Best User Experience (UX) Agencies – September 2019 Reviews

Designs, for a very long time, were associated with fashion, interior, textile but now the disjoining is not just confined to that. The design is now a core part of many industries like digital agencies, machine designing, advertising, and many other growing domains. With screens taking over, we have UX (User Experience) and UI (User Interface) that has crucial design roles, which are also expected to play quite a role in IT and digital platforms.

>> UX Design:

User Experience Design is all about giving a meaningful and a comfortable experience to the customer. The design is not visual or aesthetic but as the name suggests it’s about experiencing and feeling. It deals with quality interactions, engagement with the users. The effective you are the better the result. User Experience is a combination of design, communication, and usability for your digital projects.

>> UI Design:

User Interface has a lot to do with how the website looks and how easy is it to understand and access it. UI Design is the process of making your digital experiences intuitive. It includes the layout, content, and responsiveness of a device or the software.

>> Difference between UX and UI

As stated by Emil Lamprecht in one of his articles explaining about UX and UI, “If you imagine a product as the human body, the bones represent the code which gives it structure. The organs represent the UX design: measuring and optimizing against input for supporting life functions. And UI design represents the cosmetics of the body–its presentation, its senses, and reactions.” It should be clear from the definition and understanding that UI and UX work hand in hand and so does their implementation. It’s hard and very difficult to implement both of them separately. 
Strategy, content, wireframing, prototyping, execution and analysis part of the product development in UX. An ideal UX team requires an expert in design, a marketer, and a manager’s thought process. The aim of a UX designer is to connect business goals with user requirements and to grow the relationship between user and businesses by improving user stability. While the UI is responsible for a brand’s visual graphics and presentation that gives the user a great experience while using a digital product or platform. Co-Creator of foster.fm says “User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) are some of the most confused and misused terms in our field. A UI without UX is like a painter slapping paint onto a canvas without thought; while UX without UI is like the frame of a sculpture with no paper mache on it. A great product experience starts with UX followed by UI. Both are essential for the product’s success.”

Over time we have realized the importance of the UX design. Now people understand it and realise that it should be a part of every project from the very start. For example, An E-commerce website is designed by just the web developer won’t be able to navigate the users or make a purchase. The web developers are only limited to website ideas. However, the basic problem like such is solved by UX Design. It engages the customer and keeps them curious and interested in the product. Furthermore, the UX designs increase productivity and sales, decrease training, support, development, and maintenance costs.

You can define your UX by the experience and connection with your users or consumers. It can vary from being very simple or it could be in flow and smart build with your brand traits but in any case should be user-friendly and should connect with the users.

Here are a few examples of the best UX Design:

> Apple
> Pepsi
> Bakken and Baeck

Designing User experience is a complex and time-consuming process which requires aloft of research, experience, tests, observation, and study.

>> Below is a walk through the process that we have carved and think is the best process to go about:

Define Buyer or User Persona: The first and most essential step towards creating a great User Experience is to know your audience. Starting with the basics like, ‘Who is your ideal customer?’ or who will use your product regularly, you can build a user persona. User persona will further require demographic information like; Age, gender, location, career, personality type, etc. anything that is related to your product or services and might help. You should research intensively as well. For example, talk to people who fall in your targeted audience for case studies and make buyers persona. Another example would be how firstcry.com only targets babies to sell their products while Nykaa targets women of almost all ages by bringing different brands of makeup products on one platform.

Interface Test: Once you have created a buyer’s personas, you should work on the interface consumers will engage with. You can have multiple options and test them and choose the one that fits the targeted audience best. Another thing to keep in mind while making the new interface is that it should be better than your older interface of the site. Pick the best version and make necessary changes or improvements before launching.

Interview or Meeting: The first thing you need to keep in mind is; Do not hesitate to ask questions. The best way to get insights is by talking to your targeted audience or consumer. Apple for example before launching MacBook Air conducted interviews asking people what problems they face using the laptops. After getting similar kind of answers about the weight of the laptops and battery drainage they launched MacBook Air which was light and ran longer without charging again and again. Similarly, you can make a set of people use your website and ask them a set of questions for a constructive feedback.

>> Questions can be as these or on similar lines:

1. Did you find what you were looking for on the website easily?

2. Did you get confused anywhere?

   3. Were the language and signs helpful?

• User Flowcharts and Sitemaps: Making a stepwise flowchart of how users will browse through your app or the website and how they are using it to understand the navigation better. A comparison between the user persona, the flowchart and the interview research will lead you to the answer of the question, ‘How does your user want to use your digital platform?’ Using heat maps with user activity combined with other findings, you’ll be able to create a great UX.
 A sitemap is a well-organised library designed according to your ideal user experience. It helps you imagine how a user would move from one page of your website to another and help you remove unnecessary steps and consideration from your list of possible ideas. Hence, a sitemap is an important step. Amazon has a crisp page to page jump and a neat payment gateway as well.

• Wireframe and Prototypes: Wireframes are used so you get a good idea about how your website will look. It is always a wise decision to use wireframes with images and content and see how it’ll navigate the users through the page. Wireframes also help catch critical issues and helps removes them before going live. After wireframing makes your page look well and once you’re satisfied with the way it looks you can go live with the website. Once the website is ready to be launched it becomes easy to prototype all the pages of your live site.


Design and Style Guides: Your application and website interface needs a consistency in design. You can decide elements like buttons, breadcrumbs, module tabs in this current initial stage of UX decisions. For more effective and similar experience, you can create similar design patterns on all pages. The consistency has proven to give a memorable experience to the users on big brand sites like, Apple, Pepsi, etc which are strong brands and designs and style guide helps make strong brand presences. For example Mac, the cosmetic brand has a vibrant black, pink, and white website with scroll down grid columns.

With n-number of digital platforms on the internet, endless apps and websites across the globe, it is you ‘User Interface’ that will make you stand out of the crowd, differentiate you and make you unique. Applications that come with an intuitive interface tends to be more engaging and memorable.
A good user interface is like a guide that will take you through the application and help you meet your business goals. The application or website is a waste if it is too complex for a user to understand irrespective of the fact that they were invented for serving a good purpose. A poorly designed app won’t meet your business needs and goals and an app that can’t describes itself well or isn’t clear about its existence, is a substandard app. Airbnb has one of the best website interface, with a vibrant background at home page and a requirement box followed by apt categories as we scroll down.

Underneath are a few reasons to why you need a good User Interface.

1. Engagement: Traffic is what makes the site going and that’s why if you’re getting good traffic make sure it’s there to stay. How do you do that? You engage your users by creating a good interface. Your users will not navigate through the app if your interface is boring and neither will they return if they’re left with a bad impression. The consumers look for an app where navigation isn’t a problem and that’s why your website or app needs a good UI for your users to be interested enough to return.
 
2. Great Design brings Great Business: A great interface design will communicate and connect with your users well so that the users keep returning to your website. Once their purpose is served easily, they will get more business to your website or app. A well designed website will bring in more traffic, even educational sites like Stanford University are aware of that fact and hence have an exceptionally impressive website. 
3. Right UI makes Content better: A successful business needs an effective combination with you. Right content helps you communicate better. And a right UI makes sure that your content is presented in a perfect manner, easy to read and attractive enough to make users take actions in your favour. Specially with the millennials, they notice everything and a grammatical error can affect the brand reputation. 
4. Adds more to functionality: Functionality is directly related to conversions, your business goals. A great User Interface confirms the long-term success of your web or mobile application. It helps you to stand out from mediocre and substandard applications available in the market.
 

Above is a list of reasons why UI is important, but here are the factors that make a great UI

• Fast loading
• Lightweight UI elements
• Clean look
• Easy to understand
• Fit to the screen size
• Multiple languages supported
• Amusing content
• Good graphics
• Organized elements
• Simple view
• Help

If you’re wondering why is UX important for your website or application, here’s why:

1. Easier App Development: UX requires a lot of research; knowing your users, surveys, wireframing, and prototyping. But it gives you a clarity about the vision you have for your business for it to be accomplished and known. After the research and prototyping, you have a mock product in hand which won’t require structural changes in development. And you can run test easily.
 Brands like Amazon have an website as well as an app. 
2. Communication and Improved estimation: 
The UX helps build a clean and smart interface which further helps in communicating better with your users. While researching you made user and buyer personas which helps you improve your investments. After understanding your users and buyers you can improvise product and service design and get a better estimation of your design, development and other costs.
 That’s why all big brands have customer service be it any industry. DTDC, Apple, Samsung, ebay, etc all get a feedback from customers and act accordingly on them. 
3. Increase Conversation and engagement: The audience wants a simple and an easy to use digital platform. A good UX simplifies the process of navigation and decision making on the interface. For Example, single page checkouts are experimented in UX design stage in order to have an impact on user behaviour which will increase conversions.
   
Appealing layouts highlight the content irrespective of the type of content (Text, graphics, video, ads, etc.). Content gets attention only if you have a good UX which motivates the readers and nonreaders to read it and will increase your engagement. 
4. Build Brand Loyalty: Customer loyalty is won through the experience and consistency in UX design lets people remember the experience. Customer’s journey maps help you understand the bottlenecks of user’s flow and helps you reveal where your customers are disconnecting from the website and where they are engaging. Once you’ve figured that out you can modify the UX for better results.  
5. Word of Mouth: A good UX attracts the crowd and once your users are back they will spread the word about your platform either by talking about it to friends and family or sharing the brand experience on social media. The better the experience the more popularity you gain. These words are the words of encouragement for a brand to deliver more to their customers. 
6. Reduced Resources Burden: Once you know the users you will automatically have other specifications to make your platform more appealing and attractive. This helps you decide your resources better; what are your requirements, what role is needed, whom to hire. The more skilled people you have on the team the more inputs and idea you will have to make your product loved by users.

• Mind Manager for Mind Mapping: Mind Manager is a software that helps to make digital mind maps and strategic planning. Mind Manager maps can work as a virtual whiteboard for your projects and help your team to craft a better UX process. It is the best way to brainstorm, generating ideas, make plans and organise tasks.
 
• SmartDraw for Flowcharts: As mentioned above flowcharts are a crucial part of the design to understand your users, buyers and the entire process. SmartDraw helps you create these flowcharts and diagrams easily using a web browser.
 
• Mockplus fro Rapid Prototyping: You can’t create a mock product for testing your website before it goes live without prototyping it. 
MockPlus is an ideal application for prototyping and comes with an easy drag and drop UI. Its design features include design mode, repeater, templates and sketch import for flawless prototyping. 
• Axure for Wireframing: Axure helps you with diagrams, documentation, and interactive tools to design and prototype. The best feature is that these protease come without coding making it easy to share.
 
• AppCooker for Prototyping on iPad and Flinto for Prototyping on Mac: AppCooker is a prototyping studio for iOS apps that can help you build and share beautiful iWatch and iPad prototypes. It is widely used by the leading brands of industry like Disney, Apple, Cisco, GE, etc. This advanced prototyping tool offers smart mockups, customised UI elements, adds links and transitions, and makes the prototyping process smoother.
  Flinto for Mac is a comprehensive tool for prototyping and is used by designers across the world to create interactive and animated prototypes. It works as a behaviour designer to create and change micro-interactions with screens. It allows you to add scrollable area as well as scroll based animations. 
• Sketch and InVision for interface designing: Sketch is a tool for interface design that comes with useful features for an intuitive interface and amazing plugins. It is crafted by a community of developers and helps you focus on things you love to work on. You can build your prototyping and transform your designs into prototypes without leaving Sketch. It also allows you to see the preview of work from anywhere and anytime. InVision, on the other hand, is an online web-based application that helps designers collaborate on UX projects. Designers can upload and share their files, animations or any interactive prototypes. This helps everyone on the project to be updated with the changes and be updated. 
• IconJar for Storage: IconJar stores all your icon in one place and lets you access them without any hustles. You can even drag and drop the icon on any app (Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop or Sketch) irrespective of the size, colours, and different file formats. Just select the icons and export it for managing it easily.

 

UserTesting for User Testing: User Testing is an online tool that lets you perform usability testing. It works for landing pages, emails, prototypes, live sites, and applications. It also helps you to create a user-centric interaction for any of your projects.

Now that we have discussed the importance of User Experience Design, you know that selecting the right UX firm is a very crucial and massive decision.

Platforms with better UX are expected to get more traffic, engagement, and generate better revenue. Below are some points that can help you generate more revenue by picking the right UX design firm.

1. Defining your Goals: Once you’re clear about your product and its requirements, you will be clear about the type of firm you want for your product. Define whether the app looks dull or is it complex and confusing and why you need a designing firm. And an experienced firm will ask you all the essential questions about your business and product goals. 
2. Design and Developer Coordination, Approach to Design and Communication: UX is all about making the user feel comfortable and engage them. Hence the design firm you hire should use User Centric Design (UCD) approach but should be able to incorporate your business and technical requirements. 
Once you’ve hired a firm that does that, your developer and the firm should be in constant touch. The firm needs to be few steps ahead on the developer for them to be in sync and your business to have the best UX and UI design. You should confirm deliverables; CSS files, wireframes or prototypes from the firm which will be suitable for the developer. Communicate with the firm on daily basis to be in sync with you web developer as well. Ask the firm to appoint one person who updates you with the progress and stays in touch with developer as well. 
3. Research and Interviews and Experience: If the firm is experienced enough and has already worked on a similar project as yours then they would have conducted the right kind of interviews and would have an intensive research. Asking them questions about their previous works would be a good start. And if they are experienced in this field you can also ask them to share the relevant domains for you to judge their work. Be convinced that they are suitable for your product, goals, design specification and your interaction methods before you hire them. 
4. Location of the Firm: Location of the from matters depending on your requirement. If you’re looking for someone who can hold face to face meeting on a regular basis and think there is a need to reach them quickly, you should find a firm based in the same city. But if you think you can work with a creative remote team then select the firm based on your particular requirements.