How to find a designer.

Design is the one role where the work itself is public before you ever speak to the candidate. That should make screening easy, and it would if portfolios were read properly. A polished portfolio can be assembled entirely from redesign concepts that nobody shipped and no constraint ever touched.

What predicts performance is the case study underneath: how the problem was framed, what alternatives were considered, which constraints applied, and what happened when the first approach did not work. Alongside that sits a definitional problem — UX and UI are different disciplines, and 'UX/UI Designer' usually means an employer hoping one person covers both.

Job titles worth searching

Grouped by what the person actually does, because searching all48 at once produces a result set you cannot triage. Decide which group you need first — that decision does more for the search than any string below.

Where designers actually are

Portfolio platforms are the obvious home, with an important caveat: Behance and Dribbble skew toward visual craft, and thumbnails reward polish over reasoning. Personal portfolio sites usually carry the stronger case studies, because designers curate them for job seeking rather than for community engagement.

Written work is the best senior-role signal. Designers who write about a redesign — what they got wrong, what the constraints were, what the data said afterwards — reveal reasoning that no visual artefact conveys. For roles where influencing product strategy matters more than execution craft, this is the most predictive evidence available.

The community circuit is active and identifiable. Figma Config and the IxDA Interaction conferences attract practitioners rather than vendors, and speaker lists surface designers who can articulate and defend their thinking. Accessibility specialists are worth searching separately, since the expertise is genuinely scarce and increasingly a legal requirement.

Boolean search strings

Written to be pasted as-is. Each one is built around an intent rather than a platform, since the useful question is what you are trying to find, not which site you happen to be on.

site:linkedin.com/in/ ("product designer" OR "UX designer" OR "UX researcher") (Figma OR "design systems" OR "user research") "{city}"

(site:behance.net OR site:dribbble.com OR "portfolio") ("case study" OR "process" OR "research") "{domain}" -template -mockup

("UX researcher" OR "user researcher") ("usability testing" OR "ethnographic" OR "diary study" OR "mixed methods") -jobs -course

("design system" OR "component library" OR "design tokens") ("built" OR "maintained" OR "scaled") -jobs -template

(site:medium.com OR site:substack.com) ("design process" OR "we redesigned" OR "what we learned") ("product design" OR UX) -course

("enterprise UX" OR "B2B design" OR "complex workflows" OR "internal tools") ("case study" OR portfolio) -jobs -template

("speaker" OR "workshop") ("Config" OR "UX Week" OR "Interaction" OR "Design Matters") 2024..2026 -jobs

("accessibility" OR "WCAG" OR "inclusive design" OR "screen reader") (designer OR "design system") -jobs -course -audit

Mistakes that cost the most time

1. Merging UX and UI into one advert without meaning to

   UX covers research, information architecture, and interaction design; UI covers visual design, typography, and interface craft. Some designers do both well, but many are genuinely strong at one. Advertising 'UX/UI Designer' when you need deep research capability or deep visual craft produces a shortlist of generalists who match neither need.

2. Screening portfolios on visuals rather than process

   A polished portfolio can be assembled from redesign concepts nobody shipped. What predicts performance is the case study: how the problem was framed, what alternatives were considered, what constraints applied, what was learned when it did not work. Portfolios showing only final screens are the least informative kind.

3. Confusing UX research with designer-led user interviews

   UX research is a methodological discipline — study design, participant recruitment, qualitative analysis, and knowing which method answers which question. Many designers have run user interviews; far fewer have run a properly structured study. If the role needs genuine research, hire for it explicitly rather than assuming a designer covers it.

4. Assuming consumer and enterprise design are interchangeable

   Consumer design optimises for first-time users, delight, and conversion. Enterprise design serves expert users doing complex work repeatedly, where efficiency and information density matter more than elegance. Portfolios from one context predict poorly for the other, and the transition takes real adjustment.

5. Ignoring collaboration with engineering

   Designs that cannot be built, or that ignore technical constraints, waste everyone's time. Designers who understand implementation realities and work well with engineers are considerably more effective, and this rarely appears in a portfolio. Asking how they handled a technical constraint reveals it quickly.

6. Overlooking accessibility as a requirement

   Accessibility is increasingly a legal requirement rather than a nice-to-have, and genuine expertise is scarce among designers. Those who have it usually say so explicitly because it differentiates them. Roles in regulated or public-sector contexts should treat it as a hard requirement rather than assuming it can be added later.

Common questions

What job titles should I search for when hiring a designer?

It depends which discipline you actually need. For product work, Product Designer, UX Designer, and Interaction Designer. For visual craft, Visual Designer, Brand Designer, and Art Director. For research, UX Researcher and User Researcher, which is a genuinely separate discipline. Specialised roles use their own terms: Design Systems Designer, Content Designer, UX Writer, Service Designer, and Accessibility Designer. For complex domains, Enterprise UX Designer and B2B Product Designer identify people used to dense workflows and expert users.

What is the difference between UX and UI design?

UX design concerns how something works — research, information architecture, user flows, and interaction behaviour. UI design concerns how it looks and feels — visual hierarchy, typography, colour, and interface craft. The disciplines are related and many designers do both, particularly at smaller companies where the combined role is realistic. At larger scale they separate, and advertising for 'UX/UI Designer' when the actual need is deep research capability or deep visual craft produces generalist candidates who satisfy neither requirement well.

How should I evaluate a design portfolio?

Read the case studies rather than looking at the screens. A polished portfolio can be assembled from unshipped redesign concepts, which says little about working within real constraints. What predicts performance is how the designer framed the problem, which alternatives they considered and rejected, what constraints they worked within, how they measured whether it worked, and what they learned when it did not. Portfolios showing only final visuals without that reasoning are the least informative kind, regardless of how attractive they are.

Do I need a separate UX researcher, or can a designer do research?

It depends on the depth required. Many product designers can run user interviews and basic usability tests competently, which is sufficient for straightforward product work. Dedicated UX researchers bring methodological training — study design, participant recruitment, qualitative analysis, and knowing which method actually answers a given question. If decisions carry significant risk, if the user population is hard to access, or if the domain is unfamiliar, a specialist researcher produces meaningfully better evidence than a designer doing research as a secondary activity.

Where can I find designers outside LinkedIn?

Portfolio platforms are the natural home — Behance and Dribbble host work directly, though Dribbble skews toward visual craft over process depth, so read case studies rather than judging on thumbnails. Many designers maintain personal portfolio sites, which typically contain their strongest case studies. The community circuit is active: Figma Config and the IxDA Interaction conferences attract practitioners, and speaker lists identify designers who can articulate their thinking — much of what senior design roles actually require.