They are said together and they are two things. UX is how it works: what each person does, in what order and in how many steps. UI is how it looks: the screens, in your brand. A product can look flawless and be impossible to use, and the other way round. Design settles both before a mistake becomes expensive.
Why it comes before code
Because the price of changing something depends on when you change it. Moving a button in a design takes minutes. Moving that same button once it is coded, wired to the database and tested takes days. Design is the moment when fixing things is still cheap.
And there is a less obvious reason: designing forces decisions. While the product only exists in a conversation, each person imagines a different one. Drawing it brings up the questions nobody had asked: what the salesperson sees and what the manager sees, what happens if a piece of data is missing, where a mistake gets corrected.
What you receive
- The flows. What each type of user does, step by step, before any screen is drawn.
- The screens. The design of every view of the website, app or platform, in your brand.
- The validation. You review and correct them, on the design.
Signs you are missing it
- The product exists in your head and not in a document.
- Users get lost and do not finish what they started.
- Every screen looks like it belongs to a different system.
- It was coded first, and now changing anything costs twice as much.
It can be hired separately
Design does not oblige you to hire development from the same company. It can be delivered for your own team to build, or continue with whoever designed it. What does not pay is skipping it: coding without design does not save the design, it pays for it later and at a higher price.
What the cost depends on
On how many flows and how many screens the product has. A landing page is a few screens; a platform with three types of user is many. And on whether you already have a brand: with brand guidelines the design starts there; without them, the identity has to be defined first.
How to know how much you need
With a 30-minute diagnosis, free of charge, which leaves you with a scope and a fixed investment. And if we build the project, design is always included: development starts once the product already makes sense on paper.
You can see what UX/UI design includes or request your quote.