Design Consulting Careers: UX, Innovation, and More

Design consultants combine creativity, business strategy, and user-focused practical methods to help organizations solve complex problems. Typically, businesses hire design consultants because they require someone with a combination of skills and experience that is beyond what their staff possesses.

Professionals in the design consulting field improve products, services, and experiences across industries. Explore what design consulting is, the educational foundation and qualifications needed for the field, and three common design consulting roles — UX consultant, brand strategy consultant, and innovation consultant.

What Is Design Consulting?

Design consulting is a professional service that uses design-oriented thinking, research, and strategic planning to address business challenges. Design consultants help companies understand their users’ needs, identify opportunities, develop solutions, and implement changes that deliver measurable value.

Because design consultants’ services are secured on an ad hoc basis, their engagements can range from a few days to years.

Design consulting generally entails:

• Framing problems so teams can more accurately focus their efforts
• Conducting research to identify users’ needs, behaviors, and pain points
• Generating and refining ideas through rapid prototyping and testing
• Aligning stakeholders around a singular vision and a road map for change
• Helping organizations implement solutions and measuring their impact

People who excel in this field are those who can move comfortably between big-picture strategy and hands-on execution. Consulting is a flexible career; individuals can choose to be generalists or to specialize in an area such as digital experiences, brand strategy, or organizational innovation.

The qualifications and background commonly required for design consultants include:

• A foundation in design, interaction, product management, or a related field, often evidenced by a graduate degree, boot camp experience, or portfolio of work.
• Strong research and facilitation skills, including in interviewing, usability testing, and workshop design
• The ability to link design choices to metrics such as conversions, retentions, or cost reductions
• Experience with rapid prototyping tools and methods, and familiarity with basic front-end constraints
• Clear communication, stakeholder management, and other soft skills that are needed to help facilitate a consensus

Design Consulting Careers

Learning about specific roles can help those interested in the field decide if it is a career worth pursuing.

UX Consultant

User experience (UX) consultants focus on improving how users interact with digital products and services. They diagnose issues and create user-centered solutions that increase users’ engagement and satisfaction. UX consultants work with research, design, and technical teams to ensure products solve real problems.

The typical responsibilities of a UX consultant include:

• Conducting user research, interviews, and usability testing to gather evidence
• Creating user personas, customer journeys, and experience maps
• Designing wireframes, prototypes, and interaction patterns for web and mobile applications
• Running design development sessions or workshops to create solutions with stakeholders
• Advising engineering teams on implementing trade-offs and accessibility best practices
• Measuring postlaunch metrics and refining designs based on analytics and users’ feedback

UX consultants typically work at design consultancies, at digital marketing agencies, or as independent freelancers. They often contract with product teams inside technology companies, financial institutions, health care providers, and government agencies. Some work on-site with clients for intensive discovery phases, while others provide remote advisory services.

Brand Strategy Consultant

Brand strategy consultants help organizations define or refine how they present themselves to their customers and stakeholders. They translate an organization’s business goals into a coherent brand identity, messaging, and customer experience that strengthens the organization’s market position.

The typical responsibilities of a brand strategy consultant include:

• Conducting market research and competitive analysis to identify opportunities
• Defining brand architectures, value propositions, and positioning statements
• Crafting messaging frameworks and tone-of-voice guidelines for consistent communication
• Creating brand guidelines that include visual identity, logo usage, and content strategy
• Collaborating with marketing, product, and sales teams to ensure brand alignment across touchpoints
• Measuring a brand’s health using metrics such as engagement, public perception, and customer loyalty

Brand strategy consultants typically work at marketing agencies, management consulting firms with creative practices, and independent consultancies. They often partner with marketing departments at consumer goods companies, retail brands, nonprofits, and startups looking to refine their visual aesthetic and narrative.

Innovation Consultant

Innovation consultants help organizations create new products, services, or business models. They apply methodologies such as design thinking, lean startup, and systems mapping to discover opportunities and limit risk during experimentation.

The typical responsibilities of an innovation consultant include:

• Leading discovery phases that uncover unmet user and market needs
• Facilitating ideation workshops and brainstorming sessions
• Building rapid prototypes and minimum viable products to test hypotheses
• Designing pilot programs and go-to-market experiments that validate value and viability
• Advising leadership on innovation portfolios, road maps, and scaling strategies
• Embedding continuous innovation practices into organizational workflows
• Helping human resources departments improve hiring practices to attract better candidates

Innovation consultants are employed by innovation labs, corporate strategy teams, specialized consultancies, and venture studios. They work in industries such as health care, finance, consumer goods, and the public sector.

Build a Career in Design Consulting

Embarking on a career as a design consultant requires the ability to research, strategize, create, innovate, and collaborate with employees and stakeholders to address complex business problems.

Whether you want to become a generalist or specialize as a UX consultant , brand strategy consultant, or innovation consultant, gaining the right skills and experience can help you build a career in which you get to help shape products, brands, or organizations from the inside out.

Tseng College at California State University, Northridge, offers an online Master of Arts in Design and Innovation program that includes coursework covering design strategy and systems, design experiences and interactions, and design leadership, all crucial to the field of design consulting.

Find out how CSUN can support your professional goals of becoming a professional consultant capable of resolving challenging business problems.