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If you’re in a situation with a great deal of downtime between projects, and therefore can’t continuously assign work to a UX/UI designer you’d hire full-time, there are three ways out of it.
Body leasing - the fastest, the easiest
First, the easiest will be body leasing - the model in which a specialist UX agency (not a recruitment one) can provide you with a designer on a contract for one or several projects. That person will work for you for exactly the amount of time you need, which means you don’t have to hire them permanently. This gives you more flexibility in managing human resources and lets you adjust headcount to current project needs, without incurring the extra costs of long-term employment.
There are two ways to do this kind of hiring: the UX agency provides its own employee, or it takes part in hiring an external person who has been vetted in an earlier recruitment by that agency’s specialists. In both cases you have a guarantee of full professionalism and a good fit with your team. A very important added value is also the guarantee of replacing the person if it turns out they don’t fit your organisation’s culture - which can be done within as little as 24 hours.
Bearing in mind the specifics of your business, a UX agency carefully selects candidates, analysing their competencies, experience and soft skills. Working with an agency also means support with onboarding the new person, which makes the adaptation process smoother and faster. As a result, the new team member can fully engage in delivering projects right away. In addition, agencies often offer training and workshops for newly hired staff, which allows for an even better introduction to the company’s structures and an understanding of its mission and goals.
This form is best for companies that have short projects of up to a month and manage the design stage very well themselves.
Body leasing means hiring on the spot
Outsourcing the design processes - you get rid of all the design problems
The second solution to this problem is delegating the entire UX/UI design process to a specialist UX agency. In this case the agency can work in two different modes: visibly, where all activities and progress are transparent and visible to the client, or invisibly (white label), where the agency operates in the background, ensuring full anonymity and discretion. It all depends on the approach you need and what your expectations of the collaboration are. Choosing the right working mode can significantly affect the project’s efficiency and the quality of the final results.
A UX agency not only delivers wireframes or the final app design but also co-participates in the client-handling process, gathers requirements and the specification, runs workshops, estimates, prices, and so on. This means that from the moment of first contact through to project completion, the UX agency handles every aspect of the project’s delivery. All that’s left on your side is overseeing what’s happening and billing by the hour. Of course, this solution is more expensive than leasing alone, because there are more processes and more people involved on the UX agency’s side. In addition, by engaging a UX agency you gain the certainty that every project stage will be led by specialists with the right knowledge and experience, which translates into higher quality of the end product.
This form is best for companies that don’t want to, don’t like to and don’t need to manage the UX/UI design process.
Freelancer - generally time-consuming
We finally have a third way - namely hiring a freelancer from the market on your own. You and your staff have to find such a person, run a recruitment, and then hire them on a contract, which may include a specific-task contract, a mandate contract or another form of collaboration. This process can be time-consuming and require thorough vetting of candidates to make sure they have the right qualifications and experience. I forgot to mention that if you use an agency’s leasing services, it’s that agency that takes care of the paperwork, which greatly simplifies the whole process. By contrast, when you hire a freelancer yourself, all the risk and paperwork are on your side. This means you have to handle all the formalities yourself, such as drawing up contracts, settling remuneration, and any matters related to taxes and insurance.
I don’t know whether you’ve used such a solution, but you can surely see that it’s the most dangerous and uncertain of the three listed. You have no guarantee of replacing the person if they don’t work out, nor any certainty that the processes the freelancer runs are correct and as effective as possible. You may worry that the project could stall when that person simply falls ill.
Freelancers often work alone, which means they have no team support that could help in case of problems. Moreover, their availability may be limited, especially if they’re running several projects at once. This can lead to delays and communication problems, which can negatively affect the timeliness and quality of the tasks delivered.
Another aspect worth considering is the lack of standardisation in freelancers’ work processes. Everyone can have their own methods and tools, which can lead to inconsistencies and difficulties in integrating the results of their work with the rest of the team. A lack of formal procedures may also mean that you won’t always have full control over the project’s progress.
The advantage of hiring a freelancer is certainly the lower rate compared with hiring a full-time employee or using an agency’s services. This can be beneficial if the budget is limited and the project doesn’t require a specialist’s ongoing involvement over a longer period. However, it’s worth remembering that a lower price can come with higher risk and the need for greater involvement on your part in managing the project.
This method works if the team has the competence to vet a freelancer and you want a higher margin.
Which form of hiring will be best for you?
We recommend body leasing for short projects lasting 1 to 4 weeks, because this form of hiring is the most optimal financially and process-wise.
If, on the other hand, you want to streamline and automate your design processes and the projects don’t flow in a regular stream, we recommend the approach in which a UX agency takes on the entire design process. What’s left on your side is oversight, communication with the client and any verification of results. In that case a lead represents the UX agency - they price the project, run consultations, workshops and so on. With body leasing, the designer works on ready materials and a brief.
The last way to replace a permanent in-house role with a more flexible solution is freelancing. It’s the most advantageous if you care about maximising the margin from the design process you deliver. Bear in mind, however, that this form of hiring carries the greatest risk and requires more work.
Co-founder and CEO of the UX agency Wzór. For 9 years he has been running UX/UI projects for startups, software houses and large companies - from audits, research and business analysis, through product strategy, to delivery. He specialises in projects at the intersection of e-commerce, SaaS and fintech. An Interactive design practitioner - designing UX/UI directly in code.
