UX Design – What Am I Paying SO MUCH For?!?!?!
Author: Lis Hubert
Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting an art gallery here in New York City. The artist’s exhibit was a group of beautifully done photographs that he took of wild life on a remote island. They were extraordinary, breathtaking even. But they were also VERY expensive.
The photographs ranged from $6,000 – $75,000 or more. The price blew me away! $6,000 for a picture?? So, my friend and I proceeded to question the gallery worker as to how the artist sets his prices. The worker, an extremely well informed young lady, explained to us the process that the artist goes through to make the prints. It is painstakingly hard, and takes a great amount of effort, time and cost. After the explanation, the prices that were set seemed very fair and made a ton of sense. That’s the sign of someone who is really good at what they do after all – making your output look effortless even though it is of high quality. That is how I look at myself as a User Experience Designer.
When you hire a UX Designer, what are you paying for? As the person hiring, this is important to know. You are not just paying for the designs, wireframes, user flows, user requirements documents (the physical outputs). Like the artist mentioned in my example above, UX Designers go through intensive work day in and day out to understand the best ways to influence the behaviors of users in a digital space.
UX Designers are physically focused on a completely different point of view – the user & human behavior. It may seem as though we are simply drawing a wireframe out of thin air, but, again like the artist, we are making our output look effortless because of our endless search for knowledge regarding user behavior.
Simply put – you are paying for:
- The mesh of knowledge that we have regarding your customer base
- Expertise in knowing how to influence your customers to use your product or service
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Knowledge regarding how to uncover what your users need from you, and how they want to pay for it. To me, this seems like a pretty good deal in the end. Having someone that is a direct input into your making more money.
So the next time you get a wireframe, a document or a powerpoint from a UXD and you think to yourself, “this is what I’m paying for?” Keep in mind that what you are holding is only the output of years of hard work and knowledge gathering.
What you are paying for is the ability to not have to worry about an entire aspect of your business - well at least not worry as much!
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