The Ultimate Guide to UX Research & Product Design Services

Why do UX research & product design matter for your business? Building products that are actually chosen, adopted, and used long-term is challenging. You want to build the right thing, the thing that solves problems and improves experiences… but what is that thing? And if you build it, will it get the results you want? How do you know?

UX Research answers questions like, will they use this thing? Or, who’s going to pay for that? And from there, you can design products and experiences that change user behavior and move business metrics like acquisition, retention, revenue, and growth. 
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Read More: How to Prove the Value of User Experience (UX) and Get Buy-in‍

‍4 signs your team needs UX expertise.
‍Healthcare teams have a tough job, with a lot working against them. Does any of the below feel familiar?
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- There’s no shortage of problems to solve, and “shiny things” can displace priorities.
- Constraints feel like you have one hand tied behind your back.
- Teams are stretched thin, and spending time learning from users can be backburnered.
- And speaking of users, chances are you have several, and their needs often conflict.
That means things are built that never meet their potential…That new customer fizzled after a lengthy implementation. Retention plummets. Users ignore a new feature in favor of how they’ve always done it. The list goes on…and if you have a list like this, it makes sense to invest in UX.
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Read More: 9 Common Product Strategy Problems (And How To Solve Them)‍

‍What does UX success look like?
‍In a perfect world, 
- Solutions are unbiased, trusted, and informed by users to lead to predictable outcomes.
- Solutions are good for both users and the business, so your goals (and your CFO’s) are met.
- The process for getting here was joyful for you and your team.

Sounding good? You have options…

‍In-house vs. agency: When does it make sense to partner?
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Key criteria to evaluate and questions to ask:

Industry Expertise – Have they worked with companies in your industry before? How well do they understand industry regulations, challenges, and user needs? Can they speak to relevant trends and best practices?

Case Studies & Proven Impact – Do they have case studies that showcase success? Can they provide specific examples of how their work has driven business or user outcomes? Do their past projects align with the type of work you need?

Read More: ZoCo Case Studies

‍Approach to Collaboration and Communication – How do they keep stakeholders informed and engaged throughout a project? How available will they be and via what platforms? How do they handle feedback and iteration? Are they open to sharing raw data and/or their analysis of research?

‍Flexibility & Scalability – Can they scale their team and approach to fit your project needs? How do they adapt to changing priorities or unexpected challenges? What engagement models do they offer?

‍Participant Recruitment – Do they have access to the right participants for research? How do they ensure high-quality and representative recruitment? Do they have processes in place to minimize risk of collecting sensitive data, administer incentives, and properly gather consent? What strategies do they use to engage hard-to-reach audiences?
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Read More: Recruitment is hard—how to overcome frustrating challenges.‍

‍Trust – What do their past clients say about working with them? Do they take the time to understand your goals and tailor their approach accordingly?

ZoCo makes understanding people and what to build for them radically easy. Why?
1. Our deep bench of experts excel in human factors and behavior design: ZoCo's decade of experience means we tell you WHY users behave the way they do, providing actionable recommendations for changes you need to make in your product to influence adoption.
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2. Our history and focus in healthcare brings objective experience to the toughest product challenges: Bringing in an outside partner with focus means objectivity without naivety about the complex industries. We bring the experience of working with other clients so you can learn from our and others lessons.
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3. We work as a part of your team, in service to your impact and embedded in how you already work: Our work is always done in support of increasing your capacity, impact, and influence in your organization.
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Read More: About Our UX Research Practice here
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‍Read More: About Our Product Design Practice here 


‍How does working with ZoCo, well, work?  What are the differences between retainers and projects?
‍For work with clear outcomes defined at the outset, we’ll likely propose a project-based engagement. Ahead of starting, we’ll provide a detailed plan for why, how, and what we will deliver.

When outcomes are ambiguous or the work will be ongoing, we offer scalable retainer engagements. You’ll have access to a core team through a set number of hours per month. Our designers, researchers, and strategists will support your team in a fractionally embedded model. Design system build outs and iterative product design are typical examples of retainer engagements. 

For straight-forward asks, we offer sprint-based engagements lasting a few weeks, while others evolve into years long relationships. 

We’ve shared our perspective on previous retainer success in an article here.

Read More: ZoCo Product Sprints

‍How do you scope work?
‍The exact scope of our work together will be shaped over 1-2 free discovery calls with our leadership team. After learning about your goals, we typically propose 3 options to demonstrate how our approach can scale depending on your investment level, time constraints, and other variables. We’ll show examples of previous similar work and outline any caveats or considerations. We believe scoping work is collaborative and welcome your input, questions, and requests during the process. We’ll also share any preliminary perspectives on your challenge based on our expertise.

After we agree on our scope, we’ll start working on contracts. We’re used to navigating processes like MSAs, NDAs, and government procurement vehicles. We’ll make this necessary part of the process of getting to work together as easy as possible.
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‍Read More: Contract Vehicles + Certifications‍

‍Can ZoCo provide engineering support?
‍ZoCo doesn’t have an in-house engineering team, and that’s intentional. By staying laser-focused on UX research and product design, we ensure our recommendations are driven by user needs and business goals rather than constrained by a specific tech stack.

This approach keeps us nimble, adaptable, and truly tech-agnostic, allowing us to design solutions that work for your users first. That said, we deeply understand technical constraints and collaborate closely with engineering teams to ensure smooth handoff, implementation, and help test for quality assurance.

‍How does ZoCo work with developers?
‍We collaborate closely with both third-party developers and internal teams to understand functional requirements and constraints. If you don’t have an engineering team, we can recommend and manage a development partner. Our preference is to involve engineering early, and our scopes often include dedicated technical requirements-gathering sessions.

When handing off designs, we provide detailed annotations and responsive specifications across all screen sizes to ensure a smooth development process. We're also happy to integrate into existing engineering rituals—such as standups and sprint reviews—to stay in lockstep. Whether you work in an agile or waterfall environment, we’ll adapt to your preferred workflow.

‍How much does ZoCo cost?
‍Generally, our work falls into two service areas: user research and product design.

Research projects typically start at $50,000. The factors that contribute to cost are generally informed by your audience: how many participants do we need to recruit, is the study qualitative or quantitative or both, is your audience very specialized and difficult to recruit, etc. 

Product design work ranges as well. For example, if you’re looking for a quick, sprint-based, prototype design to visualize an initial concept our team could pull together a medium-fidelity prototype for as little as $25,000. However, more robust design work with complex functional requirements can exceed $50,000.

Looking for ongoing, flexible support instead of a finite project? Typical retainer engagements start at 100 hours per month and grow from there. An engagement of this size would come in at $20,000 per month.

‍How fast does ZoCo work?
We consistently hear that we deliver work faster than a lot of internal teams! When you really having a pressing matter, we offer short-term sprint engagements. Similar to a project in that we will define our plan and deliverables before starting, with a sprint, the focus is on mapping the shortest path to impact. A sprint might be perfect for quickly prototyping a new feature or crafting a compelling pitch deck for an upcoming investor meeting.

‍How much time will you need from my team throughout the engagement?
‍We understand you’re busy and your time is a precious resource. That’s why we communicate transparently, join your internal rituals seamlessly, and offer efficiencies whenever possible. In the past, we have provided executives week by week breakdown of time commitments prior to kicking off to ensure time is available and use well.

‍How quickly can we start after the contract is signed?
‍The answer to this question is often, “How quickly can you get your team ready to go?!” In reality, we can generally kick off a project within two to three weeks of contracting.

‍How long does ZoCo take to onboard?
‍Depending on the complexity of your business, our discovery phase could take half a day up to a couple of weeks. The phases isn’t just about the project request: we want to understand your business quickly to ensure our work is contributing to strategic goals. We’ve developed a very efficient kickoff process that allows our team to onboard quickly while making an impact, so even if you’re in a very complex industry like clinical trials design, our team is able to make an impact while building understanding.

‍How do we collaborate with your team?
‍You’ll have a Client Engagement Manager to ensure our work stay true to the goals, flexes to any evolving needs, and as a primary point of contact, but know that our entire team of researchers and designers are reachable.
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One thing that we’ve heard repeatedly from past clients is how great our team is as collaborators. We see ourselves as an extension of your team – meaning we communicate transparently, join your internal rituals seamlessly, and are always looking for opportunities to make an impact. You’ll never wonder what we’re working on, and you will quickly see the value our team can bring. We’ll integrate into your preferred communication channels we that Slack, MS Team, Google Chat, or something else.

‍Is upskilling my time a part of how you work?
‍Yes! Our team frequently mentors and coaches our clients’ team members as we collaborate. We’re fully transparent with our methodologies and open to sharing work-in-progress files and analyses. When clients have interns or junior/associate-level UXers, we often provide direct coaching on the specific skills used in a project. Additionally, we can offer dedicated upskilling engagement scopes, including executive coaching for new leaders and skills assessments.

‍What is your experience in healthcare?
‍Healthcare is a vast and complex industry, and we’ve had the opportunity to work across a variety of niches within it—including those below—each with its own unique challenges, stakeholders, and opportunities for innovation. 

The common thread is always helping our clients uncover the insights they need to drive product success. Our service offerings for healthcare clients have spanned the areas below, each connected to answering key questions.

What is in your wish list of documentation and data we should supply? How much is too much? How will you use it? Do I supply this before or during kickoff?
‍Before work begins, you'll be introduced to your Client Engagement Manager, who will request specific documentation based on the project scope. That said, the more the merrier! If you have materials that could enhance our understanding of your business or challenge, please share them; we’ll thoroughly review everything.Providing documentation in advance helps ensure that our meetings stay focused on progress rather than revisiting past work. You’re welcome to share materials before kickoff and anytime afterward if new resources come to mind.

‍Will our own view of the customer and their journey bias your research?
‍No, think of it as a fact inventory of preconceived ideas. We absolutely want to gather what you assume to be true because it helps us understand your current perspective, align on terminology, and identify any existing knowledge gaps. 

As part of our process, we often include workshops designed to map out your view of the customer and their journey. These sessions don’t bias our research; rather, they provide a valuable foundation for our work. By documenting your assumptions upfront, we can ensure that our research is intentionally designed to validate, challenge, or expand upon them. Our goal is to approach the research with fresh eyes while also leveraging your expertise to explore the right questions.

‍How many objectives or hypotheses can we have in one discussion guide or project?
ZoCo crafts research objectives to align with business goals, ensuring discussion guides and screeners are structured to allow room for discovery while staying focused on key themes. While there’s no strict limit, we recommend focusing on 3–5 core objectives to maintain depth without overwhelming the research.

‍Can we inform our marketing and product in the same go?
Our research can informs product strategy, UX decisions, messaging, positioning, and overall customer experience improvements. We’ll carefully design the study to ensure clarity in insights across both domains without muddying findings if this is a goal. 
Read more: 9 Common Product Strategy Problems (And How To Solve Them)Read more: Essential Research for Scaling Healthtech Products Successfully
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‍What is ZoCo’s approach to audience recruitment?
‍We use a mix of client-provided contacts, panel providers, third-party sites,  and direct outreach to source high-quality participants. Our screening process prioritizes relevance to research objectives. When needed, we also recruit hard-to-reach audiences through specialized networks and partnerships.

‍What do we do if our preferred recruitment method doesn’t work? In the “worst case scenario,” recruitment may take longer than expected, but we’ve successfully sourced participants even in the most challenging populations. When needed, we adjust our strategy by broadening criteria, leveraging additional recruitment channels, increasing incentives, or tapping into specialized networks.
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Read More: Recruitment is hard—how to overcome frustrating challenges.‍

‍What is ZoCo’s POV on participant quantities for qual and quant? ZoCo follows a practice of “just enough” research without spending unnecessary time or budget. For qualitative research, our rule of thumb is that for every participant segment,  you want about 4-6 users to represent that group as patterns and themes typically emerge within that range. For quantitative research, where we are typically intending to validate qualitative insights at scale, we recommend 200 responses per segment. 

Typically our scopes will include a recommendation to research “up to” X participants. “Up to” sets an upper limit on the number of participants, meaning we aim for that number but may not always need to reach it to get reliable insights. 

We account for audience diversity by designing screeners that go beyond basic demographics to capture behavioral, attitudinal, and experiential differences. Each screener is carefully structured to ensure we recruit a well-rounded participant pool, balancing key variables without overcomplicating the study.  If gaps emerge during recruitment, we refine screener criteria or adjust outreach to ensure all critical voices are represented.

‍How confident are you in your insights? Are they statistically significant?
‍Our confidence in insights comes from a mix of qualitative depth and intentional screening, rather than statistical significance in most cases. We focus on patterns, trends, and user behaviors that provide actionable insights, without the extra expense in time and cost of a statistically significant sample size. That said, our team is versed in statistically significant methodology and provides confidence intervals base on total population, so that your team can make informed decisions with the insights and data provided.

“I don’t think the agency model works for product teams. We don’t outsource product.” 
‍We don’t disagree, and so we built our studio differently. Instead of outsourcing your most important initiatives, our team works in an embedded and iterative model so we can collaborate in real-time alongside your people. We resource fractionally (also called variable) so we can plan for the perfect amount of the right brains on your biggest challenges—it’s talent density to the max. We’ve worked this way with all sorts of clients including complex industries like healthcare, insurance, and energy sectors.

Even better, because we’re working in your tools and systems, no brain-share or learning is lost. We’re likely to even upskill your research or design operations as we go so you can leverage these systems long after we’re gone. It’s iterative, it’s excellent, and it’s built for how product teams work.”

‍“We have an internal team that does these things already. Let’s just put Ben’s people on it.”
‍Ben’s team is likely already stretched. Even in the case that we’re talking about a crew of superstars—with an equally deep niche where ZoCo excels—even the most talented people become reactive when faced with 'fire-fighting mode.' Our team will alleviate pressure on your people by adding capacity, velocity, and critical headspace through thought partnership. The benefit of working with a studio is we’ve seen a multitude of ways to solve problems like yours.

‍“Our team can’t make the time to do this work now. I don’t want to stretch their focus.”
‍We are very conscious of how we use our partners’ time, and don’t take it lightly. We plan ahead and collaborate on how we’ll connect—including asynchronously over your Slack or Teams channel, or as a part of your existing weekly standup.Even beyond the tasks at hand, we hope to uplift your team for the long run.

We’ll look for opportunities to amplify your people and unlock their potential even beyond our focus area. If you want more of our philosophy, check out the book Multipliers, or ask us for a client reference.

‍“I’m not sure now is the right time. Let’s put this on the backburner today.”
‍Kicking the can down the road often creates more pain later—especially if there are already resources being spent on this problem (and perhaps ineffectively). There are always reasons not to take action, but the question I’d ask is “What are the risks in not doing this work now?” Will the company be in a better position if we solved the challenges you want to task us with?

‍“Resources are tight. Let’s not invest in this problem today until we get over this hump (or something else happens).”
‍What is the potential value and impact of this work on the business? Surely it’s not zero. But to reap the benefits of different outcomes, investments and progress have to be made. We’d be happy to talk about what the future looks like, but most companies are really saying, 'my resources are stretched thin and I don’t know where to allocate them to get to where I want to go. I’m uncertain, so I choose inaction.'

We’re committed to proving the impact and value of our work through business KPIs—even the ones your CFO cares about most. This will set your team apart, and show how important your work is to the overall health of the business.

‍“No, seriously. We have no money and are not approving any expenses.”
‍That’s a shame, and we feel for you. If you can’t fund change, it’s hard to shift your trajectory. Have you considered our product sprints as a lean alternative? It’s a bite-sized model with impact in just 1–3 weeks. That said, if all work is off the table, let us know if you just need an ear.