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Service guide · Berlin

The best UX and UI Design Studios in Berlin

Design is where a project is either de-risked or where risk is quietly added. A studio that hands over a component library with states saves the build team weeks. A studio that hands over twelve beautiful screens has moved the hard decisions downstream and out of its own budget.

01

What a handover should contain

Components rather than screens. Every component with its states: default, hover, focus, loading, empty, error, and what happens when the content is three times longer than the example. Spacing and type as a scale, not as numbers typed per screen. And a written note of what was decided and why.

Twelve polished screens with none of that will be redesigned during the build, by developers, under time pressure. You pay for the design twice and get the second one for free.

02

Research or decoration

Ask who they spoke to and what surprised them. A studio doing real research has an answer that contradicts the original brief somewhere, because that is what research produces. A studio that only decorates will describe a mood board.

Five interviews are worth more than a survey of five hundred for most product decisions, and they are affordable. If nobody proposes talking to users, ask why not.

03

Rates you will hear

Freelance product designer65–110Small studio, blended85–135Mid-size agency, blended110–165Research sprint, per week3500–7000

Hourly bands commonly quoted in the city, except the research sprint, which is priced per week including recruitment of participants.

04

Signals worth checking

States, not screens
The handover describes behaviour, not just appearance.
Accessibility considered in the design
Contrast, focus order and target sizes decided before the build, not audited after it.
Working with the build team
Design reviews during development, not a handover and a wave goodbye.
Content taken seriously
Real text in the designs. Lorem ipsum hides the problems until they are expensive.
A named researcher or a reason there is none
Either they do research or they say plainly that they do not.
05

Ask before you sign

  1. What does your handover contain, and may we see a real one?
  2. Who did you speak to on your last project, and what changed as a result?
  3. How do you work with the developers during the build?
  4. Which parts of this brief would you challenge?
  5. How do you design for the longest realistic content, not the shortest?

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