5 Ways a UX Designer Can Benefit Your Company

What is a UX designer? 

A UX designer is an employee or contractor who’s responsible for optimizing a product’s user experience. Whether you’re building a website, developing a mobile app or creating a physical product, it should be as easy as possible for your client to use.

A UX designer constantly seeks ways to improve your products and services. They do this by amassing a deep understanding of your company and the problem you’re aiming to solve. This reduces the chances of product failures and other issues.

UX designers conduct in-depth user research to discover the target customer’s pain points and identify their needs. They gather survey data, assemble focus groups, schedule individual interviews and conduct A/B testing. 

UX designers then continue building out the offering’s design and conduct user testing to see how people interact with the product. By gaining feedback, they modify the design to fix any problems that arise. 

5 ways a UX designer can benefit your business

The right UX designer can help your small businesses become more efficient, user-friendly and innovative. If you’re still not sure you need one, consider these five benefits of hiring a UX designer. 

1. UX designers can think through systems.

UX designers can see the big picture and organize complex processes into simple solutions. When they talk about design thinking, they get excited about conquering major obstacles — even for innovative, enterprise-level solutions.

If you work in a field with many moving parts, you need a systems evaluator. Once these designers are on your team, they will interview stakeholders and users, follow the customer journey and sketch different possible pathways from a new perspective. 

In your hiring process, look for candidates who can turn confusing problems into simple solutions. To sharpen their skills, give them challenging, complex problems to work on across different departments.

2. UX designers can be artistic.

Some UX designers lean toward artistic thinking. They come with portfolios full of sketches, drawings or digital animations, and they often have an innate talent for compelling visual work.

These candidates might need someone to guide them on technical tasks. But given how heavily UX design relies on sight, these individuals make great candidates for companies that need eye-catching prototypes.

Artists know how to distill a concept down to its core and make that core as appealing as possible. Visual work takes practice, so if you give these artists plenty of time and space to hone their craft, it will pay off. Consider building more creative time into your UX designers’ schedules to maximize their value for your small business.

3. UX designers can gather customer insights.

Some companies have entire positions or departments dedicated to the user experience. But for smaller businesses, the designers must know how to research, and UX designers know how to do this well.

When you’re interviewing candidates, inquire about their user outreach experience. Ask for examples of their customer interview skills, and see if they ask good questions and show empathy as they research customer insights.

Build research and testing into every product development cycle to allow these designers to improve the product using their unique skills. They know how to find the answers, but they usually need the go-ahead from management to flex their research muscles.

4. UX designers can improve your product.

Some companies, like corporate innovation centers with agile teams, need to see working prototypes as quickly as possible. As natural tinkerers, UX designers are perfect for that role. [Read related article: Metrics for Measuring Your Agile Team’s Productivity]

If you prioritize speed above all else, look for UX designers with a history of learning new design tools, attending classes and Maker Faires, and playing with experimental concepts. Within your team, open lines of communication between designers and developers. This will give the designers an opportunity to create even more efficient processes.

These designers can test new tools you’re considering. If the team wants to implement technology for a new feature, let a UX designer team up with a developer to take a crack at it first.

5. UX designers can also be managers.

The best managers are process-oriented people. They stay up to date on trends by reading blogs, following thought leaders and attending meetups with fellow designers. Sure, UX designers know how to do the design work, but they also see how that work fits into your organization’s broader picture.

If your small business wants designers who could step into other roles in your company one day, look for people with a passion for human-centered design, a history of organized efficiency and leadership skills. These designers can speak capably with stakeholders from across departments, and they’ll show an interest in the data their work produces. These high-potential UX designers are introspective about processes and are always ready to pursue improvements.

As a business leader, you should allow UX designers to adjust the processes around them after they get some experience in the environment. This improves operational efficiency in the short term and helps designers take steps toward leadership responsibilities.

How UX design is changing

UX designers are responding to current business demands by broadening their skill sets. Previously, UX was largely the domain of designers. Today, UX professionals create designs based on data from websites, apps and customer research, with the aim of solving users’ problems. Their ultimate goal is to create a website, product or service that becomes indispensable to the user. 

Many UX designers have carved out their own niches in particular industries. So, if you’re thinking about hiring a UX designer, consider looking for candidates with specific knowledge of your sector. They’ll have a deeper understanding of what your customers want and the challenges specific to your business.

Artificial intelligence (AI), including machine learning, has become integral in UX design and development, and that’s set to accelerate in the coming years. For e-commerce firms, in particular, you need to customize your website or app so visitors immediately see what interests them. Expect increasing personalization on websites and apps, coupled with the use of AI-powered chatbots that can answer customer questions and provide recommendations. 

For years, there have been attempts to make the internet and mobile apps more accessible for people with disabilities and impairments. The fluid structure of UX design tools makes this task easier than it was 10 years ago. Businesses that focus on accessibility will not only broaden their market of potential customers but also improve the experience for all users. That’s because accessible sites or apps are easier to navigate, have optimized color contrast, use legible fonts and are compatible with screen readers. 

3 predictions for the future of UX design

There are reasons for companies to optimize the UX design of their products and services. A good customer experience can result in more sales; in a Statista survey, 82 percent of respondents said they would recommend a company based on a positive customer service experience, and 78 percent said they make purchase choices based on their interactions with customer service. 

Given these figures, businesses will continue to invest in UX. Here are three dominant UX industry trends that analysts expect in the near future.

1. DIY UX

Many analysts predict that software as a service (SaaS) will play an increasing role in UX design, similar to how Webflow brought complex, responsive websites to business owners and designers who couldn’t code. UX-focused tools will make it possible to plan layouts and test prototypes using logic-driven, drag-and-drop-type interfaces. The no-code and low-code revolution is coming to UX as well.

Just as Webflow did not decimate the coding industry, these tools won’t eliminate the need for UX professionals. In the future, they’re more likely to take on a more consultative role and guide the people they manage through the more complex aspects and applications of UX that software won’t quite capture.

2. AI integrations

Earlier, we mentioned how AI would help transform the user experience. AI has already begun to change how UX designers do their job by not only generating suggestions and providing feedback on live projects but also actively contributing ideas and solutions to design and workflow decisions.

In the way an artist can type a prompt into Midjourney and receive four different interpretations of their visions, UX designers will be able to input their rough written and visual concepts into their AI-driven software. This will then generate multiple design options based on the user data, brand guidelines and best practices that have been fed into the system already.

Again, this won’t replace UX professionals, but it will allow them to focus their vision and talents on the bigger picture rather than on repetitive, time-sapping design tasks.

3. Voice in UX

Voice commands seemed to be the next big thing back when Siri, Cortana and Alexa came to market, but they never really took off because their interactions were formulaic and stilted. Generative AI changes that, so voice might be the next frontier for UX designers.

Building in voice interactivity powered by generative AI could be revolutionary. That’s because, unlike the older system, generative AI can engage in full conversations with humans and remember previous interactions. 

Challenges for UX designers will include incorporating voice recognition tech into their schematics, figuring out how to make systems reply to users without compromising privacy, and moving beyond simple commands and responses to make the voice and personality of the AI likable. 

Mark Fairlie and Rudy Mutter contributed to this article.