Why UX Designers and Researchers Are Essential from the Start

It’s been my experience, too often, that UX designers and researchers are brought into digital projects halfway through a portal, website, or platform build... or worse, after MVP launch. By that point, much of the foundation has already been poured, without the user's voice.

Here’s how it typically goes:

The business hires a team of developers, often with a few certifications in “UX” or “design thinking”, who claim they can do it all. Great! Two for the price of one. They start building based on what makes sense from an engineering perspective. Bias takes over. Stakeholders and devs are now designing for themselves and not for the people who’ll actually use the product.

Then launch day hits. Numbers start coming in. But they’re not what anyone expected.

What went wrong?

User frustration starts bubbling up, through customer service calls, drop-offs, data dashboards, and blunt feedback. Analytics show users hitting dead ends. Clicking in circles. Leaving.

Now leadership is worried. A senior exec looks at the PM and says, “Fix it.”

Cue the scramble. UX designers and researchers are brought in… finally. But by then, damage has been done. The brand, product, and team have already taken a hit. It’s not too late to fix it, but it’s more expensive, more painful, and harder to rebuild trust.

This is where strong UX can save the day. UX teams bring in empathy, structure, user testing, and clarity. We take out the bias and make sure the voice of the user is heard through journeys maps, uncover friction, and design around real behavior. And when companies take the bold step of acknowledging past missteps and relaunching with intention? That’s when the magic happens. Marketing gets to tell a new story, one of improvement, care, and human-centered design.

Because here’s the truth: empathy builds connection faster than any feature.

It’s why healthcare, pharma, and even fintech lean heavily into storytelling and human visuals. People want to feel seen, understood, and supported. That doesn’t come from guesswork. It comes from UX research and design.

So the question isn’t “Can we afford to bring UX in early?”

The real question is: Can you afford not to?