[Sigia-l] Estimation process for UX services by hours or by deliverables?

[Juan Ruiz]

Hello community

Apologies if this is a thread that has existed already, however, I would like to get your input on this.

One thing that we have noticed with clients when they ask for estimates is that they ask the  UX team to detail every single action for each activity we suggest to perform (for the proposal), and because of this, the billable hours/days start to pile up and then we ended up with a massive quotation.

The nature of the UX work is not as streamlined as the developers (or even designers) work where they have to write code following a set of directions and with an outcome already agreed on. The developers start the work with existing documents (i.e IA, wireframes, functional specifications), UX consultants have to create those documents from scratch.

Hence, I've been suggesting that for proposals the UX side of things are estimated by Phase, rather than by activity.

For example. We can estimate a total of 3 weeks for the discovery phase (goal is to define scope and business/user requirements based on user research activities). During these 3 weeks, the UX consultant will perform a series of activities s/he sees necessary in order to achieve the desire results (ie. Workshops, focus groups, personas, etc). Of course we will detail the activities we will perform on the proposal, but we won’t break it down by hours for each activity. 

In other words, the estimation process will be by results/deliverables rather than by hours

Would love to hear your thoughts on this matter and if you have found a better approach to this.

Regards,
-Juan Ruiz
User Experience Team Lead
Hyro Ltd.
www.hyro.com