can be a great option to supplement your company’s skill base and improve the chances of success.
UX Designer Vs. UX Consultant
For clarity, let’s be clear on the difference between a designer and a consultant when it comes to UX. Where the UX designer works with UI designers and developers together to create websites, software, applications, and more, the UX consultant serves more as an auditor of the process.
The consultant develops UX testing, an overall UX strategy, and ways to ensure that the UX will return better on the investment.
They have a bigger-picture view of UX design for startups issues and can usually give you a very realistic picture of how your users will react to the UX in its current form.
Why Hire a UX Consultant?
1. You Need a Better UX Strategy
If you feel that you and your team have been operating fairly blindly and without a clear direction and purpose in UX development, then this is a key area where a UX consultant will add strength. Alternatively, it could be that your original strategy which used to work is no longer working and you are unsure of how to effectively adapt the plan to fit with new and changing circumstances.
2. They Understand Your Users Well
UX consultants typically work within specific sectors for which they know the user base very well. They can act as a kind of litmus test for how your target users will respond to your current UX and therefore how to improve upon it.
There could be aspects of your user base that you are missing and that’s why the UX has been experiencing chronic problems. Using their unique understanding of your customers, they can help you fill in the gaps.
3. Consultants Can Audit and User Tests
One of the keys to fixing things that go wrong with a website is to perform an audit. These audits are used for many purposes, including things like accessibility. The beauty of a UX audit is that it will tell you precisely where the holes and deficiencies are so that you can then build their repair into your overall strategy.
An audit is usually incredibly detailed and covers virtually every aspect of UX design, and quite possibly things that you and your team had never considered before.
Besides audits, experienced UX consultants will devise much more insightful and illuminating user testing methods than most regular UX designers will.
By incorporating their user insight and perspective, they can generate a much more meaningful set of responses and feedback from users than UX designers who are mostly focused on their own design perspective.
4. You’ll Get a Better Return
In terms of ROI, there’s no doubt that a UX consultant is a good investment.
By creating a more coherent plan, finding the deficiencies and weaknesses in your UX design, thoroughly auditing your app or website, and offering key insights into your user base, you’re getting increased certainty that your digital platform is going to be one that users enjoy using, and therefore will share, return to and hopefully become dependent on.
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