How to choose a UX consultant: 10 questions to ask

Why this is harder than it looks

Every design portfolio looks impressive. Polished screens, confident outcomes, well-known logos. But a portfolio tells you what someone can make look good. It doesn’t tell you whether they can untangle your approval workflow, work with your engineers, or tell you honestly when they’re out of their depth.

These are the questions we’d ask if we were hiring a consultancy like ours. Some of them are uncomfortable. That’s the point.

1. “Have you worked on a problem like ours?”

Industry experience helps, but the shape of the problem matters more. A designer who’s untangled complex permissions in healthcare can probably help with permissions in fintech. Ask them to describe a similar problem, what made it hard and what they’d do differently now.

2. “Who actually does the work?”

With agencies, the person who pitches isn’t always the person who designs. With independents, you usually work with one person throughout. Neither is wrong, but you should know which you’re getting, and meet the people who’ll be in the file.

3. “What will I have at the end?”

Get specific. Annotated screens? A prioritised list? Figma files with every state? A clickable prototype? A recorded walkthrough? Vague answers here lead to disappointment later.

4. “What isn’t included?”

This is the most revealing question on the list. Good consultants are clear about boundaries: user recruitment, accessibility conformance testing, production code, ongoing support. If everything is included, the scope probably isn’t defined yet.

5. “How do you handle what you don’t know?”

Listen for whether they separate evidence from assumptions. Someone who says “we’ll validate that with users” or “that’s a hypothesis we’d need to test” is more trustworthy than someone with a confident answer to everything.

6. “How do you work with engineering?”

Design that ignores technical reality gets rebuilt during development. Ask how and when engineers get involved, what a handover looks like, and whether the designer reviews the build. A technical background is a real advantage here, and it’s one we lean on in every project.

7. “Can you show me results, and how they were measured?”

Be wary of big percentages with no explanation. Real case studies often say things like “the redesign was delivered, but adoption wasn’t measured.” That honesty is a good sign. Every case study on this site says what was delivered and what was measured, separately, for exactly that reason.

8. “How will we communicate?”

How often you’ll meet, how fast feedback comes back, where work lives and who to contact if something’s urgent. A clear rhythm matters more than constant availability.

9. “What do you need from us?”

Good consultants ask for things: access, evidence, a decision-maker, time from your team. If someone needs nothing from you, they’re probably planning to work in isolation, and the result will show it.

10. “How is the fee worked out?”

Fixed fee, day rate or retainer: all can be fair. What matters is that you understand what drives the number and what happens if the scope changes.

Red flags

A few things that should make you pause:

• A proposal before anyone has asked about your users or your problem.
• Guaranteed outcomes, like a specific conversion uplift, before any work has been done.
• A logo wall with no explanation of what the work was.
• No mention of constraints, risks or what’s out of scope.

If you’d like to put these questions to us, book a conversation. We’d rather you hired the right partner than hired us for the wrong job.