Research before opinion
We start by watching people use what exists: session recordings, funnel data, support tickets, and interviews with the people who actually buy. Most redesigns skip this and rebuild the same problems in a nicer typeface.
Most redesigns are opinion dressed as strategy. Ours start with watching people use what you already have.
A UI UX agency engagement costs $6,000 to $60,000 depending on whether you need a focused audit or full product design, and takes three weeks to six months. UX decides how something works and whether people can complete what they came to do. UI decides how it looks and feels. Good ux design companies test both against real users rather than presenting taste as evidence.
We start by watching people use what exists: session recordings, funnel data, support tickets, and interviews with the people who actually buy. Most redesigns skip this and rebuild the same problems in a nicer typeface.
Information architecture, user flows and wireframes come before any visual design. If the structure is wrong, no amount of polish fixes it, and finding that out after the visual design is signed off is the expensive way to learn it.
Components, states, spacing scale, type scale and tokens, documented so the tenth screen looks like the first and your developers are not guessing. This is the difference between a design that survives contact with a roadmap and one that drifts within two sprints.
Five to eight users on a prototype will find most of what is wrong, and it costs a fraction of shipping it and finding out from your metrics. We run the sessions, show you the recordings, and change the design based on what happened rather than what we hoped.
WCAG 2.2 AA built in from the start: contrast, keyboard navigation, focus states, labelled fields, sensible heading structure. Retrofitting accessibility costs several times what building it in does, and it is increasingly a legal question rather than a nice one.
Specs, tokens, states, edge cases and behaviour documented, with us available while it gets built. A design that has not accounted for the empty state, the error state and the very long name is a design that will be improvised in code.
| Engagement | Range (USD) | Timeline | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| UX audit | $3,000 to $8,000 | 2 to 3 weeks | Heuristic review, analytics and recording analysis, prioritised fixes |
| Website UX and UI design | $6,000 to $20,000 | 4 to 8 weeks | Research, IA, wireframes, visual design, component library, handoff |
| Product or app design | $20,000 to $60,000 | 2 to 6 months | Discovery, flows, design system, prototypes, testing, ongoing iteration |
| Design system only | $10,000 to $35,000 | 5 to 10 weeks | Audit, tokens, components, documentation, adoption support |
| Usability testing round | $2,500 to $6,000 | 2 weeks | Recruitment, five to eight sessions, findings, recommendations |
| Embedded designer | $6,000 to $14,000 per month | Ongoing | A designer working inside your team and process |
The audit is where most teams should start. It is the cheapest way to find out whether you need a redesign at all, and it frequently shows that three specific fixes would recover more than a rebuild would.
| Ask any UI UX agency | A good answer sounds like | Walk away if |
|---|---|---|
| How do you know the design worked? | Named metrics agreed before the work started | They show you the visuals again |
| Do you test with real users? | Yes, and here is a recording | Testing is an optional extra line item |
| Who does the work day to day? | People you meet before signing | The pitch team is never seen again |
| How do you handle accessibility? | Built in from the start, to WCAG 2.2 AA | It is a compliance step at the end |
| What do developers receive? | Specs, tokens, states, edge cases, and access to us | A Figma link and good luck |
| What if the research says do not redesign? | We tell you, and scope down | Every answer is a full redesign |
The last one is the real test. A UX design company that has never told a client the smaller job was the right one is a company that sells the same project to everybody.
A UX audit runs $3,000 to $8,000. Website UX and UI design runs $6,000 to $20,000. Product or app design runs $20,000 to $60,000. A design system alone is $10,000 to $35,000. An embedded designer is $6,000 to $14,000 a month.
UX is how it works: what someone is trying to do, the steps involved, and whether they get there. UI is how it looks and responds: layout, colour, type, states, motion. A product can have beautiful UI and fail on UX, and that combination is common enough to have its own reputation.
We can design without research and you should expect a worse result. Research is what separates a design that solves your problem from one that solves a problem we imagined. If budget is tight we compress it rather than cut it, since a week of analytics review and five user sessions catches most of what matters.
Five to eight per round finds the large majority of usability problems, which is well established and consistently surprising to people expecting a bigger number. More users mostly re-find the same issues. Testing several rounds as the design develops beats one large round at the end.
It is the documented set of components, tokens and rules your interface is built from. You need one once more than one person is designing or building, or once the product is large enough that consistency stops happening by itself. Below that it is overhead you will not use.
Yes, and it works better than a handoff. We deliver specs, tokens, states and edge cases, then stay available while it gets built, because the questions that decide whether a design survives implementation all arrive during implementation.
We build to WCAG 2.2 AA as a default rather than a phase: contrast ratios, keyboard navigation, visible focus, labelled form fields and correct heading structure. If you need a formal audit against a specific standard for compliance reasons, we will tell you where our work ends and a specialist audit begins.
We agree the metrics before starting, usually task completion, conversion at a specific step, drop-off, or time to complete. Then we measure after. If a UI UX agency cannot tell you what would count as success before they begin, they are selling decoration.
Frequently the right answer is fixing. An audit often shows that a handful of specific changes to the pages carrying traffic will recover more than a rebuild, at a fraction of the cost and risk. We would rather tell you that and do the smaller job well.
Send us what you are trying to fix and we will tell you what it takes, what it costs, and whether we are the right people for it. If we are not, we will say so.