Outsourcing vs In-House Design: Why a Design Studio is the Smarter Choice for Your Startup
As a startup founder, you understand the significance of exceptional design in crafting a successful brand and product. Successful companies like Apple, Airbnb, Instagram, and Google have generated billions in revenue by creating products with outstanding product design. Design plays a critical role in attracting customers, conveying your message, and creating an unforgettable user experience. However, when it comes to designing your product or website, you may be wondering whether it’s better to build an in-house design team or work with a design studio.
Although both options have advantages, a design studio offers benefits that an in-house team may not be able to match. Let’s look at some key reasons why a design studio is the smarter choice for your startup, including cost-effectiveness, access to expertise, flexibility and scalability, fresh perspectives and creativity, and time-saving.
1. Cost-Effectiveness
One of the most significant benefits of working with a design studio is cost-effectiveness. Building an in-house design team requires a significant investment, to get highest quality designs you need to attract senior talent and provide a design leader who can retain the team and support their growth. Additionally, there are significant costs associated with recruiting, hiring, salaries, benefits, equipment, software, and onboarding. Plus, there’s always the risk of turnover.
On the other hand, working with a design studio allows you to access the same level of expertise and quality without the high upfront costs. You might also be considering working with freelancers to make it even more cost-effective, but freelancers won’t have the same ownership of your product and brand as a design studio would have. Furthermore, the quality of the design output is often lower compared to studios since freelancers usually work solo and lack the support and feedback they need to produce high-quality, coherent and consistent designs.
Lastly, design studios have dedicated teams of designers, project managers, and other professionals who are skilled at working on projects on a per-project basis. This means that you only pay for the work that you need, rather than having to pay a full-time salary for a designer who may not be fully utilized.
2. Access to Expertise
Another significant benefit of working with a design studio is access to a wealth of expertise. Design studios are typically made up of teams of professionals with specialized skills and experiences. We have experience working with a range of clients across different industries, from fintech to SaaS to marketplaces to automotive, providing us with a broad range of knowledge and skills.
This diversity of experience means that design studios bring new ideas and unique perspectives to your projects. We help you to challenge product ideas and find creative solutions to your design challenges. Additionally, you can tap into the studio’s specialized skills in areas like user research, usability testing, information architecture, and visual design to ensure that your product or service is world-class. With this breadth of expertise at your disposal, you can be confident that your design solution will be innovative, effective, and tailored to your users’ needs.
3. Flexibility and Scalability
Working with a design studio provides your startup with a great deal of flexibility and scalability. Startups are often unpredictable, and their design needs can fluctuate from one month to the next. When you have a full-time design team, you need to make sure the team always has interesting work to keep them motivated and engaged. When they don’t, you risk turnover as product designers have a lot of job options in the growing tech market. As an example, when startups launch their MVPs, most of the follow-up work is maintenance to establish product-market fit. Other times the priority is global expansion and not product development. During those times, your internal design team might stay idle and you risk retention.
With a design studio, you can easily scale up or down depending on your needs. We can help you scale your design efforts quickly, bringing in additional resources and expertise as needed to meet your changing needs. You can also work with us on a project-by-project basis, which provides more flexibility than hiring a full-time, in-house design team. This level of efficiency and flexibility is essential for startups, who need to be able to adapt quickly to changes in the market.
4. Fresh Perspective and Creativity
Design studios work with a range of clients across different industries, giving us a broad perspective and experience on different design challenges. Also, studios often work collaboratively with their clients, taking the time to understand their business goals, their product roadmap and the competitive landscape. With this experience and approach, we bring new ideas and concepts to the table, helping you to differentiate your startup from your competitors and develop a unique brand identity that resonates with your target audience.
Also, as a startup, you might be inclined to hire junior to mid-level designers to keep the costs low, which means a lack of experience, efficiency, and a limited skill set. That means you don’t get holistic design thinking that connects the dots between all the product features, consistent design solutions with a solid design system, and fast execution that helps you meet your tight deadlines.
Furthermore, design studios have expert researchers that help conduct user research to understand your end users’ needs to make sure the design solution solves actual user problems and matches their expectations. It’s costly and sometimes not necessary for a startup to hire a full-time user researcher. This collaborative and user-centered approach leads to more creative and innovative design solutions that lead to a better product market fit.
5. Time-Saving
Finally, working with a design studio saves you time, which is essential for startups. You’ll get access to a team of experts without the same level of investment, and you’ll save time by not having to manage an in-house team. Design studios have efficient workflows and processes, allowing us to deliver quality work on time. We can help you move quickly from ideation to prototyping to production, ensuring that your product is launched on time and within budget. This means that you can focus on other aspects of your business such as product development, sales and marketing, knowing that your design needs are in good hands.
Also, design studios often have access to the latest design tools, technologies and tested collaboration models that allow us to work more efficiently and effectively. This means that we deliver high-quality work in less time than an in-house team, which may not have access to the same level of resources.
In conclusion, working with a design studio provides your startup with a range of benefits over building an in-house design team. From cost-effectiveness and access to expertise to flexibility and scalability, fresh perspectives and creativity, and time-saving, design studios offer startups the ability to access high-quality design services without the high upfront costs of building an in-house team.
Of course not all design studios provide you with access to all of the above, so if you’re a startup looking to take your design to the next level, consider working with a design studio like us, Studio Pinto.
