User experience or UX design is creating products that provide meaningful and relevant experiences to users. This involves the design of both the physical product and its interactive aspects. User experience design results from good product planning that incorporates the user from the beginning stages of development. UX design primarily focuses on enhancing a user’s experience with a particular product or service. Businesses hire user experience designers to undertake the entire design process of acquiring and integrating the product, including function, usability, branding, and visual design. User experience (UX) design is often mixed with user interface (UI) design. Despite the two working closely together, they are different.

What are the types of UX designers?

UX design is a broad term that breaks down into several similar roles. Your project may not need all of them, but it will not hurt to vividly understand the difference between the roles before you hire UX designer. UX researcher A UX researcher collects the data on the product and its potential, competitors, and target audience to inform the design process. The UX researcher’s main tools are user research, testing, analysis, and data. UX strategist The UX strategist defines the goals of the product experience and aligns these business goals with the end user’s experience. UX strategy results in building information architecture, wireframing, and UX writing. UX/UI designer Since UX and UI design are two different parts of a single consumer experience, UX/UI job is at the intersection of product experience and visual design. You may also hire a UX designer, who will be mainly concentrated on building or improving digital experiences, and a UI designer working on the visual part of the product.

How to evaluate UX design?

UX design may be hard to get right because UX is not the responsibility of a designer or a team of designers, but instead is an organization’s vision. Companies need to hire a UX designer to define the customer (persona), the problem, and the best strategy for tackling the problem. According to Peter Morville’s User Experience Honeycomb, good UX design should be evaluated by the customer-centric terms we identified earlier: whether the product is useful, usable, findable, credible, accessible, desirable, and ultimately valuable. Hire user experience designers who have mastered these main UX design principles. Another way to evaluate whether the UX design is good is to stick to Nielsen Norman heuristics. As a company, you may be willing to hire UX designer who follows the list of heuristics for interface design. They are as follows: Visibility of system status Match between the system and the real world User control and freedom Consistency and standards Error prevention Recognition rather than recall Flexibility and efficiency of use Aesthetic and minimalist design Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors Help and documentation High-quality design solutions need to align with these principles. Before you hire UX designer, make sure they have demonstrated their expertise.

What UX designer portfolio should look like?

When you hire a UX designer, their portfolio is all you have to go by. How can you tell if their work will fit your needs, and if they’re a good match for your team? Demonstratable strategic thinking Hire a UX designer who has a story to tell, not just a pretty design. Great designers not only solve problems but can show their strategic thinking. Look for case studies that include big picture thinking and go beyond traditional design constraints. Clear and straightforward writing Designers have to be great communicators, not only with their design work but also in person and in writing. The portfolio of a UX designer for hire has to be available at any time and should make a great first impression that leaves the employer wanting to know more. Relevant case studies When doing through the designers’ portfolio, mind the projects they have worked on. You might be willing to hire UX designer that has previous experience and interests that align with the type of work they will be involved in your product.

What skills do UX designers need?

Hire user experience designers whose skills include both the technical skills needed to create a functional design and the soft skills necessary for creative collaboration (co-creating a product) and dealing with clients. Here is the list of prior skills to look for when you hire a UX designer: UX research To create a product that meets users’ needs and solves their problems, a UX designer for hire needs to understand who the users are and what they want. UX research is the practice of understanding user behavior and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies. At this stage of the design process, designers also gather the stakeholders’ requirements, which ensures that they’re building the right thing. It helps design with a “why,” instead of just a “what.” This skill is so critical that some companies have a specialized role on their design team known as the UX Researcher. Their responsibility is to conduct user research, user interviews, surveys, and other activities that produce insights into potential customers. Wireframing, prototyping, user flows, mockups UX designers envision a product before it’s built. This is why startups and corporates hire UX designers to help map out the entire user experience with a product or service. They use tools like wireframes, low or high-fidelity prototypes, mockups, and user flows to create visual representations of the final product. Visual Design As a mix between art and science, good User Interface (UI) design combines creativity with usability. Great UI is about understanding the users and knowing the essential elements you need to close the gap between their needs and your product. Figma, Sketch, Photoshop, and Illustrator are the core design software that UX designers for hire need to have mastered to create the visual elements of a product. Usability testing Usability testing is used to validate the design approach by observing users as they interact with a product. It is an excellent way to identify bugs, pain points, and missing features early in development before investing significant time or money. Hire UX designer to catch design flaws early and make adjustments; it will help save time, money, and resources in the product life cycle. Interaction design Many large companies are on a continuous mission to improve their customer interface, and they require specialists in the field of user experience design. That’s why UX designers for hire skilled in interaction design are in such demand. Interaction design shapes the way we experience the physical and digital world by guiding our behavior (both psychological and physical) toward the desired action. Communication Effective communication is one of the most important skills you should be looking for when you hire UX designer because it increases the chance of delivering a winning product. UX design teams need to speak a common language that all team members understand. The same goes for collaboration: the needs of your customers, users, and stakeholders must be clearly understood and documented so that any misunderstandings can be avoided. Empathy Great designers understand that their understanding of users is key to successful product development, but it’s not enough to empathize with just the end-user. You want to hire UX designer who can empathize with the engineers and product managers whose jobs are most directly impacted by the insights the designer gathers about users. Teacher and Facilitator Great designers understand how important it is for them to teach, share and build relationships with other people who aren’t designers. In light of this, hire UX designer who fosters creativity and respect for their peers as it will often work to bridge the gap between themselves and people who don’t think as they do. In practice, hire user experience designers that are always eager to push boundaries and conduct design workshops with engineers. When a UX designer for hire does this, it shows that they are putting their craft first and foremost and that they’re comfortable enough in the presence of their peers to get the best out of them.

How to Hire UX Designers In 2022

Looking for user experience designers for hire? At Limeup, we help rising startups and established companies at every step of their product development process, from user experience research and consulting to UX design and development.

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Senior UX/UI designer

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Middle UX designer

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At Limeup, we work with startups and established companies, helping with UX design, research, and product development.

Our partners often share how challenging it is to find and hire UX designers with relevant experience.

We know what could be the reason why.

There are many design companies and freelance UX designers who promise top-notch services. However, they don’t necessarily know the difference between web and UX design and can’t deliver a proven-to-work solution that a client paid for.

We’ve heard these pain points from our partners and wanted to develop a solution to help entrepreneurs, startups, and established companies hire the best UX designers.

This UX hiring guide was created by our Chief Design Officer, Daria, and the Limeup founder, Alex.

The ultimate goal of this guide is to help you make the UX designer hiring process smarter, not harder.

Therefore, we analyzed the current freelance rates and most popular hiring platforms and shared our insights on how to assess UX designers’ expertise.

Before we move on to these profound questions, let us explain who UX designers are and how they can help you achieve your business goals.

Who is a UX designer?

Think of the last time you browsed through an unfamiliar website or opened a new mobile app. Were you able to find what you were looking for? Was it easy? How did the whole experience make you feel?

The job of UX designers is to make your online experience pleasant, easy, and effective.

A more formal definition would be this one:

UX designers create intuitive and easy-to-navigate digital product designs based on user interviews and UX research findings.

User experience designers work with UX researchers to test design solutions with current users, identify usability issues and pain points, iterate user interfaces, and create an impactful product design.

This way, UX designers eliminate guesswork and ensure the final product design will help you achieve your business goals, whether increase a site conversion rate or decrease churn rate.

What does a UX designer do?

UX experts can help you cope with various design challenges, including user experience research.

If your preferred UX designers for hire have experience with usability testing and user interviews, they can manage the whole UX design process on their own. However, only some UX companies and freelance designers provide an all-in-one setup.

You might be offered to hire user experience designers and researchers separately for extensive projects, like a massive website redesign or design-from-scratch work.

At Limeup, our user experience design professionals can help you with the following:

Research and define the main usability issues that prevent your target audience from becoming your customers.
Improve the most critical user flows that affect your website’s conversion rate, such as the registration flow or an ecommerce add-to-cart flow.
Design websites, mobile and web applications based on research findings.
Prioritize development efforts to save your budget and avoid developing elements people don’t need.
And more!

Review our UX design services to learn more about what we can do for you.

Depending on your needs, our UX experts can support you at every step of your product development process, from an idea to a product launch.

If you are looking for UX designers for hire, contact Limeup. We will discuss your current challenges and goals and assign the most suitable UX professionals to help you achieve your business objectives.

Reliable websites to hire user experience designers

If you google “Where to hire a UX designer,” you’ll see over 13 million results.

What websites to choose from among that many options?

As a customer, you want to work with reliable UX designers who have experience in your niche and have done similar work in the past. We also assume you want to review a few websites and hire suitable UX designers, ensuring they ideally fit your project.

This hiring UX designers guide was created to address your challenges and help you speed up the hiring process.

As an established UX design company, we’ve been researching and analyzing the UX design market for 7 years.

We’ve also reviewed many UX freelancers’ CVs to handpick and hire the top UX professionals.

Therefore, we know the UX industry from the inside out.

The following are a few reliable websites where you can review UX designer freelance rates, their focus, and portfolio and hire the most suitable expert for the short or long term.

Limeup

We are proud to mention our global UX company among the reliable websites to hire user experience designers.

At Limeup we carefully examine our client’s challenges and business goals and choose the most suitable UX designers for hire.

Our UX specialists become a true extension of the client’s product team and assist at every step of the product development process.

Startups and established companies worldwide typically hire our UX professionals to research and design a product from zero, redesign an existing platform, website, or mobile application or help with product development.

Our UX experts worked with a USA healthcare provider, Raccoon Recovery, to build an exclusive solution that helps people recover from surgeries and injuries faster. We’ve also partnered with a German trading platform, i88, to develop their platform and mobile application.

Our UX designers for hire worked on the Racoon Recovery healthcare product design

We designed and developed a patient’s platform for a healthcare provider

The former two are just a few notable projects we’ve worked on.

Companies from education, blockchain, igaming, real estate, and other industries hire our UX designers to work on their projects.

If you are looking for top UX designers for hire, review our best design experts below and contact us to discuss your project. We also share our experts’ portfolios upon request.

Dariia Khomych

Chief Design Officer

Dariia is responsible for all product design development processes at Limeup. As a senior design expert, she has developed navigational structure, architecture and design solutions for clients in the education, blockchain and healthcare industries.

Oliver Breault

Senior UI UX design designer

As a part of the Limeup designers team, Oliver creates digital experiences for B2B and B2C companies worldwide, applying user experience research to validate design ideas and create proven-to-work solutions.

Tamila Garibova

Middle UX designer

Tamila utilizes broad-based elements of user experience design like researching, ideating, conceptualizing, journey mapping, and prototyping to design desktop and responsive mobile solutions for startups and mid-size companies.

Stella Herbert

Senior UI UX designer

Stella has experience designing for fashion, beauty, and entertainment industry. She uses the psychology of human behavior to understand users’ needs and create human-centered designs.

Michaela Kabir

Senior UI UX designer

Michaela has experience in creating digital products for retail businesses.

She is skilled in user experience design, user interface design, product strategy, and innovation for web and mobile applications.

Jenna Salac

Senior UI designer

Jenna is an expert in UI graphic design and has a deep understanding of UX design principles.

She has worked on various projects from designing landing pages for startups and building complex UX solutions for enterprises.

Ann Ischenko

Middle UI designer

Ann works as a freelance visual designer, designing mobile applications, websites, and digital platforms.

Ann has a keen eye for detail and an unerring sense of design.

Daniel Egerton

Middle UX designer

Daniel specializes in visual identity, experience mapping, and wireframing to create user interfaces for digital products.

Daniel has worked in the following industries: fintech, e-learning, and technology.

Marcin Przystalski

Senior Web designer

Marcin is a web and interaction designer.

He works with clients in both the private and public sectors to define strategies and then turn them into easy-to-use, high-impact digital products.

Stephanie Fischer

Product designer

Stephanie Fischer is a multi-disciplinary product designer with more than 8 years of experience. Her expertise covers user interface design, user experience research, mobile design, responsive design, marketing, and branding.

Need UX designers for hire?

Let’s discuss how our UX experts can help you achieve your goals.

Clutch

Clutch is a reputable B2B rating and reviews platform with curated lists of UX expert companies worldwide.

The platform can help you find the top UX providers in your country or city, quickly review their core services, average pricing, minimum project cost, and former clients’ testimonials.

It’s important to mention that Clutch does not list individual contributors. It means you won’t be able to hire a UX freelancer through Clutch. Instead, the platform recommends established UX companies you can reach out to discuss your UX challenges and needs.

Many UX companies, like Limeup, work globally and let you hire the most suitable UX experts on-demand for the duration of your project.

This way, you don’t deal with individual freelancers. All administrative questions are discussed between you and a design agency. You sign an NDA (a non-disclosure agreement), a contract with a scope of work, expectations, deliverables, and costs, which protects you legally and ensures the work will be completed as per your agreement.

A list of UX design companies on Clutch

Upwork

We are pretty sure you’ve heard about Upwork in one way or another. It is one of the world-known and most popular freelance marketplaces.

Upwork’s business model is simple.

Anyone can register on Upwork, describe their expertise, become a freelancer, and bid on projects in a matter of hours.

Depending on the freelancers’ specialization, Upwork will recommend available projects posted by different clients. Once the project is finished successfully, freelancers get their remuneration, while Upwork gets a small chunk of profit for connecting both parties.

The projects’ scope varies from short ones, like “need to design one landing page,” to long-term projects with complete digital product design and development.

You can review some UX jobs in the screenshot below.

Examples of UX jobs on Upwork

If you decide to hire UX designers on Upwork, you have to keep in mind that this is an open platform for everyone, meaning thousands of designers are out there. Upwork does not check and verify their expertise in any way. So, you can only rely on their profile description and testimonials.

If you are looking for reliable and experienced UX designers for hire, contact us.

At Limeup, we carefully review and analyze every designer’s CV, portfolio, and personality before letting them join our team. This way, we can ensure top-notch quality of work and a smooth collaboration process.

Whenever you want to review someone’s career path and background, there is a high chance you will open LinkedIn.

Why?

According to Oberlo, LinkedIn has over 830 million users from 200 countries. It implies that any established individual contributor has a profile on LinkedIn, and if you want to check someone’s profile, it will most likely be on LinkedIn.

In a way, the LinkedIn profile serves as an online CV that helps employers quickly review the background of applicants. At the same time, individual contributors can benefit from a variety of job offers.

If you want to find and hire UX designers via LinkedIn, you can use the search bar with filtering.

For instance, you can see 98 available UX experts who live and work across the United States in the screenshot below.

UX designers on LinkedIn

This quick search can help you find design experts in any destination. However, you might stumble upon too many candidates at once. How long will it take you to review 98 profiles of UXers in the USA?

What if there were thousands of profiles? Besides, these people might not be actively looking for a job now.

Despite these tiny details, LinkedIn remains one of the most popular sites to find potential UX candidates since you can quickly find and review profiles of real people with real professional experiences listed.

5 must-have skills for user experience designers

Knowing where to look for reliable and experienced UX designers is just one piece of the puzzle.

You should also know how to assess their hard and soft skills.

At Limeup, our UX experts have worked successfully with startups and established companies for 7+ years. We accumulated priceless experience that helps us assess UX designers’ hard and soft skills quickly and accurately.

According to our Chief Design Officer, Daria, the following are must-have skills for every experienced UX designer.

1Research skills

A good design is not about how it looks but how it works.

Therefore, professional UX designers should possess research skills to analyze the target audience’s pain points and create user-friendly design solutions.

If you need help with user experience design, make sure you hire UX designers who are skilled in the following:

Conduct usability tests with the target audience.
Run user interviews to learn more about your target audience’s pain points and needs and how they perceive your digital product.
Assess the design flaws of your digital product.
Etc.

Research is an essential part of the user experience design process. Therefore, we recommend you hire UX professionals who can do both, design and research simultaneously.

How to know whether your preferred UX design candidates have research skills?

First, review their CV and portfolio. They will most likely mention their experience with UX research and usability testing if they did any.

Second, ask questions. If you jump on a call with a prospective designer, ask what UX research methods they use, how, and whether they have any success stories to share.

Pay attention to the impact of the UX design work. The UX expert did an excellent job if any critical metrics, such as conversion rates, improved due to the design work.

2Root cause analysis skills

If your website’s conversion rates suddenly drop, you will start wondering why. Perhaps, you’ll recall all recent website changes that might have led to the CRs drop.

This is called the root cause analysis.

In other words, it is the process of discovering the root causes of problems to identify appropriate solutions.

Experienced designers know how to conduct extensive root cause analysis through UX research to discover what exactly causes performance issues, and only then do they recommend solutions. This way, they can create new design solutions to tackle your core usability issues.

3Communication skills

Any collaboration success depends on how well the communication is structured among team members.

The initial requirements should be communicated clearly to kick off the project successfully.

The updates should be conveyed accordingly to ensure everything and everyone is on track.

Finally, the end results should be communicated well to the client to close the project and keep the client satisfied.

Apparently, communication skills are the fundamentals of fruitful and frictionless collaboration. Therefore, we recommend hiring UX designers who know how to communicate with clients, will keep you up to date, and explain complex processes in easy to understand way.

Share your current challenges and goals and we will find the most suitable UX designers for you.

Hire UX designers

4Basic front-end coding skills

Every design is, sooner or later, implemented in life.

The easiness and accuracy of implementation heavily depend on the quality of the design. The web page might be code-heavy if the design is cluttered and different styles are used for the same elements, such as headlines.

A heavy page might slow down the loading speed, adversely affecting the overall website’s performance.

Therefore, we recommend partnering with top UX designers who have at least basic coding skills and know how design elements are coded.

5Attention to detail

Micromanagement takes a lot of time and effort. You don’t want to hire user experience designers who require 24/7 guidance.

Instead, you want to find a self-managed UX expert who pays attention to details and can handle a complete design project with minimum checkings.

UX designers should consider whether the user interface will differ on desktop and mobile and, if so, how. They should tell you why certain design elements are placed in particular places. They should spot and fix the bugs, not you.

Fully owning the project — what attention to detail means.

As a client, you are always welcome to provide feedback and ask for improvements. However, you won’t need to be there constantly if you have an experienced UX designer.

At Limeup, we assist clients at every step of their product development process, ensuring the final product design meets their initial requirements.

If you are looking for UX designers for hire, contact us. We are ready to discuss your current needs and dedicate the most suitable UX designers for your project.

How much does it cost to hire a UX designer?

As a UX design agency, we often hear the following question from our potential customers: “How much does it cost to hire a freelance UX designer?”

According to Glassdoor and Indeep, the following are the average salaries of UX experts depending on their experience level in the USA:

UX Design Intern: US$60,864, roughly $31,7/hour
Junior UX Designer: US$100,334, roughly $52,25/hour
Middle UX Designer: US$106,896, roughly $55,67/hour
Senior UX Designer: US$139,001, roughly 72,39/hour
Senior UX Design Manager: US$159,856, roughly $83,25/hour

So, depending on the expertise level, you will be required to pay $30 to $85 per hour if you hire UX designers.

The above pricing is just an estimate to help you understand the UX market a little better.

The actual costs will vary depending on whether you work with a company or a freelancer, years of experience, location, certifications, the impact of design work, and other criteria.

If you are looking for a price quote, contact us. At Limeup, we will estimate the scope of work, calculate the pricing and handpick the most suitable UX designers for your project.

5 things to review before hiring UX designers

Imagine you handpicked several UX design experts for the final review. What criteria would you use to assess the candidates and hire the best one?

As a global UX agency, we recommend reviewing the following criteria before hiring UX designers.

1The portfolio

Every experienced UX designer should have a portfolio with former works.

A portfolio serves as proof of expertise, creativity, and UI (user interface) design skills.

Design companies, like Limeup, usually display their portfolios on their websites, where you can quickly review the quality of work and decide whether the company is the right fit for you.

If you consider hiring UX freelancers, we recommend asking for a portfolio.

A good portfolio should necessarily contain the following elements, which will help you make the right hiring decision:

A list of designers’ latest projects
Former client names
Examples of former works
Industries
A summary of projects with key achievements

Need UX designers for hire?

Let’s discuss how our UX experts can help you achieve your goals.

2Industries

Different industries require different design approaches.

For example, if you work in fintech, you will most likely be concerned about security more than someone from the education sector. Therefore, you will be more open to partnering with UX experts who have previously worked with banks, investment, or crypt platforms.

Hiring UX designers who know your industry will ensure they understand the peculiarities of your industry and your target audience. Therefore, they can progress with your project faster.

Where to check the industries?

Industries are usually listed in the portfolio or the case study pages.

For example, our UX designers have in-depth experience in fintech, blockchain, real state, healthcare, saas, igaming, and education industries, to name a few. We openly display our former projects on the website and mention our former companies.

If you are looking for experienced UX designers in a particular industry, contact us. Our experts have different backgrounds and skills to help you with your current challenges.

3UX research skills

Designing based on gut feeling is a losing strategy.

Therefore, we stress the importance of UX research during the UX design process. User experience research specialist helps with usability testing, user interviews, product ideas and concepts validation, and more.

If you are tight on budget or don’t plan to work with a UX team, we recommend hiring dedicated UX specialists with research skills.

This way, your digital product will be designed and built with end users in mind.

4The impact of work

We assume you want to hire a UX designer to fix a particular problem on your website.

Perhaps the conversion rates dropped, or your website’s overall perception worsened over time. As a company owner or CEO, you believe these performance issues can be addressed with a digital product design.

So, a powerful design solution combines both an appealing user interface and the impact of work.

As a UX design company, we recommend hiring experts who publicly talk about and share the impact of their work. The impact is usually expressed in numbers, such as the percentage of CR increase, churn rate decrease, etc.

If your preferred company or a freelance UX designer worked on notable projects, they could talk about the global impact.

For example, our UX designers closely worked with a USA healthcare provider on an exclusive platform that helps people recover from injuries and surgeries faster.

If you want to hire a UX designer to create an impactful design solution, get in touch with us.

The Racoon Recovery patient platform was designed and developed by Limeup

5The process of work

A smooth collaboration process is an essential part of every successful teamwork.

Team members who are updated on the work progress usually perform better and faster. It’s especially relevant for remote collaborations, where team members work from different countries and time zones.

Therefore, we recommend hiring user experience designers with established remote work policies who use various collaboration tools, such as Slack and Figma, to discuss updates and share work progress.

Design experts should adapt to your working processes and be accessible daily for quick chats.

At Limeup, we often partner with companies in North America and Western Europe. Therefore, we have developed our own remote collaboration process that lets us effectively work with companies worldwide and stay accessible to our clients at any time.

Should you need help with UX design, contact us. We will discuss your current challenges and business goals and assign the most suitable UX experts to your project.