Differences Between UX Designer and UX Consultant

Who is a UX Designer?

A UX designer is someone who aims to make products/services accessible and enjoyable for users. His focus is on meeting the user needs by making the design user-centric. A UX designer performs several functions in a design process. It ranges from research to creating user personas, prototypes, and wireframes to the testing of a design. Their focus is on the user journey, and they strive to make designs that guide users to their goals intuitively.

Who is a UX Consultant?

UX consultants are UX experts whose job is to identify and solve business problems. Their focus is not on improving the UX of a product/service but rather on improving the UX of the business as a whole. UX consultants perform a design audit, UX coaching, UX research, etc. They create a roadmap of user experience strategies to get a big picture understanding of user journey and identify problematic areas. Their focus is on ensuring that the overall performance of a company’s UX remains strong.

What are the Distinctions Between a UX Designer and UX Consultant?

Like I mentioned earlier, there is a certain overlap between the responsibilities of UX designer and UX consultant. But each has unique characters as well. Let’s take a look at what they are.

UX Designer

• Focuses on aspects of a product’s user experience
• Understands UX design principles and their impact on the UX design process
• Analyses research findings and UX data and integrates them into design work
• Works under the direction of business leaders
• Iterate and enhance upon product’s design over time

UX Consultant

• Suggests strategies and tools for measuring UX improvement
• Performs big picture prototyping and usability testing
• Conducts evaluation and auditing of a company’s products/services
• Provide expert leadership and guidance to the organization’s UX efforts
• Equips stakeholders and staff with best UX practices knowledge

So these are the critical differences in priorities and operation of a UX designer and a UX consultant.

Why Hire a UX Designer?

When you become a UX designer, you play a part in the design process from the very beginning stage. They work in close collaboration with UI designers and programmers to develop a user-friendly design for products/services. Employing a UX designer has several benefits, such as

• It increases the accessibility of a product
• Creates an intuitive and engaging user interface
• Guide users towards actions, decreasing bounce rates and increasing leads
• Increase customer loyalty but meeting their needs through design

Why Hire a UX Consultant?

A UX consultant comes into the picture when a business needs some expert help. It could be to find out a business problem, create a solution, aid business transformation, or guide a UX team. They work in collaboration with the entire organization to improve the business ecosystem. Some benefits of hiring a UX consultant are:

• Improve your business ROI
• Provide insight to make transformative business decisions
• Detect usability issues quickly and provide diagnosis
• Develop UX strategies to boost your business

UX Designer or UX Consultant?

Whether you want a UX designer for your business or a UX consultant depends on which stage your business is at right now and what your requirements are. A UX designer can help build user experience from scratch, while a UX consultant can help troubleshoot issues in a design. UX consultants don’t work on creating a design from scratch but rather on bettering an existing design. The services of both are indispensable for an organization.