Nowadays, it is difficult to find and hire MVP designers. One day each product company comes to a point where they need to hire a UX designer. There have been an increasing number of companies that are placing an increasing amount of importance on customer experience, which has resulted in an increased demand for UX designers. And as the competition is much more fierce the expectations of the professionals are not the same as they were 5 years ago.
First of all, you have to understand your current needs and then which specialist will fit the most. There are so many related design jobs that it is easy for employers to mistake one for another. Let's take a closer look at the most common design professions to define whether you need a UX designer:
UX designers work with the product to make it easy and enjoyable to use. They work closely with the rest of the product team at all the stages of product design: from research to developing user flow, building structure, wireframes, prototypes, and testing them. On the other hand, UI designers work with the visual side of the interface. If you want someone to change illustrations, typography, and animations on your website to make it trendier, you might be looking for a UI designer. UI/UX designers who master both skills are very common: they will be on your shortlist, too.
Furthermore, graphic designers work with all kinds of visuals: they can develop logos and corporate styles, create images for social media, or design T-shirts. Many UX designers come from graphic design backgrounds, whereas product designers follow the product at all stages of design and development. They typically have more responsibilities. Product designers follow the product at every stage and their work does not stop at the launch.
Other professions that may be confused with UX design are a front-end developer and interaction designer. Front-end developers work with code and serve as a link between the user interface and developers. Interaction designers are close to UX designers, but have narrower responsibilities: they focus only on the moments of interaction between the user and the product.
MVP Design
To hire MVP designers, we first have to understand MVP. The primary goal of an MVP is to launch your product as soon as possible while spending as little money as possible. But MVPs have many uses, which are the following.
An MVP is your gateway to raising funds for your startup project. Nowadays more and more investors want to see concrete numbers before deciding whether to invest or not. Once you have an MVP in the market, you’ll obtain some solid data on how your product is faring in the market. What is more, you will be able to demonstrate an actual working product when pitching to investors. This will majorly increase your chances of getting funded.
MVPs let you do some much-needed trial-and-error when developing your product. So you can tweak and change your product until it reaches the optimum product-market fit. You do not have to have everything perfect from the get-go. I know, it’s a huge relief! As you work on your MVP, you will go through a string of iterations, using feedback from early users. This feedback can be especially helpful in improving the design of your product to provide what your target consumers truly want.
How to Find and Hire MVP Designers
In this section, we will describe a few websites where you are more likely to find the best level of designers so you can hire MVP designers.
1. LinkedIn
Although LinkedIn does not work for all professions, with UX designers you can give it a try. To get an idea of what a perfect candidate would look like, find accounts of experienced designers who work for companies that are a point of reference for you. On LinkedIn, you can see work paths and references, and most profiles would have a link to portfolios.
2. Platforms with references
In a perfect world, you would find a designer by reference to a friend. That is how it works with many other specialists: hairdressers, dentists, and so on. If you do not happen to know the right person, you go to reference services. Some of our favorite clients came from Clutch, a B2B reference website. If you are looking for freelance UX designers with reviews, check platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and 99designs.
3. Behance
Behance is the ultimate designer pool. This website focuses on the most important thing: the designer's portfolio. There are tons of great design cases, so it is easy to get lost. Here is a tip, on Behance, you should be looking not only at beautiful images but at the work details, too.
The format of Behance cases encourages people to share all the working process, behind the stage, and so on, explain where the solutions came from, and what influenced the final result. Be sure to read this part carefully. The things that you should be paying attention to are: how the user research was done, how the user flow was improved, and how much design relates to the business goals.
4. Dribbble
While Behance is a place for all kinds of designers, photographers, and creative professionals, Dribbble is a platform mostly for UI/UX and web designers. Compared to other design platforms, it has a higher concentration of UX designers, but the downside is that the images there only give information about the visual aspects, leaving aside all the essential information about the project.
If you lack time for a long-lasting HR screening, a good practice can be to post a message on your company’s social media asking for recommendations and see what happens. That way, you are likely to get candidates who are already interested in your product.
Bottom Line
If you want to hire MVP designers, this guide will help you find the ones that are a solid fit for your business.
