Despite UX being a well-established discipline in the IT industry, there is still some confusion as to what exactly a UX designer does or even what exactly a UX designer is. A UX designer uses methods such as design thinking to find the best possible path to solving a problem for customers. They analyse the end-to-end journey of your customers, how they will interact with your product, find the best opportunities, and develop prototypes and concepts to help them achieve their goals and thereby help you reach your business goals. They analyse what makes sense to people and what they desire, compare that with what is technically feasible right now and in the near future, and finally how they can apply their findings to a sustainable business .
So How do UX consultants Help your Business?
Understand and empathise with users
For a product to be adopted by customers it needs to resonate with them. A UX consultant helps to provide a better experience for your customers. They do this by researching and understanding your target audience and presenting their findings in a way that can be consumed by your team to develop a better product.
User surveys, interviews, persona building, etc are all tools that a UX consultant can use to better understand customers. By delving deep into the mind of your customers and by creating an empathetic bond with not only what they want to accomplish, but who and they, and what path they take to accomplish their goals, they help your team to create a product that truly delights your customers
Auditing existing products
A UX consultant can be an absolute boon at the beginning of a project, helping to guide you on the correct path. However, if your product or website is already launched, that does not mean it's too late to try and improve on it. If you feel that your product has not reached its full potential or has not seen the adoption you had predicted at the start, it might mean that you need a UX consultant to audit your product and find how and where it’s failing to meet your customers’ expectations.
A UX consultant can perform a UX audit on your existing product or website, identify how and where it can be improved to better match with customer expectations, create a list of suitable improvements, and help you prioritise and make gradual changes to improve your product. In many ways a UX consultant views your product the same way as your customers, helping them to spot improvements that can be easily missed by amore technical review.
Prototype and test for better results
After carrying out customer research to discover their expectations, a UX consultant can help you prototype the solution and test it with your target users to find what works best for them before even starting development. They use the feedback garnered through the initial round of customer testing to improve and create a better prototype with a higher chance of adoption.
This kind of prototyping and testing is often cheaper and produces better results than engaging in multiple rounds of redevelopment. As many of these prototyping methods allow the users to get the real look and feel of the final product the feedback is more tangible and actionable than simply using UI sketches or wireframes.
In addition to the above UX consultants are an asset to any development team. They can help your entire team to grow into a more design-oriented mind set, create strategies for implementing great design in all your products, and truly help your product stand out in the marketplace, leading to better brand recognition.
In Conclusion
A UX consultant is an asset that few development teams can now do without. The modern customer is rarely satisfied with simply getting a task accomplished, but also needs to have their tasks accomplished in a quick, efficient, and painless manner. UX consultants fit into this niche, helping your team to develop products that are not only functional, but also go the extra step to truly delight your customers.
