Lately, more and more of our clients are taking advantage of our ‘Dedicated UX Team‘ engagement model whereby we carefully select and assign a group of UX resources to our client’s project(s) throughout the entire duration of our engagement. It seems too many businesses have experienced failed relationships with design firms because the firm constantly reassigns resources from one client project to another. So, unless you specifically request your consulting firm to provide you with a Dedicated Team, you’re likely going to engage in a time and material project where there’s no guarantee that the resources that start on your project are the ones that stay on your project.
Here are 5 reasons why you should make sure you hire a dedicated team:
A lot of our clients have businesses that require a deep understanding of complex complicated business rules, regulations and compliance laws, technology requirements and limitations, and even unusual nomenclature and acronyms. So, there is simply no way a resource could be assigned to a halfway through a project’s completion and expect to create a great software product without that deep understanding. With a Dedicate Team, all the knowledge that is gained throughout a project is never lost. In fact, often times we end up presenting things about our client’s business that they didn’t even know about because our methodology requires us to perform specific research and user shadowing activities that were never done before.
Whether a given team people are designing a product, a website or a building, it is important that the design maintains a certain level of continuity and consistency throughout its complete end-user experience. Since a ‘Dedicated Team’ works on a project from its beginning, the design of your product will be far more consistent than if you had team members swapping out throughout your project. Any great design has baked-in design standards, rules and characteristics that are known by those who create them and those that document them. If you don’t maintain continuity and consistency in your product’s design, you’re users will surely let you know about it.
Throughout the course of any project, team members begin to develop a trust in each others abilities and recommendations. This trust adds stability to the team and makes the overall team perform much better and faster because everyone spends less time doubting each other and more time getting their jobs done.
A great UX Team is typically comprised of Lead UX designer, UX designers, Front-end Developers, a Project Manager and sometimes other supporting resources such as researchers, testers and analysts. When you have a Dedicated Team, you can make sure that each resource on the team is focused on what they’re really good at instead of requiring team members to stretch their abilities to do things they’re not good at. The bottom line is that it is simply never a good idea to have Developers designing and Designers developing.
Some firms shield their clients from getting to know exactly who is doing the actual work for them. We believe in building a long-lasting relationship between our clients and their assigned team members. In fact, our clients get to know each team member on a first name basis, which sounds petty but this kind of enhanced relationship leads to better communication and a sense of comradery that helps the team gel and work more better together.
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