What does a UX designer do, and what do you get from it?

A managing director receives a quote for a new internal system. Half of the first phase is called “UX: research, user journeys, wireframes and testing”. She asks herself: what do we actually get for those hours, and can we not just start building? It is a fair question, and the answer is one of the most important in the whole project. UX work is where you find out what to build before you pay to build it.

In this guide we show what a UX designer does with a concrete example. We follow a week in a project where a service company with 40 staff wants to replace spreadsheets and phone calls with a system for planning jobs. The example is put together from the engagements we typically see, and it shows the methods, the deliverables and the value they create.

What does a UX designer do? The short answer

• Talks to users and observes how they work today.
• Maps workflows, user journeys and the points where things go wrong.
• Prioritises with you what the first version must do.
• Designs the structure: navigation, screens, flows and content.
• Sketches wireframes and builds clickable prototypes.
• Tests with real users and adjusts the design based on the results.
• Hands the design over to developers and follows up once the product is in use.

Notice how little of the list concerns colours and typefaces. That is the UI designer’s main job, and often the same person does both. We explain the difference in the guide to UX vs UI design.

A week on a project: what does a UX designer do day by day?

The most valuable moment of the week often happens on Tuesday. In our example the designer discovers that the planner spends an hour every morning phoning around to confirm who is ill. It was nowhere in the requirements, and management did not know. The solution becomes a simple sick-day button in the staff app that moves jobs automatically. That feature alone saves around five hours a week, and it would have been missed if the project had gone straight to development.

Which methods does a UX designer use?

Interviews and usability tests are the two methods that deliver the most value for money in most projects. We have written separate guides on how to run user interviews and usability testing with five users, so you can use the methods yourselves between projects.

What does a UX designer actually deliver?

• A short research report with the key insights, quotes and recommendations.
• Personas or user profiles describing the main user types and their goals.
• User journeys and flows for the tasks that matter most to the business.
• A sitemap or navigation structure.
• Wireframes of every key screen, often in Figma.
• A clickable prototype that can be tested and shown to management and investors.
• Test results with a prioritised list of fixes.
• Specifications for developers: states, error messages and edge cases.

We cover the difference between wireframes, mockups and prototypes, and when you need which, in wireframe vs mockup vs prototype. In short, the deliverables become more detailed and more expensive to change the further along the process you get.

What is a UX designer worth to your business?

Run the numbers on the example above. If the UX phase costs a week of work and saves the planner five hours a week, it has paid for itself in under six months on that one feature alone. Add the features that were never built because testing showed nobody needed them. Those saved development hours are often the biggest gain. It is also why we always start by understanding the workflow when we help companies replace Excel with a custom system.

How does a UX designer work with developers and management?

A good UX designer is the link between three groups: users, who know how the work is done, management, who know what the business needs to achieve, and developers, who know what can be built within time and budget. The designer translates between them. With management it is about priorities and goals. With developers it is about states, data and edge cases: what happens when the list is empty, when the network drops, or when two planners edit the same job at once. The closer designers and developers sit, the fewer misunderstandings.

After launch the work changes character. Now there is real data to look at: where users drop off, which features get used and what support is asked about. A good UX designer uses those numbers to choose what to improve next and tests the changes before they are built. In our projects much of that dialogue happens in the client panel, where clients can see designs, comment and approve, so decisions are kept in one place and do not vanish in email threads.

Which skills mark out a good UX designer?

• Curiosity and the ability to ask open questions without leading the answer.
• A grasp of complex workflows and the ability to simplify them.
• Sketching and prototyping in Figma or similar tools.
• Understanding of accessibility and WCAG 2.1 AA.
• Knowledge of how web and apps are built, so the design can be realised.
• Communication: can explain a design decision with data and user quotes.
• The courage to recommend dropping a feature when testing shows it.

Should you hire a UX designer or buy UX from an agency?

With us, UX is part of the fixed price. That means research, wireframes and testing are included from the start, and the same group of people designs and builds. If you are recruiting yourselves, you will find questions for the portfolio review and the interview in the guide to hiring a UX designer, and you can read about our approach to research under user research.

How to get the most out of a UX designer

1. State the goal in numbers: hours saved, more bookings or fewer support tickets.
2. Give access to real users, including those in the field and at the counter.
3. Share data: support logs, analytics, spreadsheets and complaints.
4. Appoint one decision-maker who can answer quickly.
5. Join at least one usability test. It changes how you see your own product.
6. Accept that some features will be dropped when testing shows it.
7. Plan follow-up after launch so the design can be improved with data.

If you have a project where you want UX involved from the start, you can get a fixed price within 24 hours. We describe which UX activities are included, and you can follow the work as it happens in our client panel.