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UX/UI Designers

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UX and UI designers decide how a digital product behaves and how it looks doing it. The work runs from research with real users and information architecture, through wireframes and interaction design, to the interface itself and the design system that keeps it consistent as a team grows. Two labels often get merged in job adverts, but the skills are genuinely distinct, and a person strong at usability research is not automatically strong at visual craft.

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In the UK this discipline carries two obligations that visual design alone does not. The first is accessibility. Public sector bodies must meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 AA standard under the accessibility regulations, and the same guidelines are the working benchmark for everyone else because the Equality Act 2010 places a duty on service providers to make reasonable adjustments.

The second is the design of consent and pricing interfaces. The ICO has clear views on what a compliant cookie banner looks like, down to the relative prominence of the buttons. Separately, the CMA now enforces rules that treat certain interface patterns - hidden fees added as a customer proceeds, false urgency, obstructing a decision - as unfair commercial practices. What used to be a debate about persuasion is now partly a compliance question.

What UX and UI work actually covers

  • Discovery research: interviews, contextual observation and analysis of what people currently do.
  • Information architecture and navigation, which decides whether anything else can be found.
  • Wireframing and prototyping, used to test a flow before anyone spends money building it.
  • Interaction design: states, errors, empty screens and the paths people take when things go wrong.
  • Visual interface design and the design system - components, tokens, spacing and typography rules.
  • Usability testing with participants who resemble your actual users, including people using assistive technology.
  • Handover documentation for developers, which is where good design most often gets lost.

WCAG 2.2 AA as a design constraint, not a test at the end

GOV.UK describes the requirement as meeting the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 AA standard, and the underlying principles as making content perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Most of what that demands is decided in design rather than in code.

Colour contrast, for example, is set the moment a palette is chosen, and a brand colour that fails contrast on white will fail on every screen it touches. Focus indication is a design decision. So is whether a control is large enough to hit reliably, whether error messages appear next to the field that caused them, whether a form can be completed without recalling information from a previous step, and whether anything essential is signalled by colour alone.

Designers who treat accessibility as an audit item hand developers an interface that cannot be made compliant without redesigning it. Designers who treat it as a constraint produce something that passes at review and costs nothing extra. Ask a candidate how they check contrast and what they do about focus states, and the answer will tell you which kind you are hiring.

Working on council, NHS and other public sector products

  • The Public Sector Bodies accessibility regulations apply to central and local government organisations and some charities and other non-government organisations, with partial exemptions for schools.
  • The compliance standard is WCAG 2.2 AA, and bodies must publish an accessibility statement explaining how accessible the website or app is, kept under review.
  • Some content is out of scope, including pre-2018 PDFs, heritage collections, pre-2020 audio and video, maps, and third-party content not under the body's control.
  • A disproportionate burden claim is possible where the cost is unreasonable relative to the benefit, but lack of time or knowledge does not justify inaction.
  • Compliance is monitored by sampling websites each year, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission enforces through investigations, unlawful act notices and court action.
  • If you are a supplier, expect accessibility to appear as a contractual acceptance criterion and budget for testing with assistive technology.

Designing consent screens the ICO will accept

  • Consent requires a positive action; the ICO is explicit that silence or inactivity does not qualify.
  • A banner offering accept all and customise but no reject all option is flagged by the ICO as bad practice.
  • Toggles for non-exempt technologies switched on by default are treated as non-compliant, because pre-selection is not a positive action.
  • Make it as easy to refuse consent as it is to accept, with equally prominent options rather than a bright accept and a grey link.
  • Withdrawal must be as easy as giving consent, so the interface needs a persistent way back to the choice.
  • Design for what happens after withdrawal: processing stops and the information held is deleted, which has consequences for any personalised state in the product.

Interface patterns that consumer law now catches

The unfair commercial practices provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 apply to commercial practices from 6 April 2025, replacing the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 while keeping much of their scope. The CMA's guidance frames the general prohibitions as misleading actions, misleading omissions, aggressive practices using harassment, coercion or undue influence, and a failure to exercise the standard of skill and care amounting to honest market practice.

Several familiar interface techniques sit inside those definitions. Drip pricing, where an initial price is shown and further fees are added as the customer proceeds, is on the banned list. So are misuse of trust marks, false endorsements, pressure selling and persistent unwanted contact. Concealing commercial intent is a misleading omission.

The CMA can now decide that consumer law has been infringed and act directly rather than litigating, including through redress and fines, with government citing maximum penalties of up to 10 per cent of global turnover. For designers that shifts the conversation: a pattern that lifts conversion by making the full price hard to see is not a clever optimisation, it is a risk transferred to the client.

How a UX engagement should run

  • A research phase that talks to real users, with the number of participants and how they were recruited stated openly.
  • Findings shared as evidence, not as assertions, so the team can argue with the data rather than with the designer.
  • Prototypes tested before build, since changing a prototype is cheap and changing production code is not.
  • Accessibility criteria written into the design definition of done, including contrast, focus and keyboard operation.
  • A design system delivered with usage rules, not just components, so consistency survives the engagement.
  • Developer handover with specifications and a working session, plus a review once the build is real.
  • Measurement agreed in advance: task completion, error rates and drop-off, not just how the screens look.

Where UX projects fail

  • Research skipped because the deadline was fixed before the discovery work was scoped.
  • Beautiful screens that ignore the states the product spends most of its life in: loading, empty, partial and error.
  • A design system with no adoption plan, so the old components stay in the codebase alongside it.
  • Testing with colleagues rather than users, which validates the team's assumptions back to itself.
  • Accessibility checked after launch, when the palette and layout are already locked.
  • Conversion targets set without a compliance check, which pushes the team towards patterns the CMA now treats as unfair.

UX/UI Designers: frequently asked questions

What is the difference between UX and UI design?

UX covers how the product works: who uses it, what they are trying to do, how information is organised and what the flow through a task looks like. UI covers how it is presented: layout, typography, colour, components and states. Many designers do both to a reasonable standard, few do both exceptionally, and research is a third skill again. Be clear which one you are short of before writing the brief.

Do we have to meet WCAG 2.2 AA?

Public sector bodies do - GOV.UK states that meeting the WCAG 2.2 AA standard is how they comply with the accessibility regulations, alongside publishing an accessibility statement. Private sector organisations are not covered by those regulations but are subject to the Equality Act 2010, which places a duty on service providers to make reasonable adjustments. WCAG is the only recognised technical standard, so it is what both sectors design against.

Are dark patterns illegal in the UK?

Some specific ones are now banned outright. The unfair commercial practices provisions applying from 6 April 2025 include drip pricing, fake reviews, false endorsements and pressure selling on a banned list, and they prohibit misleading omissions such as concealing commercial intent. The CMA can act directly rather than going to court. So a persuasion technique that hides material information is a legal question for the client, not just a design preference.

What should a compliant cookie banner look like?

The ICO expects a clear positive action to give consent, with silence or inactivity not counting, and it treats a banner offering only accept all and customise as bad practice. Non-exempt toggles must not be switched on by default. Refusing should be as easy as accepting, which in practice means equally prominent accept all and reject all options, and people must be able to withdraw consent as easily as they gave it.

How many people do we need for usability testing?

Fewer than most teams expect, and the recruitment matters more than the number. A small round of sessions with people who genuinely resemble your users surfaces the serious problems; testing with colleagues surfaces almost nothing. Include at least one participant who uses assistive technology, because keyboard and screen reader problems are invisible in a mouse-driven session and are exactly the ones with legal weight behind them.

Sources

  1. GOV.UK - Accessibility requirements for public sector websites and apps
  2. Equality Act 2010, section 29: provision of services
  3. ICO - How do we manage consent in practice?
  4. CMA - Unfair commercial practices (CMA207)
  5. CMA - New consumer protection regime comes into force

Written by the LokalMatch editorial team. Last reviewed 22 September 2026. How we write and check our guides

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What affects the fees UX/UI designers charge

Fees depend on the work involved and how the professional bills. We only publish fee ranges when they’re backed by real LokalMatch data or reliable sources. Until then, here’s what usually changes the fee:

  • Scope and complexity of the work
  • How the firm bills: hourly, per project or on a monthly retainer
  • Experience of the team
  • Timeline and how urgent the work is
  • Ongoing support after the work is delivered

How to compare UX/UI designers before you hire

  • Ask for examples of similar work for clients like you.
  • Read reviews and ask for references you can contact.
  • Make sure the scope, deliverables and timeline are written down before work starts.
  • Ask who will do the work: an in-house team, freelancers or subcontractors.
  • Compare two or three proposals before you decide.

Questions to ask UX/UI designers before you hire

  • Have you done work like this before, and can I see examples?
  • Who will work on this, and who is my main contact?
  • How do you charge: hourly, per project or monthly?
  • What is included, and what costs extra?
  • How long is the contract, and how can either side end it?
  • How will you report on progress?
  • Who owns the work, files and accounts you set up for me?

Licences and registration

This kind of work is often limited to licensed or registered professionals, and the rules depend on where you are. Ask which body they’re registered with, and check their status on that body’s public register before you hire.

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