Designers on the inside: stories from embedded client projects

In this interview, three of our talented UX designers share insights about working side by side with client teams as fully integrated team members. 

• Agustin works on their ecommerce and internal tools for the biggest global B2B chemical supplier 
• Agos and Brunno work for the seller success group and the search funnel team of a B2B/B2C German vehicle marketplace

They’re all employees of UX studio, a UX design agency where we outsource UX solutions for B2B SaaS clients. Learn about how such a collaboration looks in practice, the impact embedded UX teams make, and the surprising ways this setup can exceed expectations.

How do you collaborate with developers, product managers and other stakeholders as an embedded designer?

Agustin Diaz: We're taking part in every meeting, every discussion, everything that is happening with developers, with PMs, with everyone. So the collaboration is very extensive. 

You have more decision-making power and they can reach out to you at any point. You're always there for support. I think that’s the main thing about being embedded, this kind of strong client relationship you get to build over time.

How does being fully embedded in a client's team differ from working on a project as an external consultant?

Agos Marmai:  I'm so involved in client projects that I don't feel that I work for them as an external. I’m as much part of their team as if I was an internal team member. 

Leads trusts me with projects or initiatives that require specific knowledge about the product over internal designers, because I’ve actually been on the project longer than some of their new hires. 

I had a PM who selected me to be his right hand, just going through roadmaps, pending tasks, and different topics around a specific workflow to prioritize things with him. It felt really good to be trusted so much. 

What makes you feel like you’re really part of a client's company? 

Agustin Diaz: I'm assigned tasks that you wouldn't expect as an external team member, like creating internal newsletters or creating the internal communications website.

I also have a very close relationship with the client’s internal team. We know each other, we have our lingo, we have our own memes. It's like I'm part of their family as an adoptive child!

How do you balance following the client's workflow with bringing in UX studio's own best practices?

Brunno Andriani:  Respecting the client’s process comes first. I need to understand how they work before I suggest anything. In a way, when I’m on client projects, I feel like I’m taking care of their home. I don’t just change things around without asking them.

When I introduce an idea, I do it gently and wait for their reactions. I like to show early designs, quickly sketch something and ask if this is what we’re going for. 

If the reaction is positive, we can spend more time on it, if not, I can let it go. When there’s pushback from their side, it’s never a total dismissal, it’s usually about resources, like they’d prefer to ship something as soon as possible, even if the quality could be better. 

I need to be flexible in these situations, but let them know when there’s room for improvement, and bring in my experience without being pushy.

Can you share an example where being embedded helped you spot a design challenge early that might have been missed otherwise?

Agos Marmai: There were many times where PMS or my leads brought me a topic that I needed to work on, and I spotted a UX design issue.

For example, I noticed that there were some elements and components in the design system that didn't have focus states. It was a big issue, because you absolutely need focus states for accessibility. So the design system wasn’t in line with the newly introduced WCAG regulations, and we had to act quickly.

Following their workflow to report issues, I made a proposal. Then I presented it to the relevant decision makers, it got approved, and went into production.

How does your presence as a dedicated team member influence decision making speed? 

Agustin Diaz: When we are in embedded projects, you usually sign contracts for at least half a year or even a year sometimes. At the beginning there's no difference. You're still building the partnership and overexplaining everything. 

But in the long run, things start to go more smoothly. The client will trust you and your judgment and there’s less back-and-forth. 

You can actually bring the focus back to UX design issues in meetings, build a roadmap, prioritize issues. Decision making sort of naturally speeds up. 

Brunno Andriani: That reminds me, I have a unique way to handle off-topic suggestions in meetings where we really need to make design decisions. When I'm  in one of those meetings where people are just talking about edge cases, I just basically create one Figma section for each edge case. We will probably be tackling these issues later, and they’re not a priority right now, but this way, they don’t get forgotten, and we can go back to the initial problem. 

What’s something that usually surprises clients about UX studio?

Brunno Andriani: They’re often surprised  that they don't only get the experience of expertise of the designer or researcher they hired, but all the knowledge from everyone at UX studio. 

UX design freelancers or contractors they may have experience with usually work alone, but we have a community here. 

We have knowledge sharing sessions, design reviews and squad meetings where we can share challenges we’re having on our projects, get inspired by others, ask questions, learn things. Having this collective experience from other clients and other types of projects add a lot of value.

What's the biggest misconception about working with embedded UX professionals?

Agos Marmai: I think there’s a misconception that externals, even when they’re embedded,  wouldn't care as much about the product as internal designers, but that’s not the case.

Brunno Andriani: Yeah, my PM told me once that he thought he would be getting someone who’s  just completing the tasks, being an executioner in a way. He didn’t expect the proactivity and strategy support we bring. I'm not sure if he had any kind of bad experiences with other designers or if it's related to the fact that we are externals.

Agos Marmai:  I remember once the VP of design gave kudos to all the externals because he was surprised how much effort we put into the designs and how much we cared about them. 

Agustin Diaz: In my case, the client  was kind of getting out of a bad relationship with another UX agency when we joined. So they were, I don't know, hurt in a way; they were very cautious about everything they were doing because they were afraid of having the same bad situation with us. 

The key, as in any relationship, is listening and learning, I think. We integrated into their workflows and ways of working, to then be able to have conversations with full context, propose suggestions, get a better understanding of feedback, that sort of thing. 

Having that place for communication and showing our willingness to learn from them set the tone for the partnership, and it all worked out.

What professional growth do you personally gain from being embedded with different clients?

Brunno Andriani: Staying flexible was something that I learned through practice. On a more technical level, being involved in many different stages of the product development cycle is a great experience: you do everything from prototyping to managing stakeholders. 

With UX studio, I’ve got to  work on large-scope projects for months and months, but also super short projects with tight deadlines. I learned to handle basically anything a design job can throw at me without panicking.  

In your experience, what benefits can clients get from working with embedded UX designers?

Agos Marmai: We’re not just executing tasks, but demonstrate our value and knowledge as professionals by proactively engaging in meetings and conversations and providing new perspectives on topics. 

We’re not just asking what to do and then do it: we’re asking questions about how the initiative is  going to help the business,  how will a given change benefit users, what’s  the real user problem that we're trying to solve.

When each designer is the owner of an initiative, then you’re in charge of the decisions and responsible for the outcomes. This makes a huge difference.

How do you ensure knowledge transfer so the client's team can continue improving even after we step out?

Agos Marmai: Clients tend to have handover processes for that, which we follow. It's usually a template page in Figma that you need to fill out before you're stepping out of the project. You provide information about the context of the initiative, the status, the current to-dos, next steps, any important links, also the names of stakeholders involved. 

After you fill this out, you will have a meeting with someone just to go over everything one time to also check if something is missing.

On my current project, every initiative is worked on by at least three people: a designer, a PM and a content writer at minimum. So even when I'm gone and there's something missing, they could go to either the PM or the content designer to just ask for more information. 

I also try to document my design decisions at least on the final designs that we hand over to devs. So everything is documented.

Work with embedded UX designers

While the lovely people in this interview are already committed to long-term client projects, the good news is that at UX studio, all our designers and researchers can join projects as integrated team members.

Get in touch with us to have a UX expert work on your project with full dedication and a ton of enthusiasm.