Question 1

What is a design system and does my product actually need one?

Accepted Answer

A design system is a shared library of components, tokens, and documented patterns that your design and engineering teams both work from. You need one the moment you have more than one designer, more than one engineer touching the UI, or more than one product surface. Without it, every new feature introduces inconsistency and every engineer re-solves the same component problems independently. We have seen teams where 30 percent of engineering time was going to UI inconsistency rework before they had a design system.

Question 2

How long does a design system take to build?

Accepted Answer

A useful MVP design system — core components, a semantic token layer, and basic Storybook documentation — takes 4 to 6 weeks. A comprehensive system covering every product surface, advanced interaction states, and full accessibility compliance takes 10 to 16 weeks. We ship the highest-value components first so your team is using the system from week two, not waiting for everything to be perfect before getting any benefit.

Question 3

What is the difference between a design system and a component library?

Accepted Answer

A component library is the engineering artifact: the code. A design system is broader — it includes the Figma source of truth, the design tokens that control visual properties like colour and spacing, the usage guidelines that explain when and how to use each component, and the governance process that keeps everything in sync over time. A component library without the broader system is just code that drifts from design the moment the next sprint starts.

Question 4

What is a product redesign and how do you do it without disrupting live users?

Accepted Answer

A product redesign is a structured overhaul of your existing product experience to improve retention, conversion, or usability. We start with a UX audit that identifies the highest-friction points using analytics, screen recordings, and moderated user sessions. Changes are rolled out incrementally, with A/B testing at each stage so you have evidence before committing to every change. Live users never experience a big-bang switch that disorients them.

Question 5

How do you measure conversion improvement from a UX redesign?

Accepted Answer

We establish baseline metrics before touching anything — activation rate, completion rate, session-to-conversion, drop-off at each step of the key flows. Every design change is tied to a hypothesis about which metric it will move and by how much. Our average engagement delivers 35 to 45 percent improvement in the primary conversion metric we target, because we identify the highest-leverage friction points first rather than redesigning for aesthetics.

Question 6

What is a UX audit and what comes out of it?

Accepted Answer

A UX audit is a structured analysis of your current product identifying where users are struggling, where they are dropping off, and which design decisions are costing you conversion and retention. The output is a prioritised list of specific friction points with evidence, severity ratings, and design recommendations ordered by impact. Most clients find three to five changes that individually move their metrics meaningfully and wish they had done the audit years earlier.

Question 7

How long does mobile UX design take?

Accepted Answer

A focused mobile UX engagement — audit, user flow redesign, and pixel-perfect delivery for a specific journey like onboarding or checkout — takes 4 to 8 weeks. A full app redesign from information architecture through to final screens takes 10 to 16 weeks depending on the number of screens and the complexity of the user journeys.

Question 8

Do you design for both iOS and Android?

Accepted Answer

Yes. iOS and Android have different navigation conventions, gesture patterns, component styles, and App Store guidelines that affect how users expect the interface to behave. We design platform-native experiences for each, not a single design applied to both. Where a cross-platform approach makes sense, we design with a shared structure and platform-specific adaptation layers.

Question 9

What is a Figma handoff and why does it matter?

Accepted Answer

A Figma handoff is the process of transferring a design from the design tool to the engineering team for implementation. A poor handoff creates weeks of back-and-forth where engineers are asking designers questions on every element. A good handoff means engineers can implement a screen without a single question, because every state, spacing value, interaction, and edge case is specified. We design with engineers in mind from the first screen.

Question 10

What are design tokens and why should I care?

Accepted Answer

Design tokens are named values for visual properties — colour, spacing, typography, elevation, border radius — that both your design tool and your codebase reference by name rather than raw value. When your brand colour changes, updating a token updates it everywhere automatically. Without tokens, a brand update requires finding and changing every hardcoded value in Figma and every hardcoded value in the codebase — a multi-week manual exercise that inevitably misses things.

Question 11

How do you handle accessibility in design?

Accepted Answer

We design to WCAG 2.1 AA compliance as a baseline on every engagement, not as an optional add-on. This means colour contrast ratios that meet the 4.5:1 standard for text, touch targets sized to 44 by 44 points minimum on mobile, focus states visible to keyboard and screen reader users, and semantic structure that assistive technologies can interpret correctly.

Question 12

Can you redesign an existing product without access to our codebase?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We work primarily from your product in production and screen recordings of real user sessions. We do not need codebase access to conduct a UX audit, redesign the experience, and deliver pixel-perfect Figma files ready for implementation. Where understanding technical constraints helps, we work with your engineering lead to understand those constraints during the design process.

Question 13

What is an onboarding flow and why does it determine retention?

Accepted Answer

An onboarding flow is the sequence of screens a new user experiences from signup to their first meaningful action in your product. It determines retention because users who do not reach their first value moment in the first session rarely come back. Users who experience meaningful value in session one have five to eight times higher day-thirty retention than users who do not. We design onboarding flows around the minimum viable interaction to reach that first value moment.

Question 14

What is progressive disclosure and when should we use it?

Accepted Answer

Progressive disclosure is a design pattern where you show only the information and options a user needs at each step, revealing additional complexity only when the user needs it. It is particularly valuable in onboarding flows, forms, and settings screens where presenting everything at once creates overwhelming cognitive load. Most signup forms, checkout flows, and application wizards we audit are showing far more than users need at each step, which is why they have high abandonment rates.

Question 15

How do you design dashboards for non-technical users?

Accepted Answer

The mistake most dashboard designs make is showing every data point the system can produce rather than the specific information the user needs to make a decision. We start by understanding the three to five decisions your primary user type needs to make daily, then design a layout that surfaces the signals for those decisions immediately, with additional depth available on demand. We also design different views per role — executives need different dashboards than operators.

Question 16

What is the ROI of good UX design?

Accepted Answer

The ROI shows up in conversion rate improvement from a well-designed onboarding or purchase flow, typically 20 to 60 percent. Support ticket volume drops 30 to 50 percent when friction and confusing UI are removed. Development speed increases when engineers have a design system to work from. Customer satisfaction scores improve when users can complete tasks without frustration. We measure all of these before and after our engagements so you have specific numbers, not estimates.

Question 17

Do you work with our existing design team or replace them?

Accepted Answer

We embed alongside your existing design team, not instead of them. Our most common model is working directly with your lead designer or product manager, bringing senior UX expertise for specific high-stakes work that goes beyond what your current team has bandwidth or specialist depth to do. When the engagement is complete, your team owns everything we built and can extend it independently.

Question 18

How do you handle design for products with complex permissions and user roles?

Accepted Answer

Complex permission systems are one of the most common sources of confusing UX in B2B products. We start by mapping every role against the tasks they actually need to complete, then design role-based views that show each user type only what they need. Most permission-related UX problems come from designing for the administrator who understands the full permission model rather than for the end user who just wants to do their job.

Question 19

Can UX design help us reduce customer support costs?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and this is one of the clearest ROI cases for design investment. Most customer support tickets about software products are about UI confusion — users who could not find a feature, could not complete a flow, or received an error message they did not understand. A UX audit identifies these friction points systematically. The engagements where we focused on reducing support-generating friction have consistently cut ticket volume by 30 to 50 percent within 90 days of implementation.

Question 20

What is the difference between UX and UI design?

Accepted Answer

UX design is the discipline of understanding what users are trying to accomplish and designing the flows, information architecture, and interaction patterns that let them accomplish it efficiently. UI design is the visual execution: the colours, typography, component styles, and layout. Both matter and they are deeply connected. A beautiful UI on top of a confusing UX produces a product that looks impressive in demos and fails in real use. We do both, always starting with the UX problem before moving to visual execution.

Question 21

How do you design for different screen sizes and breakpoints?

Accepted Answer

We design mobile-first for consumer products and desktop-first for B2B products, then adapt. For each design, we define behaviour at three to four breakpoints — mobile, tablet, desktop, and wide desktop where relevant — specifying how layout, component behaviour, and information hierarchy change at each width. We provide engineering with explicit breakpoint specifications rather than leaving responsive behaviour to developer interpretation.

Question 22

What makes MarsDevs different from a typical design agency?

Accepted Answer

Most design agencies deliver Figma files and disappear. Real product design means mapping user journeys, removing friction from every flow, and handing engineers components they can build without constant back-and-forth. The difference shows up in your activation rate, not your design review.

Our senior product designers have redesigned live products with hundreds of thousands of active users across FinTech, HealthTech, E-commerce, and B2B SaaS. You work directly with the designer who owns your product. No account managers, no middlemen, no translation loss between your brief and the finished work.

60+Products designed

40%Avg. conversion improvement

4 weeksTo first design milestone

Question 23

How quickly can we see results from a UX redesign?

Accepted Answer

For targeted interventions — redesigning a specific flow like onboarding, checkout, or a critical conversion step — results are visible within 2 to 4 weeks of implementation going live. We phase every redesign so you see movement in your primary metric within 30 days of the first changes going live, not after a six-month waterfall process.

Question 24

Do you do user research as part of the design engagement?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and we consider it non-negotiable for any significant design decision. We run moderated usability sessions with real users, analyse session recordings and analytics, conduct stakeholder interviews, and use card sorting and tree testing for information architecture work. The research phase is typically one to two weeks and produces the evidence base that all design decisions rest on.

Question 25

What industries do you design for?

Accepted Answer

We have designed products across FinTech, HealthTech, E-commerce, B2B SaaS, PropTech, Logistics, EdTech, and InsurTech. The industry changes the domain knowledge required and the regulatory constraints to design around. The UX fundamentals remain constant. We have specific depth in FinTech and HealthTech, where compliance requirements and high-stakes user decisions make good UX especially consequential.

Question 26

How is a UI/UX engagement priced?

Accepted Answer

We price design engagements based on scope, not hours. A focused engagement — UX audit, design system MVP, or single-flow redesign — is a fixed-price, fixed-scope commitment. A larger engagement — full product redesign, multi-platform design system, or ongoing design partnership — is scoped and priced at kickoff. All engagements start with a free 30-minute scoping call before any commitment.