What am I paying so much for - (new series)

Lis, founder of Hubert Experience Design, a boutique user experience firm based in NYC, has a nice post up on the New York Entrepreneur Week on the subject of pricing for the UI design and user experience services. Lis takes the analogy of $75k wild life photographs at an art gallery and why the price seems seemed very fair and made a ton of sense after she understood the painstakingly hard process that the artist goes through to make the prints and the great effort the photographer goes through spending lot of time and money. Lis explains that making the output look effortless even though it is of high quality is a sign of someone who is very very good at what they do.
Lis further says that as a customer of a UI design firm, you pay for:

• The mesh of knowledge that we have regarding your customer base
• Expertise in knowing how to influence your customers to use your product or service
• Knowledge regarding how to uncover what your users need from you, and how they want to pay for it. To me, this seems like a pretty good deal in the end. Having someone that is a direct input into your making more money.

With a good UI firm, what you are paying for is the ability to not have to worry about an entire aspect of your business.


Lis covers probably three or more distinct but very important topics in a single blog post, which I think deserve separate blog posts. Go read the Lis's post here and come back in a week for part I of the series.