What’s it like working at a UX design company? Let’s take a peek behind the scenes at UX studio. 

We’ve gathered everything from how we welcome new team members to how we build project teams, work with international clients, and support each other along the way. 

Come along!

Joining our company 

Joining a new company is never easy. That’s why we aimed to develop a smooth experience for our new colleagues. 

In our studio, every newcomer needs to complete the same UX onboarding week. Not just designers and researchers, but finance, marketing or sales, too. During this first week, our colleagues are lining up to show the new colleagues how we got from product discovery to the point of testing a prototype. 

This way, we’re all on the same page about major workflows and common terms, and can start connecting with new coworkers.

We make sure that our new colleagues know that there is no risk during this week: they won’t be judged based on their questions. 

Our support system 

From the second week, designers and researchers have separate occasions for advanced onboarding sessions and will get to know our running projects by having conversations with colleagues working on them. Moreover, our company puts a great emphasis on further improving our skill sets, such as how to be a good project lead, how to become a mentor, or how we work with clients in a more effective and successful way. 

In our company, we have mentor-mentee pairs. So, from the second week our new joiners will get their mentor, with experienced colleagues who can provide guidance to our junior colleagues. 

Moreover, mentors have biweekly 1:1s with our two dedicated leads who will provide you with guidance and support related to their work and mentorship as well.  Juniors also  have the chance to be in immediate contact with our leads: they have monthly check-ins, and will eventually upgrade to a bi-weekly schedule. 

During these meetings, we have the chance to discuss our professional challenges, company-related topics, and ask for feedback or support. 

On the office side, employees from salespeople to marketers have their own onboarding with peers, and weekly 1:1 meetings with their team lead.

With these support systems, our company wants to make sure that every new colleague gets enough support to get to know our working style and will be able to start and finish a project when the time comes. Also, we are aware that working on projects with different stakeholders could cause difficulties throughout a project, so we want to make sure that everybody gets the proper support from their mentor and/or lead.

Additionally, the structure of the company contains so-called squads, which are small professional groups within our company. There are designer squads and researcher squads. All of our researchers and designers are part of one of these groups. These small groups meet every week to discuss upcoming challenges, difficulties, different methods or work towards a common goal set by the company. This way, this small group functions as a support team as well. 

Client work’s teams setup 

Our support system can be important, especially when someone is starting a new project. Since we are an agency, we have multiple different clients, such as corporate companies, start-ups, or UX teams for training. Accordingly, we work in lots of different team setups. 

The project’s team setup mainly depends on the nature of the project. Mostly, we work with full digital products, like apps or websites; however, we are handling projects related only to certain flows of a product as well. 

Here at the studio we are working mostly in small teams. Our sales team aims not to sell designs without research. With this, we are able to decrease the uncertainty related to design solutions and also map pain points related to old and new designs. 

For this reason, the most common setup for a project is one designer and one researcher. The one with more experience will be the UX lead. That person will manage the project and the client communication as well. However, if a project needs more designers, it can happen that one researcher will collaborate with multiple designers.

We have rare occasions when designers or researchers work alone on a project. 

If a designer is working alone on a project, most probably it happens around the end of a project, when the design needs to be finished up, working on a design system, or development needs support. Other scenarios could happen as well, but the agency will always aim not to sell designs without research, so we try to avoid these scenarios.

A research-only project can happen if a client comes with the request to have a discovery, legacy testing, or a UX audit on their existing product, or they would ask for an expert review related to the design they have. 

Also, it can happen that big organisations will request designers or researchers to work with their own UX team. In this case, the chosen team member will build into the client’s organisation’s team and help their work on a daily basis.

Another situation is when a company asks our agency for UX training. Companies could ask for UX training from our companies if they want to increase their team’s UX maturity, or even with more specific topics related to UX. For these trainings, most of the time one designer and one researcher will be allocated, however, it strongly depends on the training’s main goal.  

Not too long ago we had a training with a company, where they wanted to have an overview of UX processes with more emphasis on research activities and roadmap planning. In this case, one designer and one researcher joined the company’s UX team for one week. During that week, the aim was to discuss the basics of the UX design processes, practice research activities, and roadmap planning together with the team. 

Working for a company with international clients

Working language

Most of our clients are international companies, and we also have colleagues from all around the world. Accordingly, one ‘good to know’ thing about our agency is that our working language is English. 

When we have a Hungarian project, it is also up to discussion whether the client would prefer Hungarian-speaking colleagues or they would be fine working in English as well. 

Changes in working hours

Working for clients from all around the world can cause changes in our working hours. The simple reason behind this is different time zones. However, we try to schedule recurring meetings at an appropriate time for both teams. It can mean that it will be in the morning for our team and the afternoon for the client, or the other way around. Therefore, we are aware that from time to time we will need to adjust our working hours, especially during collaborations where the time difference is more than 4 hours. 

Traveling 

Moreover, since COVID restrictions were raised, we started traveling again to the location of our clients. Most of the time it happens when a company asks for training from our company, or for project kick-offs. On the other hand, it can be the case when we are working on a design that requires on-site testing. 

Working with people from different backgrounds

Accordingly, we collaborate with people with really different background knowledge about UX. This means that we often need to be the ambassadors of UX as well during our projects. Being an UX ambassador means that we should be able to educate our clients, at least on a basic level about the basic processes of UX in order to be able to have meetings ending with not just questions but decisions. 

And as you probably suspected, working with stakeholders from different fields would require you to communicate effectively, assertively, and directly. With these main guidelines, it’s easier to avoid confusion on the stakeholder’s side and helps you to avoid tricky or even hard collaborations. This way of communication is something you can acquire during a project, but our studio gives training on it for every new joiner as well. 

Three things you can experience here

1. Apply findings to solve a problem 

If I want to be honest, one of the most appealing things in our day-to-day job is that we can see that our work will be applied to build a digital product. As a researcher, you will see that the results of your activity will be considered during a design process, while as a designer your design solutions will be part of a redesign or a new product. 

On a project you can see these changes day by day, however, sometimes we need to wait months to see our designs developed. Despite this fact, I think when you can finally click through and use one of the designs you worked on is one of the most rewarding feelings in our work. 

2. Diversity of colleagues and projects

One of the other great things about working for UX studio is that you will experience diversity on many levels. On one hand, our company pursues a diverse and inclusive environment within the company composition. This way all of us have the chance to learn and grow as a human being by sharing experiences and cultural differences with each other. We designed our own card game, Culture Quilt, for this.

On the other hand, by doing project-based work, all of us have the opportunity to work on really different projects on really different topics. For example, we could work on a project related to cars, kid’s robotics kits, cosmetics, lawyers, streaming platforms, and finance as well. This way we have the chance to gain knowledge about different topics and interact with different kinds of a target audience. 

3. The support system

We're always open to sharing knowledge and helping each other—especially when something new comes up in a project. So far, I've never faced a situation where I couldn’t find support within the team, and I’ve never felt uncomfortable asking for help.

Summary

Working at UX studio means joining a supportive, international team where onboarding is a shared experience, mentorship is built into your journey, and English is the language we all connect in whether we're designing apps, testing prototypes, or chatting over coffee. 

We believe in sharing knowledge, asking questions freely, and learning from each other every step of the way. And we can proudly say that there’s always someone ready to help you to move forward.