Watches people use the current thing
Six sessions is usually enough to find the real problem, and it is usually not the one in the brief.
Hire a pro
UI/UX Designer
A designer who watches people use the thing before redrawing it. Research, flows, interface design and a component library the engineers can actually build from, rather than a beautiful file that has to be reinterpreted.
Shortlist
Within 24 hours
Deployed
Inside 2 weeks
Seniority
4+ years, shipped products
Rate
Flat monthly
Wrong fit
Replaced, not billed twice
What they do
The research is the part people skip, and the part that pays.
Most redesign briefs describe a symptom. Watching six people attempt the task usually reveals a different problem than the one you were asked to solve.
Designs the ugly states first
Empty, loading, error, too much data, name too long. These are most of the real screens and they are what gets skipped.
Builds a component library, not screens
So the twentieth screen costs an hour rather than a day, and so two engineers building different pages produce the same interface.
Writes the interface copy
Button labels, error messages and empty states are design. Leaving them to engineers produces "An error occurred".
Checks contrast and keyboard access
Not at the end as an audit. While designing, because retrofitting accessibility costs several times more.
What they know
The tools, grouped by what they are for.
Nobody on the bench knows all of this. We shortlist against what your problem actually needs, and tell you where the gaps are.
Design
FigmaAuto layoutVariablesDesign tokensPrototyping
Research
Usability testingInterviewsAnalytics reviewSession replay
Systems
Component librariesAccessibility (WCAG)Responsive rulesMotion specs
Handover
Dev-ready specsToken exportStorybook collaboration
How we vet
Four exercises, all of them from real work.
No algorithm puzzles. Every exercise below is a task this role does in a normal week, and we watch the method more than the answer.
Critique a real interface
A live product with genuine problems. We want specific, prioritised observations, not "it feels dated".
Vague critique is the commonest failure.
Design the ugly states
Given a happy-path screen, produce the empty, loading, error and overflow variants. This is the fastest signal of production experience.
Build a small component set
Three components with real variants and tokens in Figma. We check whether an engineer could build from it without asking questions.
Explain a decision under pressure
We push back on a choice. We want reasoning, not deference and not defensiveness.
Interview signals
Four questions for when you interview them yourself.
You interview every candidate we put forward, so these are yours to use. They separate somebody who has run this in production from somebody who interviews well.
Ask: how did you know the redesign worked?
A strong answer
Names a measured behaviour: task completion, time to first action, support tickets about a specific screen. Compares before and after.
A worrying answer
Says stakeholders liked it, or that it is cleaner. Neither is evidence, and both are compatible with the product having got worse.
Ask: show me an error state you designed.
A strong answer
Has several, and talks about what the message tells the user to do next. Treats the copy as part of the design.
A worrying answer
Only has happy paths in the portfolio. That is a portfolio of demos, and the missing screens are most of the real work.
Ask: how do you hand this to engineers?
A strong answer
Components with variants and named tokens, plus a conversation about what is feasible before the design is finished rather than after.
A worrying answer
Exports images and annotates them. The engineers then make a hundred small decisions the designer did not, and the result does not match.
Ask: how do you handle accessibility?
A strong answer
Contrast checked as part of choosing colours, keyboard order designed rather than inherited, and focus states drawn explicitly.
A worrying answer
Treats it as a compliance pass at the end. That is when it is most expensive and least likely to actually happen.
Honestly
When this is the right hire, and when it is not.
Ask for this when
Good fit
- Users cannot complete a task and nobody knows precisely where they stop.
- Every new screen looks slightly different from the last one.
- Engineers are inventing interface decisions because nobody else made them.
Ask for something else when
Poor fit
- You want a logo and brand identity. Different discipline, ask for a brand designer.
- You want mockups to sell an idea internally, with no build behind it.
- The design is settled and you need it built. Ask for a front end engineer.
Questions
Before you ask for a shortlist.
Some do, to component level, and it makes handover noticeably smoother. It is not the default, and a designer who codes a little is more useful than one who codes badly.
Yes, and it is usually the better brief. Extending a system you already have costs a fraction of replacing it and keeps everything built so far consistent.
For most product decisions, five or six sessions with real users. Past that the findings repeat. Large research programmes are occasionally justified and usually a way of postponing a decision.
Next step
Describe the problem, not the job title.
Thirty minutes, and a shortlist within a day. If a ui/ux designer is the wrong hire for what you described, you will hear that instead.