What is UX consulting?

UX consulting is a research-driven process whereby professionals become primarily responsible for assessing and improving how people interact with your startup’s offerings. Whether you’re designing a website, app, or product, UX consulting services are worth the investment because they help a startup’s employees focus on continuous improvement to benefit its current and potential customers.

How does UX consulting benefit startups?

Since a UX consultant is a trained and experienced outside professional, that person can help a startup’s team prevent the unconscious biases that can occur once individuals become overly familiar with projects in progress. Once someone works on a website for hours per day, it can become harder for them to spot the characteristics and shortcomings that could frustrate users. UX consultants can find those issues and provide recommendations to solve them.

These professionals also help startups achieve their design goals. Whether the aim is to build something from scratch, improve an existing user-facing product or brainstorm ideas that allow a startup to move into a new market, UX consultants offer tailored expertise to maximise outcomes.

UX consultants can also step in once people within a startup’s user base have identified significant shortcomings. Perhaps the company has received numerous complaints that numerous parts of a mobile app do not work for people with disabilities who use assistive technologies. A consultant could address those problems and advise how people at the business should prevent them when updating the application.

Startups rely on user experience consultants to meet identified needs within audiences, too. These professionals run polls, A/B tests and other investigations to understand people’s sentiments and which changes would most effectively enhance the user experience.

Once startup leaders know these benefits and others, many become eager to hire professionals to help them hone the user experience. What are the top UX consulting firms they should consider?

1. Blink UX

Blink UX has five offices spread throughout the United States, as well as one in London. This global firm has experienced research and design professionals dedicated to single projects at a time, ensuring they can give your company’s needs the necessary attention throughout the business relationship. Additionally, project managers and research or design directors collaborate with your startup so the outcomes will align with the company’s unique goals.

Blink employees use a proprietary Evidence-driven Design process that features a tried-and-tested framework for identifying your startup’s challenges, finding a well-aligned project vision and creating deliverables that close the gap between business-related and customer needs.

Throughout the more than two decades since this design firm’s establishment, Blink UX has achieved a client return rate of 90%, illustrating that its thorough approach earns loyal, satisfied customers. The Blink team relies on extensive user research to craft thoughtful and specific ways forward.

Whether you want support to differentiate your brand in a crowded market or wish to offer the audience inclusive and enjoyable experiences, this company’s experienced professionals will put their UX expertise to work for your benefit. Those working on your behalf will carefully gather research that reveals your startup’s challenges and opportunities, using that data to build long-term strategies that resonate with those interacting with your company’s products.

2. UX Firm

UX Firm is a boutique company specialising in user research for mobile app and website development, software testing and more. The company’s team works to uncover details about people’s experiences with your startup’s offering, relying on qualitative and quantitative tools to dig into the details before and during development, as well as after launch.

Whether a startup will soon launch an online store or its leaders want to improve how the website functions on mobile devices, the UX firm team can conduct in-depth research to examine the current problems and the best ways to address them for users’ benefit. The company also offers diary studies, which provide user feedback over several days or weeks.

The results can give those involved a clearer picture of how people’s needs differ across time, providing a more in-depth understanding compared to usability studies, which capture someone’s moment-specific experience.

Although UX Firm is a United States-based company headquartered in Georgia, it has a global reach. The team allows its decades of experience to shape all decisions and recommendations, helping clients rest assured that they can trust the results. The business also caters to various UX needs, accommodating clients who want single usability tests to detailed projects that tackle identified challenges. These diverse capabilities make the company deserving of a spot on this list.

3. NN/g

NN/g – less frequently referred to as Nielsen Norman Group – has more than 25 years of experience assisting brands across industries to improve UX for their audiences. The team upholds a practical, data-driven approach to save clients time and money while getting measurable results.

Employees of NN/g have built an extensive body of research that includes dozens of books and published reports, plus a newsletter archive dating back to 1995. They apply that collective knowledge to every aspect of UX consulting, suggesting practical and actionable improvements to drive the desired results.

Consulting is one of NN/g’s three business pillars, with research and training comprising the other two. Throughout their work, team members have tested thousands of user interfaces while observing people on five continents. These data-backed efforts help clients develop solutions that will make money for clients while ensuring users love to interact with them.

In addition to providing its advertised services, NN/g works with clients in various customised arrangements to match their needs. Whether your startup is interested in a limited or extended engagement, the company’s professional UX consultants can work with founders and others to agree on specialised service packages.

4. Algoworks

Algoworks offers consultancy services for clients needing assistance with UX improvements for websites and mobile applications. The team aims to uphold a company’s unique visual identity while increasing usability through enjoyable and highly functional enhancements.

The process starts when the team takes the time to understand the requirements and objectives whether a startup leader wants to redesign a customer-facing page or create an app to align with several stated business goals. Next, Algoworks’ professionals will do in-depth research to understand the market, target audience and user behaviors. Those specifics help the UX professionals identify where to focus their efforts for the most impactful results.

Prototyping and wireframing come next, and these steps can enable people to see how seemingly small details – such as the location and order of buttons – can affect the user experience. Sometimes, startup clients need assistance to improve existing website or app content to cater to the users accessing it. In such cases, Algoworks can provide consulting services to redesign, review or test updated versions of customer-facing products.

The company has a workforce of more than 600 people and offices in the United States, Canada and India. No matter your specific UX aspirations and expectations, the Algoworks team has the experience and knowledge to get you closer to them.

5. Slide UX

Slide UX has more than a decade of experience serving clients, including those from complex domains. The company’s professionals provide UX strategy and user research while maintaining the goals of saving clients time and money.

The Slide UX team brings extensive experience to each situation, including designing early-stage products for startups to catch the attention of investors and users. This business has supported hundreds of product and marketing teams from various industries and countries while continually upholding a commitment to results based on user research and practical usability improvements.

The company has a team fully based in the US, and its members regularly participate in industry training sessions to sharpen their skills. Slide UX regularly refines its services to match the needs of its client base. Some of its relevant offerings include discovery workshops, user experience audits and competitive analyses. The results of such efforts keep startups on track while identifying room for improvement and turning their plans into satisfying realities.

Since Slide UX’s founding in 2012, it has been a Texas-headquartered company with a distributed remote team. It also has various partners and contractors that broaden its reach and ensure it is nimble and responsive when addressing client requests and working on projects.

6. AltexSoft

AltexSoft offers specialised services to help clients succeed in their digital transformation efforts. The company’s UX consulting offerings center on solving challenges through accessible and user-friendly systems.

The company’s process begins with a one-on-one discussion between your startup and an AltexSoft professional to discuss the project’s requirements, expectations and goals. Once the AltexSoft team and potential client agree to work together, resource assignments will begin and the company’s UX specialists will start exploring the underlying user issues to solve them and develop a strategy for targeted success.

AltexSoft is a data-driven organisation, and the information gathered by employees helps everyone involved assess the most effective ways to reach the desired outcomes. With UX consultants’ help, you can discover new ways to boost conversion rates, excel in human-centered design or optimise products with a detail-oriented approach.

Since the company’s employees have worked with clients in industries ranging from health care to finance, you can feel confident they have the adaptability required to assess your startup’s circumstances, identify the most prominent needs and chart a course for success.

7. Whizzbridge

Whizzbridge maintains four international offices and has a team of more than 120 software engineers. The company’s wide reach and deep expertise make it well-positioned to offer UX consulting services backed by comprehensive user research and an empathetic approach.

The team evaluates the likely impact of each decision before suggesting or making it, ensuring that your startup’s user base remains at the center of the strategy. They also propose various solutions, giving your startup’s decision-makers opportunities to weigh in at every stage of the process and shape the results. Additionally, interactive prototypes help clients visualise the effects of consultants’ ideas in real life, increasing their confidence and helping them feel excited about the possibilities.

Additionally, Whizzbridge’s UX consultants use a rapid prototyping process that enables them to remain quick and agile while showing clients multiple design options and then testing and tweaking them based on user feedback. Since the company’s process is highly collaborative, you can look forward to open communication while feeling included in every part of the process as it develops.

Employees stay abreast of innovative usability testing techniques, design best practices and more. That knowledge ensures the results are relevant and future-proof.

8. G & Co.

G & Co. is a company headquartered in New York City with a workforce of more than 100 people. It keeps user experience at the heart of its team members’ efforts. By taking a person-centered approach, this UX consulting firm finds solutions that will delight users and cause measurable payoffs for clients.

The firm takes a data-driven approach to align objectives with current market trends. Additionally, it has built a diverse client base, including entities from retail, fashion, travel and more. User research is central to all UX decisions, and the firm’s specialists will transform the outcomes into curated solutions that anticipate users’ needs and their associated journeys while using a website or other customer-facing offering.

G & Co. also applies diverse methodologies to the user testing process, prioritising an iterative process that improves usability while meeting clients’ and ensuring the proposed solutions have the desired response in the target audience. People can expect G & Co. to develop possibilities that blend form and function to increase conversions, elevate customer experiences and increase loyalty.

This firm turns ideas into positive impacts, keeping clients innovative and relevant in a crowded marketplace. Since it has delivered more than 120 projects to clients, potential customers can trust this business has the experience needed to cause meaningful UX improvements that people notice and love.

What are the top UX consulting firms?

These eight UX consulting firms are some of the standout options to consider. No matter your startup’s age, type or goals, user experience will remain a priority throughout the company’s operations. The businesses listed here have the knowledge, vision and research capabilities to identify the best paths forward and propose viable solutions.