Hire the Top 3% of Freelance InteractiveĀ Designers
Toptal is a marketplace for top interactive designers. Top companies and start-ups choose Toptal interactive design freelancers for their mission critical designĀ projects.
Henrique has been working as a UX designer since 2011, and heās spent the past years designing apps and mobile sites for major Brazilian eCommerce brands. He communicates exceptionally well and loves to collaborate with teams across the globe. With a solid academic foundation in graphic design and information architecture, Henrique offers his clients a complete UX design skillset from product design concepts to final specifications.
United StatesToptal Member Since September 25, 2018
Daniel is an award-winning multi-disciplinary designer. His passion lies in working with startups to create clear images of who they are and helps visualize problems they are trying to solve. Daniel will work with you or your team to identify and develop the assets your company needs to get off the ground. In solving design challenges, the main priority is always making your business grow.
Christian is an experienced product designer specializing in enterprise and SaaS platforms. Over the past 15 years, he's designed products that have collectively raised over $100 million in funding. He works from ideation to launch and believes in simple design, working closely with engineers, and testing products often. Christian's previous clients include British Gas, KPMG, DFS, McLaren, HSBC, and Google.
United StatesToptal Member Since November 16, 2015
Katrina is an innovative user experience and interaction designer with more than a decade of experience in product design for the web, desktop, mobile, and embedded applications. She creatively translates complex problems into elegant, usable solutions that exceed expectations and across devices. She approaches product design with a broad experience, a big picture focus, and a passionate user advocacy.
United StatesToptal Member Since September 18, 2017
Andi has 20 years of proven expertise leading enterprise clients through complex system overhauls in various industries. Adept at collaborating with teams of all sizes, she expertly engages with executive leadership and end-users alike while using best practices in UX, IA, and IxD. Andi has applied her E2E methodology with clients at Oracle, United Nations WFP, New York State Education Dept, Baker Hughes, IHS Markit, Xcel Energy, and more.
Quan has designed digital experiences for more than 11 years, including working with the international eCommerce platform Luxury Escapes and the high-growth Australian fintech startup Simply Wall St. Quan focuses on understanding his clients' business and their challenges through effective communication. He delivers well-crafted, scalable and considered design solutions which are also thought out for development.
Matthew is a 30-times, award-winning, lead-product UX/UI designer, advisor, and creative director with more than twelve years of hands-on experience. He's worked with leading Fortune 500 brands and startups, including Disney, Samsung, Sony, Adidas, BMW, Lufthansa, to bring impact via innovation. Matthew's mission is to deliver the most efficient, engaging, innovative, and high-quality experience with an emphasis on user experience.
Kasey is an adventurer, storyteller, and design entrepreneur, helping shape how people experience the digital world around them. He's intuitive eye for core experience and passion for design result in truly engaging interactions. As a successful UX and Interaction Designer, clients and teams have come to rely on Kasey to deliver highly impactful, end-to-end digital solutions across web, mobile, and software.
Ricardo has 11 years experience as a UX designer, with four as head of UX. He has worked from brief to delivery, specializing in user research, creative strategy, and experience design. As a past developer, he understands UX for the technology space. Ricardo is the winner of the Fast Company Innovation By Design award. He is the founder of getdoin', an Airbnb for workshops, and has worked with giants such as Google, Apple, and Disney.
Jorge Juan has more than a decade of experience designing successful products used by millions of users worldwide. He designs throughout the whole product lifecycle, from concept and MVP definition to prototypes and high-fidelity visuals. A creative, detail-oriented, and strategic thinker, he loves to work in fast-moving teams and create products that deliver great value to users while incorporating technical capabilities and business goals.
Ran brings an artist's eye and an engineer's mind to approach design in a systematic yet creative way. She holds a Master of Science degree in computer science, human-computer interaction, and data visualization. In the past five years, Ran has specialized in solving complex enterprise SaaS problems by creating elegant and simple UX solutions. Ran follows an iterative, user-centered, and data-informed design process.
With the advent of mobile and web apps, demand for Interaction Design (IxD) services has skyrocketed, causing a number of issues for designers and clients alike. IxD specialists are often mistaken for UX designers, interface-designers, or even visual designers. However, IxD deals with human-computer interaction rather than user experience or visual design.
... allows corporations to quickly assemble teams that have the right skills for specific projects.
Despite accelerating demand for coders, Toptal prides itself on almost Ivy League-level vetting.
Our clients
Building a cross-platform app to be used worldwide
Testimonials
Michael is an incredible designer, and has been a great fit for our project. He just gets it in a way that canāt be taught. My goal was to pay Toptal to find me a high quality designer for my project, and that is exactly what happened. It was easy. Being able to see the portfolio work on Toptalās platform is what gave me the infomation I needed to choose Michael. I have nothing but good things to say about Toptal and am looking forward to using Toptal for other projects in the future.
Edward Daniel, Co-Founder
improvemygun.com
I've worked very closely with Martina for over a year and have to say she is one of the best people I have ever worked with. Instead of simply following instructions blindly, she thinks through the task at hand, becoming a thought partner to help with whatever the project may be. Besides being super talented at design, she possesses specific qualities that make her exceptional to work with given the fast paced nature of being a startup. I would definitely recommend her to anyone looking for a talented, professional designer who doesn't need much direction to hit the ground running.
Sahil Khanna, Sr. Manager, Marketing
LeanTaaS, Inc.
Darko did a great job figuring out the user architecture for our concept, which led him to produce terrific wireframes. His knowledge of usability and design was a perfect match for the outside voice we needed to help jumpstart our project. We would certainly recommend him and work with him again in the future.
Rich Danker, Founder
Prose Market
Carlos has the unique talent of blending both quantitative and qualitative research to keenly identify UX challenges and opportunities. He thinks methodically, emphatically, and holistically to produce data-driven strategies and well-executed designs. Over the past 8 years of working with fully or partially distributed teams, Carlos manages working remotely far better than anyone I've encountered because of his strong communication and presentation skills. He is the first on my list the next time I need a UX designer.
Michelle Krogmeier, Project Manager
Union Station
Rafael is an amazing designer. His aesthetic sense is spot on, and he seems to be able to anticipate our needs before we even know what they are. He's taken the time to understand both our company and our clientele, and his solutions are consistently in-line with our values, interests, and our customers' needs. He delivers on time (if not earlier), works quickly, is well organized, and very effective. He's a pleasure to work with, and we're very happy to have found him through Toptal.
Ethan Brooks, CTO
Langlotz Patent & Trademark Works, Inc.
Toptal gave us access to the best designers out there. Theyāre not easy to find. Those designers integrated very quickly with our existing teams. They very quickly understood our business case and the value of our solution. Toptal really allowed us to focus on building the best possible product and save a lot of time on the typical administrative pains that goes with it -- specifically, finding the best talent. Toptal designers were very responsive, always online -- and that made life very easy for us. We have ambitious goals on how to grow the application and already Toptal has been a key contributor to that success.
Thierry Jakircevic, General Manager, Digital Solutions, Bridgestone Head Office, Tokyo
Bridgestone Corporation
We had an amazing experience working with our Toptal designer. In only two weeks, we accomplished what would've taken most companies 3 months to complete. We also enjoyed working with the Toptal team to make sure we were paired up with the right designer that would fit both our company culture and working style.
Ted Blosser, Head of Sales and Customer Success
WorkRamp
Dean blew us away. He ranks right up there as one of the top five designers of the hundreds I have worked with in the past. He listened, was totally professional, and came up with a 3D rotating cube design completely on his own. We didn't even ask for it, and yet it has become the centerpiece of our app and how users engage with it right off the bat. What he produced inspired all of us at Votify, and put us on track for launch and investor funding.
Michael Lawrence, Founder & CEO
Votify LLC
How to Hire Interactive Designers throughĀ Toptal
1
Talk to One of Our Industry Experts
A Toptal director of design will work with you to understand your goals, technical needs, and teamĀ dynamics.
2
Work With Hand-Selected Talent
Within days, we'll introduce you to the right interactive designer for your project. Average time to match is under 24Ā hours.
3
The Right Fit, Guaranteed
Work with your new interactive designer for a trial period (pay only if satisfied), ensuring they're the right fit before starting theĀ engagement.
FAQs
How are Toptal interactive designers different?
At Toptal, we thoroughly screen our interactive designers to ensure we only match you with talent of the highest caliber. Of the more than 200,000 people who apply to join the Toptal network each year, fewer than 3% make the cut. You'll work with design experts (never generalized recruiters or HR reps) to understand your goals, technical needs, and team dynamics. The end result: expert vetted talent from our network, custom matched to fit your business needs. Start now.
Can I hire interactive designers in less than 48 hours through Toptal?
Depending on availability and how fast you can progress, you could start working with an interactive designer within 48 hours of signing up. Start now.
What is the no-risk trial period for Toptal interactive designers?
We make sure that each engagement between you and your interactive designer begins with a trial period of up to two weeks. This means that you have time to confirm the engagement will be successful. If you're completely satisfied with the results, we'll bill you for the time and continue the engagement for as long as you'd like. If you're not completely satisfied, you won't be billed. From there, we can either part ways, or we can provide you with another expert who may be a better fit and with whom we will begin a second, no-risk trial. Start now.
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How to Hire a Great Interaction DesignerĀ (IxD)
In todayās technology-filled world, it will not surprise anyone if we said that pretty much every Web or mobile application is based on interactive visual elements. Itās no longer enough to simply hire a graphic designer to provide necessary visual graphics.
More often than not, you will find yourself in need of a professional interaction designer (IxD) to add to your design team who will add that extra layer of āgood to greatā to your project. This design strategist may be a full-time or part-time role, but either way they will be crucial to your design success.
Before we jump into the hiring guide itself, let us explain what an interaction designer is not.
UI, UX, IxD: Lots of overlap and loads of differences.
Many times IxDs are mistakenly called user-experience designers, user interface-designers or even simply graphic designers or illustrators.
This confusion arises because the field of interaction design only started a few decades ago.
The Challenge
Unfortunately an IxDās main goals are very similar to those of a user experience (UX) designer; they both facilitate the interactions between people and their environment.
The main difference in their goals being that, unlike UX designers, who are responsible for all user-facing aspects of a software or system, interaction designers generally only look after the interaction between users and computers, frequently known as āhuman-computer interaction.ā
This confusion makes it more difficult to decide which IxD would be right for you and your company. Note that there are important foundation concepts, principles and methodologies that are constantly used in interaction design.
Ten Interaction Design (IxD) Principles
These are the principles we will be looking at in order to help you understand the foundation and methodology behind IxD, and to help you decide whom to hire.
Meet the ten commandments of good interaction design.
Now, letās dive into the details of these principles to better understand how they add value to an interaction designerās workflow and why they are crucial.
1. Goal-Oriented Design
Any end user interacting with an application or platform has certain goals, and an interaction designerās job is to help the user reach said goals in the most efficient way possible. These goals consist of desired outcomes, such as accessing a bank statement, sending a file, uploading a photo, and so on.
The way to discover these goals is by conducting a user research. While it isnāt an interaction designerās job to conduct this research, s/he has to be fully knowledgeable of the research results.
Whether s/he does the research, or if the User Experience (UX) designer provides it, knowing exactly what users expect by interacting with your product will allow your Interaction Designer (IxD) create the best possible Goal-Orientated Design.
2. Personas
āPersonasā are fictional characters developed from cognitive psychology and human behavior research; they resemble your targeted end-user.
Personas are used when explaining design decisions along the process.
For example: āPeter, who is Chief Marketing Officer, would more likely use our app while commuting by train. How short would his attention span more likely be in that scenario?ā
The answer to this question should help to decide, for example, how many steps should a marketing proposal applicationās submission take.
3. Affective Interaction Design
This principle is strongly related to user interface design and allows interfaces to be designed in such a way that they convey positive, expressive, enjoyable, happy and inspiring emotions when interacting with technology. Needless to say, this should be in every Interaction Designerās interests.
Certain elements, and key aspects, of design influence the emotional response of the targeted end-user. Affective Interaction Design is used to avoid:
Giving users too little information to make a decision
Error messages that make users feel patronized
Bright, flashing design elements
Chaotic and confusing layouts
Instead, using Affective Interaction Design the following steps can be taken to change the negative emotions in the end-user:
Give clear, detailed instructions how to solve the problem
Make additional helpful resources accessible
Create dynamic, animated design elements to keep users informed about the current actions being taken
4. Cognitive Dimensions
To analyse and evaluate design quality and its usability, the cognitive dimensions framework is used as a lighter approach, sometimes referred to as ācognitive dimensions of notations.ā Here are the 14 cognitive dimensions that Thomas Green originally defined and that are used to analyse design quality and usability:
Abstraction gradient
Closeness of mapping
Consistency
Diffuseness / terseness
Error-proneness
Hard mental operations
Hidden dependencies
Juxtaposability
Premature commitment
Progressive evaluation
Role-expressiveness
Secondary notation
Viscosity
Visibility
5. Learnability
The best, and most professional, interaction designers donāt use their creativity solely to reinvent the wheel every time a new design challenge comes their way. Instead, they use proven ways to make users feel as familiar with the interface as possible.
This is achieved by using familiar design components. For example, If a user is used to uploading a document by clicking on a green link, he would only have to overcome a learning curve if he sees an orange button instead of green.
Even though all new products and their platforms require unique design solutions and unique interfaces, every good interaction designer will use these familiar components, sometimes called āinterface idiomā or āpattern.ā
6. Usability
This dimension is similar to āLearnabilityā. The main difference is that while learnability is about making users feel familiar with the productās interface, even the first time using it, āusabilityā is about making the productās interface easy to use.
In many cases, a usability analyst might be added to the workflow for the initial usability testing or user testing; this provides an understanding of the level of ease, use and learnability of the product.
Further, there are five usability characteristics, and the product must be:
Effective
Efficient
Engaging
Error tolerant
Easy to learn
7. Affordances
As the old saying goes, āform follows functionā, the same principle applies to anything that your IxD will design. Every product should āinviteā the end-user to take a specific action, based on the way it was designed.
For example, when you look at a hammer, you shouldnāt have to think too long to understand which end is for holding and which end to use to hit that nail into the wall.
Any good IxD knows that just as hammers have to look like hammers, scissors have to look like scissors and screwdrivers have to look like screwdrivers, buttons have to look like buttons, links have to look like links, input fields have to look like input fields, and so on.
By designing specific components using affordances, the end user immediately understands the underlying function of those elements.
8. User Scenarios
āUser scenariosā answer two important questions:
What users do on the website with the product or the application
What is the reason behind that action
You can think of user scenarios as short stories that illustrate end usersā goals, how they achieve those goals, and what the motivation is for those actions; what made them think that those steps will help them achieve their goals?
Good user scenarios should be short, relevant and to the point, yet they should be sufficiently detailed about possible actions, motives and goals of the end user.
Here are a few questions that interaction designers should keep in mind:
Who is the user Iām designing for?
What does this user want on my site?
How is this user going to achieve his or hers goals?
Why does this user come to my site and not somewhere else?
9. Experience Maps
This could be referred to as a visual representation of the userās journey over time. Here an interactive designer might partner with a senior UX designer to start creating experience maps your interaction designer must be fully aware of your target audience.
User scenarios and experience maps are a vital part of any interaction design process.
After that comes the clear articulation of usage, opportunities, needs, goals and wants. Then come the engagement scenarios that will influence the productās success with the end user:
Determine the ease-of-use at touch points and fluctuations are satisfactory, which could also become opportunities for improvement.
What are some of the issues and challenges that could occur when using the product and how could they impact the use and adoption of the product?
Spot opportunities that arise out of user-experience gaps that prevent users meeting end goals.
How would different devices influence usersā experience with the productās interface?
10. Response Time
Finally, when designing and optimizing any web or mobile productās experience, itās the response time that becomes an important strength. It consists of the three significant time limits, which have been determined by human perceptual abilities.
In 1993, Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D., a user advocate and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group, published a book titled Usability Engineering. In Chapter 5, he describes in detail why response time is important. Here is an excerpt:
Response time can make or break an IxD solution. Design and optimize for speed.
The basic advice regarding response times has been about the same for thirty years [Miller 1968; Card et al. 1991]:
0.1 second is about the limit for having the user feel that the system is reacting instantaneously, meaning that no special feedback is necessary except to display the result.
1.0 second is about the limit for the userās flow of thought to stay uninterrupted, even though the user will notice the delay. Normally, no special feedback is necessary during delays of more than 0.1 but less than 1.0 second, but the user does lose the feeling of operating directly on the data.
10 seconds is about the limit for keeping the userās attention focused on the dialogue. For longer delays, users will want to perform other tasks while waiting for the computer to finish, so they should be given feedback indicating when the computer expects to be done. Feedback during the delay is especially important if the response time is likely to be highly variable, since users will then not know what to expect.
From Principles To Practice
There are a number of ways of applying the outlined IxD principles to actual projects. IxD principles may be realized by using CSS, HTML, or other technology and frameworks. Because implementation may vary depending on the type and scope of a project, it is important to tailor interview questions in such a way as to prompt the designer to discuss general principles. Execution should be covered only after establishing the candidate has a good grasp of them.
Q: Why is contrast important for Interaction Design (IxD) and how would you use it?
This is a basic design concept. It helps set apart and differentiate whatās important on the page from the elements that serve a secondary or supportive purpose.
Contrast can make content easily readable, scannable and even sharable. I also use it to make sure the CTA (Call To Action) elements, and any other purpose-driven elements on the site, do not blend together with other background elements.
Q: How would you make sure your interaction design is not only aesthetically pleasing, but also functional?
To ensure design serves its functional purpose, it is necessary to know what the main functional priorities each interface or element have to serve. Then the next step is to think about the range of actions this interface and elements can perform.
The range of possible actions should never overwhelm or confuse the end-user . To achieve this āfunctional minimalism,ā avoid unnecessary functions and features; break complex functions and tasks into smaller sub-task steps without limiting the user experience, instead cut down on functions.
Q: What are the most important and fundamental elements of any interaction design system?
The following three elements are fundamental to all systems, especially when it comes to interaction design: control, trust and explorability.
Control is the most important; when users feel in control of the interface they feel more comfortable using it. When end-users feel comfortable in control, they will start to trust it.
They trust that the interface will prevent them from creating errors or make them uncomfortable, which might happen if the user didnāt have full control of it.
Lastly, confidence is gained by having full control of the interface and trusting it. And with confidence, users feel free to apply their own abilities to explore the interface by themselves.
Q: How would you effectively use consistency for your interaction design (UxD) work?
Good interaction design must be consistent. End-users will quickly learn patterns, repetitive actions and consistent functions. Therefore, not sticking with consistency will only confuse your end-users, making them feel uncomfortable with the interface.
As an example, if your āBuy It Nowā button, āSubscribeā link or a clickable āAdd To Basketā element is orange, then every one of these elements should be orange. These are your CTA (Call To Action) elements, and orange would therefore become what the industry calls an āAction Color;ā it should remain consistent across all your CTA elements.
Q: How would you ensure your interaction design (IxD) system always tracks the state?
As a result of the popularity of browser-based products, which exist in a stateless environment, interaction designers should ensure our systems track, as a minimum, the following interactions:
Whether this is the userās first time of using the system / application.
If not, at what stage was the user when the last session was finished?
What gained the userās interest in the system?
What are the stages or steps has the user taken during the current session?
And finally, what step is the user taking now in the current session?