What are the benefits of working with a UX firm that has backend development experience?

Episode Transcript

Moderator: Welcome to One Question with UpTop Health and today’s question is ‘What are the benefits of working with a UX firm that has back-end development experience?’ And Craig, could you start us off?

Craig: Sure, you know it’s interesting when we think about design, we look at it as great UX being the engineer of the entire experience not just the design of the screens. So, when you ask that question, what does that mean? There’s a lot of designers and a lot of agencies; a lot of talented folks that are really good at creating the screen if you will, the layout. But today, with all the technology that is needed to run that experience in terms of the data, the backend technologies, the interactions, the integrations, etc., being able to design something that really works is as much about the engineering as it is about the UX on the front-end in terms of the design and the implementation.

Having an agency that has back-end experience technologists, solution architects that can then look at the best way to put together that back-end system, if it’s new or the best way to integrate with an existing legacy system to get to that desired future state is really important, more so than ever before. Mike you have any thoughts?

Michael: Just the theoretical in general when teams front-to-back are unified, whether it’s having design and dev together at a shop, or in this case, design, front-end dev and back-end dev together, communication and alignment is a lot tighter, making for greater efficiencies. It helps with understanding the complexities and problems a lot better because we’re all working closely together. As mentioned earlier, just being unified, helps being able to understand how each other member works. We don’t have to learn all that, whereas when you’re working with third-party groups, you have to start from scratch essentially developing those relationships. Not to say that it doesn’t work;  it has worked in the past in some cases, but in others it just doesn’t so having all disciplines makes for a better work environment, a more efficient one.

Craig: Good point.

Michael: Thanks.

Craig: You’re welcome.