The significance of investing in user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design remains dominant in the last month of the year too. Choose from the top UX agencies that can help you, whether you’re looking to develop a new website, revamp an app, or identify areas for improvement in your digital product.
While in-house UX consultants, UI/UX designers, and user researchers continue to gain popularity, some businesses continue to opt for the expertise of specialized UX design firms. Here, we listed user experience consultancies and full-service UI UX design agencies from the US to Europe, with a brief description of each to help you decide.
If you want to shorten the research, our UX design agency has all the experience and knowledge you need regardless of your company size or industry. Let’s get in touch and discuss your current goals.
Further ado, let’s jump right in and look at the top UX agencies:
Top 10 UX Agencies
- UX studio
- Clay
- Ideo
- MetaLab
- Fantasy Interactive
- Designit
- Halo Lab
- Ramotion
- Method
- Bynd
1. UX studio
Award-winning European UX agency working with companies worldwide.
We, UX studio, are a global UX design agency with over 10 years of experience and became a world-class digital product designing agency in 2013. We’re one of the top UX design agencies worldwide based in Europe, among the fastest-growing.
How we work with our partners:
- Our UX experts work 100% only on your project.
- With the agile method, we don’t waste time and money.
- We build a product that serves your audience and business as well
- Flexibility is key, we align our service to your needs.
- We always take the extra mile to understand your company and the product/service you have.
As a world-class UX design agency, we manage remote collaboration effectively which allows us to work with startups and established companies from different countries. We’ve worked with many partners like Google, HBO, Netflix, and The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to list a few.
If you’re looking for a UI UX designer agency, contact UX studio. We’re ready to help you with any website or app design and research challenges you might have.
And it’s a real gift to work with different companies in various industries across the globe. We have experience in fintech, digital solutions, SaaS, traveling, education, and healthcare industries among others. If you’re interested, check out our previous works.
If you’re in need of a UX design agency, we’d be happy to help. Reach out to us and let’s discuss your current obstacles and goals. We’ll be in touch with you to discuss your challenges further, and to come up with a custom solution for you!
2. Clay
A global UX design and branding agency with a focus on AI, technology, and user engagement
Clay (clay.global) is a globally recognized design agency founded in San Francisco with a mission to elevate brands through transformative digital experiences. With a team of strategists, designers, and engineers, they have built an impressive portfolio working with renowned companies such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Sony.
One of the key differentiators of Clay is their unified and AI-infused approach to creating robust design systems that ensure scalability and consistency across all brand touchpoints. Led by co-founders, the agency prioritizes collaboration and communication to provide a premium client experience from start to finish.
Their service offerings include user experience and brand experience, where they define, design, and develop world-class digital products that people love to use. Their work is future-proof, with several websites and products remaining untouched for over 5 years. With a focus on conversion optimization and customer engagement across various platforms, such as mobile apps, websites, and enterprise software. They also offer services in e-commerce solutions, B2B & Enterprise software development.
3. Ideo
A global product design and innovation company established in 1991 in Palo Alto, California.
A legendary innovation firm based in Palo Alto, California, Ideo started in industrial design in 1991. They have worked with most of the big brands around the world, based on their very strong presence in the tech world of Silicon Valley. I can’t write about top UX agencies without mentioning Ideo.
In their early days, Ideo famously designed the first-ever Apple Mouse. They also designed one of the Palm PDAs (if you remember PDAs at all).
Later, as software became more and more important, Ideo turned to interaction design. Founder David Kelley realized early that they had to convince their client companies’ managers to follow their design methods. To that end, they came up with the term “design thinking”.
They rebranded the designer’s mindset and methods as management practices. They then persistently pushed the idea for more than 15 years until it became part of the curriculum even in major business schools.
Most famous for their innovative work and the love of prototypes, Ideo provides diverse teams with designers, engineers, and researchers for a project. There they can think freely, build fast-and-loose prototypes, and present clients with their big ideas.
It’s not a coincidence, Ideo is a top UI UX design agency. They work on innovation projects for big enterprises that want to bring back the start-up spirit. Their projects rarely end up with tangible products.
Although they rank as one of the most expensive firms on the market, critics often mention how they usually present only a raw prototype in return for a large pile of cash. Despite these critics, Ideo has become one of the most popular design firms. They also invest heavily in design education.
4. MetaLab
MetaLab is a Canadian interface design firm. They offer product design, custom software development, and UX/UI Design.
MetaLab was founded in 2006 by Andrew Wilkinson. First, he started the web design company out of his apartment. But now with more than 150 employees, they’re headquartered in Victoria, British Columbia. They provide product design, software development, and research services.
The company is now part of the Tiny group of companies which includes Dribbble, Pixel Union, and Flow. MetaLab also founded Pixel Union, which is an independent company and theme supplier for platforms including Tumblr, Shopify, and WordPress.
MetaLab’s most famous clients include Slack, Coinbase, TED, Apple, Disney, and Google, to name a few. And they manage their work with those big names while nearly half of their employees are remote and have unlimited vacation and sick days.
As their work became well known a lot of big tech companies wanted to acquire them. Just as it happened to a lot of their competitors and friends. But Tim and Andres Wilkinson realized that the buyer would ruin their culture, give the employees a hard time, and probably wreck the brand.
So they founded their holding company Meta which is focusing on acquiring the world’s best digital agencies
5. Fantasy Co.
A global UI/UX design agency with offices in the US (New York, San Francisco, Miami) and London.
David Martin founded Fantasy in 1999 but no longer serves as CEO. The company gained fame for the beautiful UI design and website design they always presents. Their own brand has a very strong visual presence as well, with an almost too-professional taste.
Fantasy gained notoriety with their “What if?” videos when they reimagined the digital products of certain industries in a new, modern way. These early videos showcased their high-end graphic design skills and contained animated UI designs, rather common back then.
Since their early days, Fantasy has grown into a much bigger digital agency. They now work with big corporates like Porsche, USA Today, and Mitsubishi.
Fantasy currently employs about 50 people, down from a few years ago when they enjoyed even greater popularity.
6. Designit
A global UX design agency with over 10 studios worldwide.
Alan Cooper and his wife Sue Cooper founded their eponymous company in 1992. Although a professional manager now runs it, the founders remain involved in certain areas, earning them a place on our top UX agencies list.
One of the great veterans of the software industry, Alan Cooper fathered the Visual Basic programming environment and became a real hero in the Microsoft ecosystem. One of the few who realized the importance of design during these early days, he has written a famous book about software design, About Face.
Today, Designit (formerly Cooper) works with companies like Google and Starbucks on interaction design and service design projects. They also take an active part in design education with different courses, boot camps, and trainings.
In 2017, the Indian IT giant Wipro Digital bought Cooper. They now work together with the firm’s international design conglomerate Designit.
7. Halo Lab
A UI UX design and development agency based in Ukraine with branding services as well.
Founded in 2013, Halo Lab operates from three offices across different time zones, boasting a team of 130+ professionals. Specializing in full-stack design and development, they focus on delivering tangible results in complex web apps, marketing websites, eCommerce, and mobile apps. Their services includes wireframing, UX/UI design, branding, and product development, utilizing a top tech stack including ReactJS and GraphQL.
Halo Lab has collaborated with startups, digital services, and e-commerce platforms, showcasing their proficiency in various domains. Their transparent design process involves mind mapping, user flow, interactive UX/UI design, and style guide provision. In development, they follow one-week sprints, QA sessions, continuous deployment, and weekly updates.
With an annual average of 60+ successfully completed projects, the UX agency emphasizes client-centricity, focusing on results rather than accolades or ambitions. Their commitment to clear communication and collaborative development backs their efficiency and success in the digital world.
8. Ramotion
Branding and UX/UI design agency helping startups and Fortune 500 companies grow and succeed.
Ramotion was founded in 2009 and soon they established a reputation among startups with their app and web design, branding, and development.
The UI UX agency is based in San Francisco with a team of more than 70 experts, also having offices in Los Angeles and New York. Although one could say it’s a big team, compared to other top ux agencies it’s relatively small and not by accident. This small team can ensure their work’s quality, working with a few clients at a time.
They can boast numerous clients such as Adobe, Tessian, salesforce, CrunchBase, and Bitmoji. As you can see, they work with SMEs and enterprises, they’re a great choice not only for startups.
Startups usually reach out to Ramotion for branding and in the last decade, the UX design agency developed a collaborative approach. They can help with strategy, identity, and communication strategy, either from scratch or reimagining what the startup already has. According to their website, their startup clients raised more than $750m with their help.
Besides their startup focus, the design company can lend a helping hand in UX and UI design, including audit, discovery, and prototypes. They can also help with web app development, app design, web design, and create tailored design systems.
9. Method
A global design and engineering consultancy, passionate about delivering quality craftsmanship and business value.
Method was founded in 1999 on the belief that design and technology could create more value for businesses. Over 20 years later, they’re still dedicated to using their craft to make lives and businesses better. Today as a UX / UI agency, Method provides digital strategy, software development, and UX/UI design services.
Method is also part of GlobalLogic, a product engineering company with over 25,000 employees in 12 countries. The UX design agency does the design and GlobalLogic does web development, mostly building products for enterprise companies. Method’s own brand uses a strong blue color popular in the corporate world.
Method has headquarters in San Jose, New York, and London, but together with GlobalLogic, they have 30 offices in 12 countries around the globe.
The Method UX agency employs around 350 people.
10. Beyond Agency
A digital product agency helping brands make progress by improving customer experiences through design.
Founded in 2010, Beyond Agency is a globally recognized design and innovation company that operates across London, Lisbon, New York, San Francisco, and Mexico City. They’re dedicated to helping brands enhance their user experiences and solve complex challenges through design thinking and creative solutions.
As a forward-thinking UI/UX design company, they opened their offices strategically to be able to provide 16+ hours of coverage in multiple time zones to meet their clients’ needs promptly.
Beyond Agency demonstrates excellence in customer experience by continually auditing and improving user interactions, nurturing connections among employees, and consistently crafting enriching customer learning experiences. In the realm of design and development, the company offers a range of services, including design sprints, prototyping, solution architecture, and cloud platform transformation. When it comes to product-related services, Beyond Agency delivers vital offerings, such as ongoing product health assessments, continuous evaluations of product-market fit, the development of innovative strategies, and the ongoing refinement of vision and strategy.
Over the years, as one of the top ux agencies, they’ve built an impressive portfolio, working with renowned companies such as Google, Mont Blanc, Apple, MailChimp, PayPal, WarnerBros, and Snapchat. The company’s approach is built on a foundation of culture, design craft, and technical excellence, ensuring they meet and exceed their clients’ expectations.
With a team of over 400 professionals, including designers, engineers, and researchers, they collaborate seamlessly to create transformative solutions. The user experience firm’s service offerings include customer experience improvement, design and development services, and product strategy. Their unique work environment is further enriched by the presence of 17 office dogs, fostering a friendly and inclusive atmosphere.
Comparing Top UX Agencies
Although these companies are experts in UX design, each of them has its own field, where it shines on the market. This section will examine the most important attributes of the best UX consultancies according to the following criteria:
- Usability vs Visual Design
- Concepts vs Implementation
- Advertising vs Product
- Digital vs Physical
- Culture and atmosphere
- Speed of starting the collaboration
- UX research
- Prices
Full disclosure: These charts represent my opinion based on personal experience and industry insights. As I said earlier, I also have personal involvement in the UX design profession, so don’t take my blog post as independent research material. I have done my best to give a realistic view of the top UX companies.
Usability vs Visual Design
Each agency has a slightly different philosophy of design. Some focus more on visual design and branding, while others obsess over usability and making everything easy to understand.
By now, all UX professionals agree a good-looking digital interface is not sufficient. Usability is one of the most important factors of success. For this reason, almost every big brand builds super user-friendly apps that follow the design principle of clarity and simplicity.
Nevertheless, the best designers don’t give up on visual design. They still acknowledge that the aesthetics of a product can contribute to its success.
No single best answer decides the aesthetics/usability dilemma. Everyone should evaluate their own products and services, and decide what to focus on next. Some industries see usability as king (millions use Wikipedia even though no one finds it the most beautiful website on Earth). Other scenarios make it worth spending more time with aesthetics.
All the design agencies on the list can do outstanding work both in visual design and usability. But on this chart, I tried to rank them based on their primary focus.
Concepts vs Implementation
You can find the fancy word word “strategic design company” on the websites of many UX design firms. But what does it mean?
A few decades ago, when you said the word “design”, everyone thought about the visual appearance of a product only. Later, usability became one of the most important factors. Today, designers spend most of their time creating products that make our lives easier.
In the meantime, design professionals have got a lot of useful skills and methods. These include prototyping, researching what people need, workshop facilitation, ideation sessions, and strategy creation.
Data analysis also came into the picture with the digital world. Later, we realized that these skills don’t just come in useful in design projects, these methods can help define a company’s business strategy as well.
Many designers today don’t work on designing products, but on defining strategies or exploring new concepts for companies. Large corporations love to run innovation projects where they can experiment with new ideas.
They don’t aim to create a functioning end product, but to research, the market, come up with many concepts, and test the viability and feasibility of these ideas. Critics always mention how they rarely end up in actual products and new businesses.
Some companies like Ideoentirely focus on innovation projects. Others take pride in the fact they do hands-on work and focus solely on implementation, like Work & co.
Many others try to keep a healthy mix. Both of these focus on strategy when needed, but they can also turn ideas into real, working products.
Advertising vs Product
Businesses use digital interfaces in two main areas: marketing/advertising and products.
When you visit a company’s website, you are probably looking at a marketing side intended to provide information about the firm and promote its offerings with effective messaging.
Many UX designers work on these advertising-related interfaces, which focus on pushing the marketing message through. They try to ensure people can find the information needed to make a purchase decision.
Products make up the other big area of UX. In this case, UXers work on tools that people will use for a certain purpose. Most mobile applications fall into this category. Desktop software provides a good example as do web applications like Gmail and many other SaaS products you can sign up for.
Sometimes, no strict boundaries separate promotions and products. We can consider a webshop a promotional interface, but also as a purchasing tool that has a lot of usability aspects to consider. One company can have both advertising sites and products. Nike has a promotional site for its shoes and a tracking app for runners.
Some agencies specialize more in advertising and marketing interfaces, while others focus on products only. The best UX design agencies on this list have vast experience in working on both types of interfaces, but some do better in one category or the other.
The chart below shows who has more experience in advertising-related and product-related work based on my opinion.
link: https://www.uxstudioteam.com/ux-blog/top-ux-agencies