User Experience Design Firms

Considering hiring a reputable UX design agency? If you are, you probably already know that fixing a problem in the development stage costs ten times as much as fixing it in design. And it costs 100 times as much to fix a product that’s already been launched. That’s why you’ll save you and your team some trouble by hiring a firm that specializes in UX design. Here, you’ll find the most prominent user experience design firms along with a detailed guide that will help you shortlist and discover your perfect match.

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8 Best UX Design Firms

Andersen

Andersen is an international custom software development company with a strong focus on technology-intensive industries. Since its founding in 2007, the company has opened over 10 development centers and about 10 sales offices around the world. Andersen has completed over 950 projects and received hundreds of positive reviews from clients around the world. Today the company is our technology stack includes .NET, C#, Java, Python, PHP, Node.js, TypeScript, Golang, C++, JavaScript, Angular, React.js, Vue.js, HTML, CSS, Java (Android ), Swift / Objective C (iOS), React Native, and more. 2, L3 support. See profile
Service focus

Custom Software Development

Mobile App Development

Web Development

Project Management

Key features

$ 10,000

$ 25-49

250+

United States, New York, Manhattan

Praxent

Over a period of more than 20 years, Praxent has delivered over 300 digital projects. Transformative and flexible, their software development services ensure the desired realization of the client’s goals, setting an actionable path for innovation while reducing risk along the way. See profile
Service focus

Custom Software Development

UI/UX Design

Mobile App Development

Key features

$ 25,000

$ 100-149

100-249

United States, Texas, Austin

Fuzzy Math

Fuzzy Math is one of the leading UX design firms in the USA. Based in Chicago, the agency serves clients on a global scale. The small team of professionals is collaborative and communicative, always keeping their clients in the loop. See profile
Service focus

UI/UX Design

Web Design

Product Design

Key features

$ 50,000

$ 150-199

25-49

United States, Illinois, Chicago

Sentio Design

Sentio is a Chicago-based product strategy and UX design agency that powers companies through human-centered solutions. They specialize in designing mobile and web applications in FinTech, EdTech and HealthTech, creating experiences customers love. See profile
Service focus

Usability Reviews

UI/UX Design

Product Design

Product Strategy

Key features

$ 10,000

$ 150-199

2-9

United States, Illinois, Chicago

Studio Simpatico

Based in NYC, Studio Simpatico is a design studio specializing in creating brands and visual identities, designing digital products and websites, and developing custom WordPress themes. Their style is collaborative, creative, and consultative, and they partner with companies, businesses, and organizations who are simpatico with their approach. See profile
Service focus

UX Design

UI Design Services

Product Design

Branding

Key features

$ 10,000

$ 150-199

2-9

United States, New York, New York City

SeekThem

SeekThem is a platform for startups and enterprises to hire dedicated remote designers on a monthly basis. Now no need to hire costly in-house designers, hire designers from SeekThem and they will work as good as your in-house designer for a half of the onshore cost. Time has changed now - we are redefining outsourcing. Now, it is the time to get the right skill-set - on demand. See profile
Service focus

Graphic Design

Web Design

Infographic Design

Web & Digital Design

Key features

$ 1,000

$ 0-24

2-9

India, Ahmedabad

Divami Design Labs

Divami Design Labs is a UX UI Design & Development firm with offices in India and the USA. The company has grown steadily over the past twelve years. They have worked with reputed clients across the world to deliver world-class user experience through web & mobile apps, B2B SaaS & Cloud platforms, Consumer apps & eCommerce platforms, and Digital Transformation projects. See profile
Service focus

UX/UI Design

Mobile App Development

UX Research

UX/UI Consulting

Key features

$ 10,000

$ 50-99

50-99

India, Hyderabad

Creative Navy

Creative Navy is a London based UX/UI design agency with a global ethos. Their team of senior designers specializes in medical and embedded GUI. Known for taking on some of the most complex projects on the market. Combining rigorous research practices and cognitive science, Creative Navy delivers UX that eliminates the need for training, prevents user errors, and preserves cognitive resources. See profile
Service focus

UX/UI Design

UX Research

UX Prototyping

UX Consulting

Key features

$ 1,000

$ 50-99

25-49

United Kingdom, London

Choosing the Best UX Design Agencies

A Step-by-Step Evaluation Methodology

 

Our goal is to present you with objective rankings to help you find the right UX agency for your UX design needs. To accomplish our mission, we’ve devised an all-inclusive evaluation methodology that considers multiple aspects, including the agency’s proficiency, project management methods, processes, customer satisfaction, and more. The following is a walkthrough of what we did to make sure you end up with a website that satisfies all six core UX qualities.

 

The Agency’s Proficiency

We begin our evaluation of UX design firms with website checks. Once we land there, we consider how UX-friendly the design is because we firmly believe in the saying, “practice what you preach.”

The next step is going through the UX design company’s portfolio to determine their experience and expertise. Beyond the attractive screens, we consider the variety and quality of work done and try to answer the following questions:

  • Do they work with a variety of industries or specialize in a particular niche?
  • Are they able to reach the client’s goals?
  • Did the product solve the client’s problems?
  • Do they have experience working with businesses of different sizes?

Finally, we gauge the testimonials that the UX design companies provide. It’s worth noting that we don’t put too much weight on this factor mainly because companies can easily alter the testimonials. That’s why we go a step further and assess client satisfaction through the reviews and ratings shared by clients on review sites, social media, and Google. These give a clearer picture of the agencies’ strengths and weaknesses. Of course, unless the number of negative reviews is overwhelming, we won’t necessarily disregard the user experience design agency. 

 

The Vetting Process

Once we have our potential candidates, we continue evaluating more specific aspects to shortlist the companies. Examining the processes they use provides us with important information regarding the agencies’ experience and credibility and their work quality. 

When assessing whether the user experience design companies have a reliable process that combines visual design and usability, we look for the following:

 

Deep User Research

First of all, we assess the UX design firm’s research methods. Research gives insight into the target users—their needs, goals, behavior, and motivation. There are different types of user research, but we consider these to be most important:

Card Sorting

Card sorting is a research method in which individuals of the target audience organize topics into groups according to what makes sense to them. Card sorting helps in creating an information architecture that meets the audience’s expectations.

Focus Groups

Effective UI UX design firms will use focus groups to learn the needs, ideas, attitudes, and desires of users and how your product addresses them. They’re best used to test the product’s usability or to collect direct feedback on proposed features. 

Heuristic Evaluation & Expert Reviews

A heuristic evaluation is used to discover usability issues in the design. Expert reviewers can assess the interface and compare it against set usability principles.

Personas

The goal of creating personas is to have reliable representations of the most critical audience segments so you can identify the different types of users that might use your site, brand, service, or product. Top UX design firms would base personas on qualitative and quantitative research, as well as web analytics.

Surveys

Surveys are quantitative methodologies that help you learn more about the people visiting your site: who they are, what they want to accomplish, what information they’re looking for, and more.

Use Cases

Use cases outline the possible interaction sequences between users and systems in a specific environment regarding a specific goal. In simpler terms, it’s a collection of possible scenarios related to achieving a particular goal.

 

Usability Evaluation

A usability evaluation explores the quality of the users’ experience with a particular product. To collect this information, the UI UX design agency needs to be agile in the following practices:

Wireframing

UI/UX design companies should be able to create an illustration of the website or app page that presents how the space on the page will be allocated, how the content and images will be distributed, and what functions are available. This guides how a visitor will use the website. The focus here is on the site navigation and structure rather than the visual layer.

Prototyping

UX agencies should then move on to prototyping. It’s the first version of the site, a close representation of the user interface and how everything will look. It enables the designer to experiment with ideas and check the usability and functionality before coding. By building a prototype, the UI/UX design company will save you a lot of time and money.

Testing

Testing is an essential step for UX companies because it allows you to polish the design.  It gives a great opportunity to resolve any errors or usability problems before the site is finished. 

 

User Interface Design

The UI design is all about predicting the users’ needs to ensure that the interface has all the necessary elements. UI brings together several essential concepts: 

Information Architecture & Visual Hierarchy

Information architecture shows a website’s navigation structure and, thus, the organizational hierarchy. Working through this format allows the UI design companies to learn whether the individual pieces of the site fit together and how they relate within the structure. 

Interaction Design

Interaction design involves creating captivating interfaces based on a deep understanding of how users interact with the product. This enables the UI design agency to anticipate the user’s interaction, fix any issues, and guide the user into fulfilling the desired outcome. 

Aesthetic Design

Aesthetic design is centered around the site’s visuals. It involves strategic placement of colors, fonts, images, and other elements like shapes, lines, and textures. The best UI/UX design companies can effectively create a visual design that gives users a smooth transition throughout the page. This helps them stay focused on the content and reinforces trust in the brand. 

 

Additional Services

We also look beyond UX design and consider whether the agencies offer other important services. While not a decisive factor for rankings, offering a broader scope of services certainly adds favorable points to the UX firms we evaluate. Here are a few extra services we assess:

Content vs. Lorem Ipsum Design

While hiring content marketing experts works well, it also doesn’t hurt to have the experts crafting your design strategize your content too. The design is a tool that presents your content with the user’s intent in mind. Preparing a content strategy as part of the design process ensures that the content will be well structured, useful, and engaging.

Accessibility

Did you know that only 10% of the websites are accessible to people with disabilities? In the past few years, there has been a general rise in awareness among business owners, designers, and marketers in general.

We made sure to list verified UX consulting firms that know the best practices for accessibility. This way, you’ll have options in case you need a design that’s navigable for people with disabilities.

Web Analytics

This refers to collecting, reporting, and analyzing data. If you want to modify an existing design or see what worked and what didn’t, know that the agencies we listed will deliver actionable insights that rely on multiple tools and KPIs.

Web Development

On our list, you’ll find user experience design firms with in-house teams of web development specialists.  They will take care of the technical part of the website, and when done by the same UX company, the two teams will collaborate and consult on whether the design choices are possible, saving time and costs on revisions. 

Consultancy

Even if you have an in-house team to handle the hands-on work, you need someone who has a deep understanding of how to oversee your site. We filtered the companies that are skilled in providing consultant UX design services. User experience consultants embody different subdomains. This can help the designer complete a UI/UX audit, fulfill business model validation, prioritize ideas, adopt new technologies, implement user research techniques, and more.

 

Project Management

This is the next big step: evaluating the user experience agency’s ability to plan and organize a project and its resources until completion. Here’s what we look for:

Competitive Analysis Report

The best user experience design companies can determine whether there’s a good market fit for your site before starting the design process. Also, a full-fledged competitive analysis should outline your top competitors and what they’re doing right. It should also list their weak points and show how a better UX can make a difference. From this, they can plan and create a product with a competitive advantage that provides a superior user experience. 

Tools and Workflow

What tools the user experience consultant uses and how its workflow looks are two crucial factors that should rule your final decision. We don’t trust companies that aren’t familiar with the tools used by the top UX designers, such as Sketch, MockFlow, Axure, and Adobe XD. 

Furthermore, learning how the agency handles its workflow shows us whether they work in teams and the focus and skills of each staff member. Some UX design firms might be UX-oriented only, while others can also act as user interface consultants or provide additional tasks like documentation. 

Transparency, Communication, & Collaboration

The top user experience design firms have a skilled team that knows how important transparency and good communication are. They should know how to deliver information so that you as a client can understand them. To assess this ability, we go through customer reviews to find specific references to the UX agency’s communication style. Sometimes, we even reach out directly to the agencies and present ourselves as potential clients.

Specifications for Developers

Top UX agencies know the importance of putting together a style guide and specifications. These resources ease the next steps for the development team, ensuring that the designs will be implemented consistently.

 

Pricing

Most UX design pricing depends on the scope of the project. We consider the companies that charge both by the hour and by project. However, they must be clear about the type of pricing model they use. Additionally, we assessed whether the UX design company’s rate complies with industry standards. And if it doesn’t, we verified whether there was a solid reason for the discrepancy.

 

Before You Hire a UX Company

Our list encompasses the best UI/UX design companies out there. However, to shortlist the candidates and find the most suitable user experience design agency for your needs, you need to follow several important steps.

Define Your Goals

Understanding your objectives is paramount. You need to have a clear vision of how you want the site to benefit your business to convey it to the design team properly. Also, consider what deliverables the designer should create and what your primary requirements and expectations are.

Check the UX Design Firm’s Industry Experience

Each industry is different, so you need to ensure the agency you choose is experienced in yours. This way, they’ll be able to come up with unique ideas and deliver a better output. 

Establish a Budget

Another essential factor to consider when shortlisting your UX design companies is your budget. If you’re on a tight one, consider the agencies that offer more affordable services. However, always make sure you know exactly what’s included in the price and whether you’ll be billed for certain additional services.  

Review the UI/UX Design Agency’s Culture

UX design takes time, so your partnership should be a healthy one. Assess the user experience design companies’ culture and the personalities of the team members. You should go for an agency that offers mutual respect, good understanding, and a smooth rapport. 

Do You Have a Fixed Deadline?

Setting and meeting deadlines are two major aspects of time management. If you have a fixed deadline for launching the site or app, you should be clear about it so that both you and the UI/ UX design company’s team are on the same page.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

How much do UX designers charge?

The cost of UX design services will depend on the scope of your project. The most significant factor for determining the price is your project’s level of complexity. The designer’s job includes learning how users can best interact with each feature on the website or app, which is far more complicated for larger projects. On average, you should expect to pay $25–$75 per hour for a general UX design project.

How much does a UX consultant charge?

The average cost you should expect a good user experience consultant to charge is between $15 and $75 per hour. The price varies according to the project scope and what’s expected from the consultant. However, be sure to check whether your chosen UX agency provides this service since the best UI/UX design companies usually do.

Why is UX good for a business?

UX design is all about delivering customer satisfaction by improving a site or app’s usability. Designing with the customer in mind is vital because it helps you leave a great first impression. In a nutshell, UX design helps you with several factors:

  • It increases brand loyalty.
  • It boosts conversions.
  • It reduces costs in the long run.
  • It delivers healthy SEO rankings.

What does a user experience UX designer do?

UX agencies are concerned with the part of a site or app that the end-user sees and interacts with. This involves the layout, the interface, and any interactive elements. A UX designer’s job is to make the site or app easy to use, ensuring that it works how users expect it to. 

Does UX design require coding?

UX designers don’t have to learn to code. While it could be a competitive advantage for some career paths, like user experience consultants, it’s not a must-have skill for UX designers. These professionals should possess high-quality design and strategy skills. 

What does a UX strategist do?

A user experience strategist is responsible for shaping and communicating UX strategies and design. The role requires a high organization level since they envision, plan, and drive the UX project with the other team members. 

Is the agency’s location important?

While it shouldn’t be a deciding factor, you might want to keep the user experience agency’s location in mind. You need to consider when and how the team will be available to communicate with you. If you prefer face-to-face meetings, you should go with a locally based UX design agency. However, if you don’t mind having Skype sessions, you can consider candidates from all over the country.