Finding the perfect UI UX designer for any firm is a challenge for the interviewer if they don’t know where to look or haven’t set the right expectations. As a canvasser, you might’ve faced some bad experiences when you hire UI UX designer for your company. As there aren’t many trustworthy candidates present out there, the only option you’re left with is to either try and succeed or it just becomes a ‘Hit & Miss’.
One thing which goes without saying is that the first quality you should be looking for in any designer is its passion for creating eye-pleasing designs. If a UX designer has an idea about what would draw attention to a normal human eye, & they can mix those ideas with your client’s brand colors & style, you’re all set.
Before we tell you the tips to find & hire UX designer that is best suited for your firm, let us answer a couple of essential questions.
Why Should You Hire UI UX Designer?
Any designer is a valuable asset in brand strategy and prioritization. A UI UX designer especially plays a crucial role in understanding & explaining what a customer wants & needs. There are multiple responsibilities that a UX UI designer needs to take care of, and we have listed a few of them here:
Key Roles & Responsibilities of a UI UX Designer
- Communicating with clients to understand their goals.
- Explaining user research results to the stakeholders.
- Developing personas and usage plans.
- Conducting usability testing.
- Designing wireframes, storyboards, sitemaps, and screen flows.
- Creating product prototypes.
What is the main difference between a UI & UX designer?
Primarily, UI refers to the buttons, toggles, screens, icons, and other visual elements that people interact with while using a website or an app on electronic devices. UX refers to the user’s interaction with a product, including how they feel about the exchange.
UX designers should think from the user’s perspective, and it’s more about understanding the user. UI designers need to be creative in designing a product or webpage. UX is all about making a product functional and valuable; on the other hand, UI makes a product attractive and interactive. You need to keep these things in mind when you hire UI UX designer.
Tips To Hire The Right Designer
Presumably, there’s no correct recipe for finding the right designer. But these tips might come in handy:
1. Analyzing the Roadmap
Assuming that you know the product or service quite well and have a predefined list of priorities, you need to evaluate the roadmap and determine the most relevant skills required to get the future work done. Don’t overthink it; just start from a combined list of UX skills, and pick those you think are necessary to solve the specific problems after a brief assessment.
2. Assess the Skills:
If you are part of a design team, you evaluate the skills of each team member. It would be best if you created spider charts of each team member’s qualities & drawbacks. When you overlap all the charts, you will notice your team’s strengths and weaknesses. And then, you can start modifying the job description.
If you don’t have a designer in your team, just use the skills list mentioned above and try to evaluate the gaps in your current team’s knowledge in terms of UX, and find the person who best fills those gaps. In a startup context, this makes sense because, to be effective, team members must complement each other. One extra tip that might help is, when you hire UX Designer that will work for the product, keep skills like marketing design, sales, or coding in your secondary checklist. You should focus more on research, facilitation, problem-solving, visual prototyping, and some experience.
3. Seek Potential Over Experience
We are not implying that experience isn’t essential, but this factor can be pretty relative these days. For instance, repeating the same tasks over & over for several years without extending responsibilities is not the same as following a growing career path.
So, whether you hire UI UX designer that is less experienced, you can always try to identify their attention to detail and analytical thinking. Listen and pay attention to how they structure their story. Ask if they did any research on your company and your clients before coming in for the interview, & notice if the first case study of their portfolio is the most relevant to your product or service. Discuss their work collaboratively, but constantly asking ‘Why?’ can give you a glimpse of their frustration parameters.
You may be surprised, but occasionally an enthusiastic and eager-to-learn junior designer can help you more than a bored or possibly an over-the-top senior designer. Not to mention the benefit of a fresh energy boost for your team.
4. Fictional ‘Thank You’ Letter
This is a tried & tested method by Jared Spool, is a little unconventional. It proposes that you imagine what you would write in a 1-year thank you letter to the UX designer you are currently looking for. This helps with setting expectations regarding technical or soft skills, teamwork, engagement, ownership, and so on. The outcome of this letter should be a specific list of expectations added to what you already have in mind. Following this trend has proven quite effective when you hire UI UX designer for your company.
5. Rating the Skills
When creating the job description, once you’ve curated all the required skills, you can rate each one with the level of proficiency you find acceptable. You can go with any rating or range, whatever works for you.
Let’s say, for instance, we use a simple experience scale of 1 to 3. 1 being the lowest, 2 is Moderate, and 3 is the Highest. If you need someone with a lot of experience in Primary Research, you rate the skill as 3 for being acceptable. If you evaluate the candidate as 2 that doesn’t meet your criteria. But as we mentioned earlier, prioritize the potential when choosing from multiple similar candidates.
6. Avoid bias filters
Discuss with the HR that has supposedly interviewed the candidate to give you a hint on what to expect next and maybe help you revise the interview script.
During the interview, have someone beside you. It can be a less experienced designer, a more technical person, or a business analyst, depending on your context. And switch roles from time to time with observation and take notes, just like in user testing.
Also Read – Top 7 UI/UX Design Trends to Follow in 2022
Best Platforms To Hire UI UX Designers
1. Upwork
Thi platform connects businesses of all sizes. From freelancers to independent professionals and agencies, they can fulfill your UI UX hiring needs.
2. Toptal
Toptal enables startups, businesses, and organizations to hire freelancers from a growing network of the best talent in the world.
3. Fiverr
This platform connects businesses with freelancers offering digital services in 250+ categories.
4. Workingnotworking
Working Not Working is where the world’s most innovative organizations hire creative talent.
5. Freelancer.com
Find & hire top freelancers, web developers & designers that fits your budget. This is the world’s largest marketplace of 43m.
We hope this article helps you find the right UX designer for your company & your hiring process. You can always go with the freelance options if you do not wish to hire a full-time UI UX resource for your company.
