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Tips to Hire a UX Designer

The Ultimate Guide in March 2024

Post UX design job

Ux design freelancers

Chapter 1
UX design history
Chapter 2
User experience elements
Chapter 3
Importance of good UX for businesses
Chapter 4
How Can I Start to Be a UX Freelance Designer?

UX Design is a high demand popular concept in the business world. It means providing the best experience of using a particular product or service. All over the world, big companies are designing products that will eventually reach us and we will use them. In the world of freelancing and remote jobs also this with hiring a motion graphic designer has been in high demand in recent years. The good and bad experiences we have in using products or services make us continue to use, buy or not buy them. User experience design, also referred to as UX, UXD, UED as well as XD, is a process designed to increase user (or customer) satisfaction with by following means:


Improve usability

Ease of use (accessibility)

Fun interaction between the user (or customer) and the product

In user experience design, a user-centered perspective with the aim to increase the interaction of user and product should be considered. UX Design maximizes profit by increasing the interaction of customers (users) with the product and avoiding customer/user frustration.

HIRE FREELANCE UX DESIGNER
Chapter 1:
UX design history

What is UX design and its effect in user experience

User experience evolving and optimization process

The Story behind UX Design

UX design is not just limited to websites and mobile applications. The notion can be found everywhere around us. Look around yourself. Your daily interaction environment. Your bed or the bookshelf beside that. Go a little further away and watch your neighbor. The buildings in your street or the shops, which are made one by one, close to each other. They all have DESIGN. Everything surrounding you is following some specific rules of designing. There is a process of imagining and planning for the creation of objects or any kind of possibilities. In the past century, the traditional role of design has been to improve the visual appearance and function of the message or the information that you might want to talk about that.


What is UX Design?

When I was a student, having my favorite coffee with a chocolate croissant from the vending machine, was my daily breakfast routine. Not such an easy challenge at first for realizing how to deal with machines, it took me a while to realize what are the instructions behind that.

Selecting, ordering, payment and receiving the snack, were the procedures. As a productive tool which has existed in many occasions such as offices, companies, universities, metro stations or any other public places, they have been set up with some main structures which should be easy to follow and even could be international rules, as people having their trip from one country to another easier than before. Which means, they’ve expected to see the same functions like any other place.

All these general structures or universally standardized functions that are encountered with User Experience (UX) will save people from having to learn how to use a vending machine. But what is UX?

UX design has its roots in the ancient science of ergonomics which is divided into two words: Work and Natural laws. User Experience (UX) design is the procedure that the design teams use to create a product that would provide meaningful and the most usable and relevant experiences for users. It had started from the mechanical engineering industry which the effort was to build the interaction between the workers and their tools. Regarding this improvement, some companies such as Toyota started their product line based on the human-centered factors and put the user into the user experience design.

User experience in the era of computers

After that, the progress on the product side was established greater than before, while the first theoretical computer was coming out. Meanwhile, some industrial designers were focusing on some design aspects such as “Designing for People” in which they stressed the connection between people, their experience and the successful design of a product. This masterpiece is certainly one of the milestones for the birth of User Experience Design.


The crucial point is, the experience already existed for users. It would be necessary to have a look at current behaviors, habits, requirements of the users for making this experience. The experience would encourage users to come back again and repeat their execution.

This experience should consider WHY WHAT and HOW questions about product usage:

After all, you need to consider all these procedures as human-centered-design. Rather than think about what you would like to design, you need to think about what will make the user’s experience better! Make systems usable and useful by focusing on the users, their needs and requirements, and by applying human factors and ergonomics, and usability knowledge and techniques.

Chapter 2:
User experience elements

What does make a good experience for your customers

What You Should Know Before Starting Your Journey?

If you want to make a beautiful web page or design you can hire a graphic designer. But UX design includes ease of use and user-friendliness as well. Intuitive, smooth and friendly, are the 3 main keywords which can be explained as the features of this UX design. Let’s be more in detail.

UX is usability. This would be one wrong definition about that which you might hear many times. It’s true that UX is started with usability but it is much more complicated than that. The ease of the usage is the fact about the UX design but meanwhile, you need to pay attention to all aspects of this experience for your specific user if you want to deliver a successful product to the market. Imagine that vending machine. Is it all about how easily you’ll find the usage or It would be more than that to learn? Here I’ll mention the most incredibly important facts which are behind this experience.

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Useful: Only the product which has the value and purpose for the target customers, are coming to the market. The vending machine will be set in places where you need to have the machine and have a benefit for it.


Usable: The experience should provide a safe and comforting situation of use. The users of the vending machine will expect to reach their objectives efficiently. Push the button of your selective item as you’re looking forward to the other option, is the example of the usability.

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Findable: There should be an easy structure to find the items or the payment method. The product needs to be finable as much as possible.


Credible: The ability of the product to provide trust for the information, which means the information should be accurate and based on previous knowledge

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Desirable: it’s a combination of branding, image, identity, aesthetics and emotional design. The more desirable the product is, the more users want to have the experience of using the product. The machine couldn’t be an old version one, which is designed about the last century, although it needs to attract the user’s eye easily.


Accessible: The experience needs to be accessible for the different range of abilities by users. Such as people with specific disabilities, hearing disabilities, motion or vision impaired or even learning impaired, needs to reach the vending machine too. How the design could be convenient for different types of users such as the color or the visual side of the product, is the other side of the UX design.

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Valuable: Deliver the value to the product in the market and the customer

What areas does the UX design cover?

The user experience design comes from the combination and coordination of several other areas. Here are some of the most important of these areas:

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Interaction Design: Interaction design is recognized as one of the key elements of user experience design. Social network users cannot easily trust websites. Human communication with such tools (as a social being) requires an interactive, two-way approach.


User Interface Design: In general, visual design (also called graphic design) means the use of visual elements such as colors, images, and symbols to convey a message to the user.

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Usability: Usability is the question of what kind of features we need to offer to the user in order to achieve a specific goal that leads to effective, satisfying and high productivity use. Although good usability is essential for creating an effective user experience, it alone does not guarantee it, and we must also consider the human ability to use a website or software.


Accessibility: Accessibility means having a system for easy access, use, and understanding.

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Human-Computer Interaction: It may be argued that human-computer interaction is a central theme of UX design. In fact, we need to incorporate user experience into the designs.


Information Architecture: Information architecture is a science of art that helps users have better access to information. In other words, information architecture means helping the user to find information more easily.

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Today, with shifter hours reduced, it is those companies that can quickly adapt to change that will have the upper hand. If your business needs UX designer experts, but lacks the required resources or feels no need to engage a full-time worker, the answer lies in hiring a freelancer. In fact, hiring a freelance UX designer has the many advantages over hiring a full-time UX designer, which we will continue to do.

What is Interaction Design (IxD), User Experience Design (UX) and Human Computer Interaction (HCI)? What is the comparison between them?

Interaction Design (IxD)

Designing the interactive product to provide evidence for the communicative relationship between people and the product. The design should contain not only usage instructions of the product but also how the product’s response due to the user’s behavior. Interactivity and user behavior are the main points here. It’s depending on how much the designer could be creative about the idea of the interaction.

User Experience design (UX)

Try to enhance the pleasure trend of experiences for users by using the products by improving the usefulness, usability, and desirability that I mentioned before. It’s more objective.

The key difference between the interaction design and user experience design, which frequently changed their definition place together is, the way we define and think about user interaction. The interaction designer’s goal is the interactive moment when the product and user are experiencing that. while for the UX designer, this moment is just a part of the whole procedure.

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

Compared with IxD and UX design, the HCI is more academic field which is different from computer science. It’s actually going through the implementation of interactive systems between computers and humans. The crucial point is, we need to make the separation between the human part of the operation which is more cognitively and socially with the computer part and graphic and language design and also interaction part, which is interaction design rules.

What are the Differences Between UX and UI Design?

User Interface is all about the layout, visual design, branding and the mutual factor with UX design is the wireframing. UI is a small part of the UX design. Imagine our famous example which was a Vending Machine. The farming of the machine which is the physical structure such as the key items or the selecting and receiving part and even the payment procedure, the whole of the package are the user experiences while the interactive relation between you and the machine is the user interface. User Interface Design focuses on anticipating what users might need to do and ensuring that the interface has elements that are easy to access, understand, and use to facilitate those actions.

Areas Related to Building the User Experience

1Project Management focuses on planning and organizing a project and its resources. This includes identifying and managing the lifecycle to be used, applying it to the user-centered design process, formulating the project team, and efficiently guiding the team through all phases until project completion.
2User Research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies.
3Information Architecture (IA) focuses on how information is organized, structured, and presented to users.
4Content Strategy focuses on writing and curating useful content by planning the creation, delivery, and governance behind it.
5Web Analytics focuses on the collection, reporting, and analysis of website data.

Best Combination of UX Design and SEO for Boosting Website

There is a close friendship between SEO and UX design. You want to ask me How? I would tell you but before that, let me refresh some old stories about search engine optimization. There was a time, that the only factor for reaching your high rate of searching optimizations by any motor engine was, keywords. Now, Google takes hundreds of factors into account when determining which pages rank high in search engine results pages (SERPs). A secure and accessible website, user-friendly website and mobile application, authority and great content are considered as the main SEO ranking factors.

Regard to the UX designing factors that I mentioned above, UX designer has your website’s visitors as the target, while SEO targets search engines. Both share a common goal of giving users the best experience. If your website is user friendly, your target audience would be encouraged to come back another time to visit your content.

Read some common website elements that impact both SEO and User Experience design, that you need to consider:

1Keywords optimization: it’s based on your content. As the content needs to improve user experience, you have to consider the intention of the users and their target for searching results. You can hire an SEO expert to help you with this part.
2Wise title design:the clickable link in the search engine, should select carefully because there is a limited number of words. Also, URL and meta descriptions are in order, which needs to take more seriously. A meta description is a meta tag that provides a description of what the page is about. This meta description is displayed in the SERPs underneath the title of the page.
3Image design: your selective images need to be in the best format (jpg, gif, BMP) depending on what provides the best quality for your image. High Compression!
4Heading: all headlines should tell the readers and search engines what the paragraphs are about and show a logical hierarchy of the content. There should be one main heading for describing the whole of the content.
5 Easy navigation: there needs to have easy site structure to follow, website design or content structure. Your site structure is not only important for your users, but it’s your site’s roadmap for the search engines, too.
6Speed: one of the crucial for ranking factors of Google search. In nowadays google search engine mobile user experience is more important than the desktop once. Subsequently should be fast and easy to reach
7User’s interaction: designing a website to boost your target interaction, which would improve the search engine results pages
Chapter 3:
Importance of good UX for businesses

You gonna need an optimized user experience if you are expecting more from your online shop, business website, mobile application and your new gadget product

Deciding between hiring a full time or freelance employee

Hiring a UX designer interview questions

Put your customers in the center and try to see the world from their eyes. User Experience Design, one of those communications tools that would help you to get to know your user’s target and bring organizations to your digital market or your brand-new business. In this chapter we’d like to talk more about what are the benefits to be more welcome to UX design.

Why Should I Hire a UX Designer?

There are 5 main reasons which encourage all kinds of e-commerce or B2B or in general, all the other different kinds of business such as marketing, to have an expert about user experience design or user interface design. But first I would like to describe, why it’s better to hire a personal UX/UI freelance designer than an agency or the companies?

Getting knowledgeable about your audience
Enjoy the long-term value
Benefits in any other circumstances

Getting knowledgeable about your audience

the foundation UX/UI designing is based on the interactive relation between the user and the product. Feeling empathy with your target group is what you need more of in your business. A UX/UI freelancer can focus only on your target group to see what is their requirement about creating the product.

Enjoy the long-term value

as you hire your own UX UI designer, you’ll guarantee your business about the stormy days of upcoming and new technology. Hire freelance UX design, will adjust and optimize your UX program and keep pace with the needs of your target users.

Benefits in any other circumstances

hire a UX design freelance can be the best option for your other marketing projects as a consulter. Because they are the best resource for your target audience.

Now we’re going through the 5 main reason:

11. Website Optimization and Competition Analysis

2To Know the Target Group and Expert Reviews

3Being Inform about User’s Need and User Research

4Being More Accessible and Reachable about Market

5Bring Usefulness to Your Business

Benefits of hiring a freelance UX designer

Today, with shifter hours reduced, it is those companies that can quickly adapt to change that will have the upper hand. If your business needs UX designer experts, but lacks the required resources or feels no need to engage a full-time worker, the answer lies in hiring a freelancer. In fact, hiring a freelance UX designer has the many advantages over hiring a full-time UX designer, which we will continue to do.

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Fairer price: A freelance UX designer working from home doesn’t have to meet lots of overhead costs that a full-time designer employee need. That is why a finished price will be much more affordable for you. For a freelance UX designer, you do not need to pay insurance, commuting costs and compensations.


Flexibility: The main reason why many freelancers have opted to freelance is that they love setting their own working hours. Flexibility in working hours can be a positive feature for your company. The freelance UX designer can work on weekends and during non-working hours and deliver your project sooner. Of course, this is not the only advantage of flexible working hours. At times when your company has nothing to do, you don't have to pay a salary. At times when your company has nothing to do, you don't have to pay. The amount of money you pay depends on the amount of work you receive. This is a great advantage for companies that do not need a full-time employee.

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Immediacy and Swift Delivery: Freelance UX designers are always motivated to perform an excellent job and fast. They lack the time for office politics or endless agenda-less meetings. You can get your work done without spending time on a variety of topics, including bureaucratic red tape.


Independence:One of the most important issues that many companies face when hiring employees is the issue of training. Freelance user experience designers do not need training and therefore the costs of training prior to hiring will not be imposed on the company. On the other hand, freelancers are accustomed to working solo. Yes, of course, you’ll need to clearly define the work parameters clearly as well as your expectations but you won’t have to explain everything or train them.

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More Innovative: Since freelance UX designers are always in competition for more work projects, the quality of their work is better. Freelance UX designers tend to be more innovative and receptive to new technology, cutting edge ideas and suggestions. Whilst large firms could also offer wonderful and innovative ideas, freelancers, as they are not typically burdened with some preconceived attitudes, could step in and install cutting edge solutions to your business design issues to challenge even the best of your professionals.


Working with multiple UX designer at once: You don't have to pay fixed salaries, and you don't just have to work with one particular employee. This will open you up to the ideas of multiple people at once. Working with freelance UX designers around the world will give you access to pristine ideas.

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What Should I Ask from a UX Designer?

Here, I’m going through the 10 essential questions that you have to ask in your interview from UX designer or UX design team, before sitting on the contract seat:

1How does UX contribute strategically to the company’s success?

2Which part of the company’s task might be more in collaboration with your design?

3How much time do you need time to express your best design?

4How many projects do you work on simultaneously?

5Are you working with a team or individually? If teamwork, how do you see the design team growing?

6What are your major traits to get successful in this company?

7What’s your management philosophy?

8What is the most challenging task that you might encounter while you are designing?

9What are your strong points and weaknesses in design?

10Define the role of User Experience design in our company, with one sentence?

How much does it cost to hire one?

You need to hire a UX designer for your website or for your business application. As we talked about that before, UX designers have the knowledge about your customer’s needs and what can make them excited to follow your business. But how can you give a rate to your UX freelance designer about the payment? What are the factors that you need to consider?

The complexity of the project: analyzing the functionality and other relevant data, defining the user’s need and making the ideal project for them, creating the initial strategies and testing the initial prototypes are some of the general tasks of the UX/UI designer
Storytelling and the user’s personas: user’s behavior, habits or the routine which would like to be adjusted with the product’s functionality. Regard to this point the UX freelancer can provide the personas and the storyboard behind that
Amount of user testing required: start to interact with application for this reason the designer will start to monitoring this interaction and reviews the user’s feedbacks and run the application at the end

Based on relevant information, how much should you expect to pay?

Project TypeAverage Price (per hour)
UX Design (General)$25-$75
Wireframing$30-$60
User Research$25-$65
Storyboards/Personas$30-$70

What Is the Route to Going From a beginner to a Professional UX Designer?

1Be open to learn any new skills: A good UX designer will start from a good observation. If you want to design the user’s needs, you have to be the best observer. Then you need to improve your empathy with target users. They would like to see how much do you have as a common-sense as a designer or UX developer with their initial requirements. Now it’s time to put them as your priority and start to do your design thinking. But how is it possible, if you don’t make it up with a good presentation at the end? For proving your idea, talent is not enough. You must learn game rules
2Use the skills which already exist: We all have our experiences from our earlier job. Everything that we learned in the past, maybe very for your future career.
3Time to learn the rules of design: Books or online courses will encourage you to get more familiar with this field.

Online Courses to Enhance UX Design Knowledge

Coursera

Pluralsight

LinkedIn

Springboard

Skillshare

UX Design Institute

Udemy

Treehouse

Chapter 4:
How Can I Start to Be a UX Freelance Designer?

We are living in a freelance nation where it is getting greater every day than before. There are currently more than 53 million freelancers in the US – 37.5 percent of the workforce. By 2020, this figure will break the 50 percent mark. CNN Money lists “UX Designer” as one of the Best Jobs in America, with an 18 percent growth and top pay in the $138K range. There is not that much to gain for starting your work, all you need is determination, skills, and customers.

What Is the Overview of UX Designer’s Tasks?

1Evaluation of Current System of Your Product and Website

2Analysis Different Interaction Between Tools and Users

3User’s Surveys and Making Interview

4Wireframes and Prototypes for Your Ideas

5User’s Flows and Guiding Their Moves

6Storytelling

7Design Your Custom Pattern

8Read the User’s Profile

9Content Inventory

10 Essential Skills That You Should Learn

1Empathy

2Communication and Marketing

3Interaction Design (IxD) & User Interface (UI)

4Information Architecture (IA)

5Software Prototyping

6Visual Communication

7Coding

8Website Wireframe

9Collaboration

10Analytics

Average Earnings for Freelance UX Designers

Average Freelance UX Designer Yearly Earnings is $97,426. UX positions of any kind have a wide range of salaries around the world, depending on the country the employer/client is located in. Earnings also vary significantly based on experience. As I mentioned before, within the narrowly-defined group of divisions in hiring cost, the range is quite wide. Designers are charging anywhere between $25-$75 per hour, on average, for all types of work.

On the other hand, you might want to calculate your work’s prices per project, rather than per hour. This eliminates the hassle of tracking hours and simplifies billing. Determining a rate for a large project can be challenging, but will become easier with time and experience.

8 UI/UX design trends for 2020

1Animated Illustrations

2Micro-interactions

33D Graphics in web and mobile interfaces

4Virtual Reality

5Augmented Reality

6Neumorphism

7Asymmetrical Layouts

8Storytelling

Stay on the Job Boards

Job boards are like restaurants and bars. The good ones attract so much business that you eventually have to move in to search for something new and hot. Some of the best sources of work right now are:

1Perfectlancer

2UX Switch – UX Jobs

3Smashing Magazine – Smashing Jobs

4DesignerHangout – UX Job Board