Here’s the entire UX literature on Design Agency by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:
We’ve found five great inspirational websites for freelancer designers – these can provide insight into how to construct your own website and online portfolios. However, please don’t copy them but rather seek to emulate things that you think work well. RadiumCosmin Daniel Capitanu of Romania runs Radium, and he’s a freelance designer and archit...
A CV is a great way of explaining your expertise to a would-be client. Not all freelancers use a CV/resume to market their services or to convey their experience to their clients. Those who do use one will tell you that it’s a great way of explaining complex information to potential clients and partners without long speeches. A freelance CV is v...
For most freelancers and newbie design owners, their most powerful marketing tool will be their portfolio. A portfolio is simply a collection of samples of your work that you use to demonstrate to clients that you have the experience and competence to handle their projects. As there are an awful lot of disciplines, it’s impossible to define the...
When you’re looking at going freelance or starting your own design agency, you’ll want to understand and examine the business models and the different types of work available to you before you start. This will help you understand and define what you intend to do with your business and how you will do it. We would like to share something with yo...
Angry customers are a fact of life. Even when you do everything right—something goes wrong that’s outside of your control, but, in truth, we all get it wrong sometimes. That means you have to be able to deal with angry customers—and the best entrepreneurs and freelancers go a step further – they learn how to turn an angry customer into a fan of ...
Planning a business means planning to succeed in business. A business plan helps you define what you do so that you can explain this clearly and succinctly to customers. It helps you see if your plans are going astray so that you can take corrective action. It helps you think about your position in your market and how to be competitive. It’s wo...
Pricing freelance and business-to-business work (B2B, i.e., business that is conducted between companies, rather than between a company and individual consumers) can be very hard when you’re just getting started. Charge too little, and you’ll starve; charge too much, and you won’t get enough work. You can learn some very simple pricing strategie...
Do you want to have your own business, but you’re not sure what niche to enter? That’s OK; you’re not alone. However, it is important to choose a niche before you get too far along in launching your business. That’s because specialists who become remarkable in a field of endeavour are much better rewarded by the market than the generalist “jack/...
It’s not enough to do the work; you also have to get paid. One of the biggest challenges facing freelancers and business-to-business entrepreneurs alike is how to handle that moment when a client fails to pay. The good news is that, by and large, it’s a painless process which shouldn’t lead to a big fallout between the business and the client. H...
We’ve all got lots of things we want to do in our lives, don’t we? Yet, why is it that so many of them seem so far out of reach even when we’ve been working on them for a long time? It’s because we’ve not set concrete goals or explored how we can move from our current reality to reach that goal. Our goals are ephemeral (e.g., they lack substance...
Many would-be freelancers and entrepreneurs know exactly what they want to do; others aren’t really sure. Whichever position you are in, sitting down and working out your passions and interests before you begin a business is a good idea. A wealth of evidence shows that when we work in harmony with our passions and interests, we become happy in t...
Don’t focus your marketing efforts on “buy from me”; it’s irritating, and it doesn’t work. Look to tell a story that embodies your customer’s worldview and the sales will come. Authenticity and believability play a key role in this. A marketing story is a way of conveying complex and intangible ideas about your business in a way that your audien...
Four common options exist in most parts of the world. The options include sole trading, partnerships, limited companies, offshore companies. Learn the advantages and disadvantages of each—it’s vital on the path to running an efficient business. We’ll teach you the most common options and the usual advantages and disadvantages of each option; th...
There comes a time in every entrepreneur and freelancer’s career when they need to stop working with a client. Employees quit their jobs, but entrepreneurs and freelancers aren’t employees; they fire their clients. Learning how to handle this is an important part of freelance and entrepreneur life. Fire a Client? Why Would I Fire a Client?There...
Market research is a huge field of endeavour, and many overlaps exist between market research and User Experience research. However, if you’re running a start-up business and don’t have the time to learn the entire field of research, four simple steps can help you conduct market research to understand your clients better without spending a fortu...
A sales pitch gets you through the door of a client, but the way you present your business and close sales is what determines your eventual success as an entrepreneur or freelancer. As with all elements of sales, there’s a process you can use to present your business well and to close more business than you lose, too. All of your sales efforts ...
Closing a sales call or asking for the business is nowhere near as hard as you may have been led to believe. In fact, it’s the easiest part of the sales process—and anyone can learn to close business over the phone, face-to-face or by e-mail in a matter of minutes. It doesn’t even require very much practice to learn the ultimate closing techniqu...
Yes, you didn’t start your own business to do administration, but guess what? Administration doesn’t do itself, and if you learn to get it done, quickly and effectively, it won’t dominate your new working life. You may even be surprised that you come to appreciate the thinking time that routine tasks can buy you. Learning to be a decent adminis...
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In 9 chapters, we'll cover: conducting user interviews, design thinking, interaction design, mobile UX design, usability, UX research, and many more!
