5 Reasons You Should Outsource Your UX Design

It’s probably no secret that MentorMate designs and builds a lot of digital user experiences for our clients. We act as the UX/UI outsource engine for many a company and have integrated it deep into our business strategy. But throughout the world of software development, a debate has always roiled: Should you outsource your UX design? In most cases, we’re solidly in the pro-outsourcing camp, but as we’ve already established, we have a lot of skin in that game. The question, then, morphs from “Should you?” to “Why should you?”

With that in mind, here are some of our top reasons why UX design should be outsourced along with the rest of your project:

1. User Expectations Are High

We’re all consumers of UX design every single day. There’s a lot of really great UX out there that creates a seamless, world-class experience for users. Conversely, there’s also plenty of mediocre (and downright bad) UX that causes major hiccups and pain points for users. The most memorable UX is the one you don’t remember as having any of these hiccups. With an outsourced UX team, you have the advantage of thousands of hours spent in the thick of UX design, recognizing and designing those world-class experiences.

2. Speaking of Teams…

Effective UX design requires a lot of specialization in a lot of different areas and, unless you’re churning out software like crazy, you more than likely don’t have enough full-time work for those specialty roles. Outsourcing gets you a blended team of design and technical skills without needing a large dedicated team of your own.

3. Keeping Up With Trends

The world of digital UX frameworks is changing faster than ever right now with new trends emerging constantly. Keeping up with everything is practically a full-time job in itself. Frameworks like Angular, Vue, and React are constantly updating and adding new robust feature sets — React in particular. Meanwhile, and in large part thanks to React and ReactNative, there’s a convergence occurring between web and mobile UX. By many accounts, it’s signaling an oncoming death of native mobile UX. If UX design isn’t the bread and butter of your business, keeping up with these trends is time-consuming, laborious, and inefficient.

4. Voice UX Is Coming

While this could technically fall under the previous argument, voice UX is big enough to justify its very own home on this list. Voice-first applications are the new frontier and latest disruption for digital user experience. Eventually, “voice enablement” projects will yield to use cases where voice excels and the deep integration of Voice UX and conversational interfaces are “table stakes”. Design will evolve to incorporate these elements in all new products delivered. Brand and visual design will take its place as a companion to the new standards of service, voice, conversation, and personality design. System integrators with broad technology platform experience will be well-positioned to build these services quickly and efficiently.

5. Because You Can

I know, I know, this one might sound like a cop-out reason, but it’s true. UX design is actually one of the most outsourceable aspects of the development cycle. Effective outsourcing is about identifying your core competencies, focusing on those as your key strengths, and being laser-focused on controlling your intellectual property. Your brand is your core intellectual property. A capable UX designer can come in, understand your brand, and translate it into clean, subtle expressions inside your web and mobile products.

Great user experience is hard to accomplish if it’s not already an integral part of your organization. As such, there are very few situations in which your company should take it on as a core competency. While you need to maintain control of your brand and how it’s applied, user experience is something you can and should outsource so that you can better focus on other aspects of your business.

Image Source: Alvaro Reyes on Unsplash