Services — Web, Digital Products & Commerce
UI/UX Design Agency
Ellington & Vale designs interfaces and product experiences for Indian companies — apps, web products, ecommerce and internal tools. The work starts with what users actually do, not with what a stakeholder prefers.
UI and UX are not the same job
The terms get used interchangeably and they describe different work.
UX is what the product does and in what order — the flows, the structure, what happens when something goes wrong, and whether the thing is understandable at all. It is largely decided before anything visual exists.
UI is what it looks like and how it responds — layout, type, colour, states, motion, and the component system that keeps it consistent as the product grows.
Good UI on bad UX produces an attractive product people cannot use. It is the more common failure of the two, because visual work is easier to approve in a meeting than structural work is.
Research, proportionate to the decision
Not every project needs a research programme. Every project needs more evidence than an opinion.
For most work that means: understanding who uses this and what they are trying to accomplish, looking at what the current product's data already says, and usability testing with a small number of real users — which reliably surfaces the majority of serious problems and costs very little.
Testing five people before you build is cheaper than discovering the same problems after launch by an order of magnitude. The reason it gets skipped is schedule pressure, and it is almost always a false economy.
Design systems
For any product that will keep being developed, the system matters more than the screens.
Components, states, spacing, typography and the rules for using them — so that a new feature built next year by a developer who never met the designer still looks and behaves like the same product. Without one, a product accumulates inconsistencies until a redesign becomes the only way out.
This is the same discipline as brand guidelines, applied to software, and it is why our product work sits inside a design practice rather than apart from one.
Designing for Indian users specifically
A consideration most international design writing ignores.
Device and network reality. A large share of Indian users are on mid-range Android devices with inconsistent connectivity. Interfaces designed and tested only on a recent iPhone on office wi-fi fail quietly for the majority.
Language. Products serving users beyond English need Indic script handled properly — typography that is designed rather than dropped in, and layouts that survive text expansion.
Digital confidence varies enormously. Products reaching first-time internet users need patterns that do not assume familiarity with conventions the designer takes for granted.
Accessibility
Genuinely, not as a checklist item at the end. Contrast that works in daylight, tap targets people can hit, text that scales, and structure a screen reader can navigate.
Most of it is free if considered from the start and expensive if retrofitted — and much of it improves the product for everyone, not only for users with disabilities.
Working with your developers
Design that cannot be built is not design.
Specifications developers can work from, realistic component definitions, and being available while it is being built rather than handing over a file and leaving. If you have an in-house engineering team, we work alongside them rather than around them.
What determines the cost
No published rates. What moves it: product scope and number of screens or flows; how much research and testing is in scope; whether a design system is being built or one exists; and whether we are supporting implementation.
Tell us what you are building and we will give you an honest read.
FAQ
- What is the difference between UI and UX design?
- UX is what the product does and in what order — structure, flows, and whether it makes sense. UI is how it looks and responds. Good UI on bad UX gives you an attractive product people cannot use, and that is the more common of the two failures.
- Do we need user research?
- More than most teams think, and less than a research agency will sell you. Usability testing with a handful of real users surfaces most serious problems for very little money. Skipping it to save schedule is usually a false economy.
- Do you build the product as well as design it?
- We design, specify and work alongside your engineering team. For web builds we can handle implementation — see our web design page. We do not build mobile applications.
- Do you work with in-house product teams?
- Yes, and it is often the better structure — we build the system and take the work needing specialist attention, your team runs the ongoing design.
- How much does UI/UX design cost in India?
- No published rates — see above for what drives it.
Your Next World
Let's create something distinctive.
Tell us what you are building. We will help give it the clarity, character and presence to be recognised.