What a UX design agency in Dublin should deliver
Good UX means fewer abandoned forms, fewer support emails and more buyers who reach what they came for. The work has four parts:
- Research. What your users do, what they are trying to finish, and where the current version stops them.
- Information architecture. The structure underneath: what is a category, what is a filter, what is a step, and what must be findable from every screen.
- Interface design and a design system. Every screen, and every state each screen can hold, drawn once and reused.
- Usability testing. People using a working prototype before it is engineered, while changes are cheap.
UX is the first stage of every website, app and platform we build, and you can also buy it on its own. For ESMA International Network, one design system serves the website, the member dashboard and the iOS and Android apps. The ERP HEADtoHEAD booking flow takes four steps and ends in one order and one invoice. Loco Digital was founded in 2021 by Mark Murphy and Adam Murphy, and works from The Digital Hub in Dublin 8.
UX research before anything is designed
We talk to the people who use your product and to the staff who support them, and note every place the current screens make a user guess. Depending on the product, research draws on:
- Stakeholder interviews. What the business needs the product to do, and how success will be measured.
- User interviews and observation. People who match your users, completing their real tasks while we watch.
- Analytics and site search. Where visitors arrive, where they leave and what they type when they cannot find something.
- Your support and sales teams. The questions they answer every week, which point straight at the gaps.
The output is a document: the audiences, the flows, the data each screen needs and the decisions now closed. That document keeps the design phase short and the estimate reliable. Trident Holiday Homes’ rebuild, for one, started from reading its own analytics.
Information architecture and user journeys
Information architecture is the structure beneath the screens, and it is what makes a large site or product feel simple. We map the audiences, the journeys each one takes and the content each step needs, then test the structure before any page is drawn.
The Irish School of Motoring project opened with a sitemap rather than a page design. Car lessons have their own layout, seven commercial vehicle categories share one template, and all of them lead to one booking panel. IPAV’s website gathers thirteen types of content, from events and courses to webinars and magazines, under five hub pages, each a contents list for the section beneath it.
Wireframes and clickable prototypes
Before visual design, we sketch the key screens as wireframes and join them into a clickable prototype you use on the phones and laptops your customers hold. It is the cheapest point to change a journey: moving a step in a prototype takes minutes, while moving it after the build means rework.
For Trident Holiday Homes, the map search, the filters and the reserve component were drawn in every state before development began, so half-filled forms, empty results and a filter that excludes everything were decided in the design rather than improvised in the code.
UI/UX design with one design system behind every screen
Past a handful of screens, our UI/UX design in Dublin starts with the system before the pages. Each component is drawn in every state it can hold, including errors, empty lists and loading, so users learn the product once and developers build from finished parts.
That is how ESMA’s website, member dashboard and apps came to read as one organisation. A design system also keeps the next release affordable: a new page or feature is assembled from parts that already work on phone and desktop. Altitude Internet still builds new service pages from the same bands we designed for its site in 2023.
How a system like this moves from Figma into production code is covered in bridging design and development.
Usability testing on a clickable prototype
Testing happens on the prototype, one person at a time. We give people who match your users a set task and watch without helping: find the product, book the place, complete the form. A handful of sessions is usually enough to surface the problems that matter most.
You get the findings ranked by what each one is costing you, with a fix beside each. Most are small, such as a label or a missing confirmation, and cheaper to fix in the prototype than after release.
A UX audit of the product you already have
An audit tells you what to fix before you commit to a redesign. On your existing site, app or portal, it covers:
- The journeys that pay. Each route that brings in revenue, walked through on a phone and on a desktop.
- Accessibility. The same journeys checked by keyboard and with automated tools against WCAG 2.1 AA.
- Your own data. The analytics and site search records you already have, read for where people drop out.
- Everything around the screens. The forms, error messages and confirmation emails people actually receive.
You get a written list in the order we would work through it: what to fix this month, what to redesign, what to leave alone, and which problems sit in the build rather than the design. Common patterns are set out in why a website is not converting.
If the platform itself is the limit, our page on website redesign in Dublin covers how a rebuild protects your search rankings.
UX for websites, apps, stores and internal tools
The same method fits whatever you are building:
- Websites. Page structure, navigation and the path to an enquiry, as part of web design in Dublin.
- Apps and portals. Sign-in, onboarding and the daily tasks, as part of mobile app development in Dublin.
- Online stores. Search, filters, product pages and a shorter checkout, as part of ecommerce development in Dublin.
- Internal tools. The admin screens and dashboards your staff use all day, as part of our custom software work.
Choosing between a UX company and a freelance designer
Either a Dublin UX company or a freelance designer can be the right choice. Three questions tell them apart.
- Who engineers the design? When a design passes to a separate development team, its details get renegotiated.
- What do you keep? Ask which files and accounts are yours at the end.
- Who runs the research? Ask who will interview your users and design your screens, and how often you will see the work in progress.
We suit products with signed-in users, live data and a workflow behind them. For a single screen or a quick visual refresh, a freelance designer will usually cost less.
UX work for ESMA, ERP HEADtoHEAD and Trident
The ESMA member directory and dashboard
ESMA’s old member directory had nothing behind it: no dashboard, no self-service profiles and no apps. The new directory has keyword search plus five filters that apply together: member category, product category, country, trade sector and brand. Members now keep their own entry up to date and see where the clicks on their profile come from.
Loco Digital designed and built ESMA’s website, member dashboard and apps in 2026. Read the ESMA case study.
The ERP HEADtoHEAD booking flow
The ERP HEADtoHEAD booking engine bills Dublin bookings from the Irish company in euro, and is set up to bill each event from its own company. Choose a place at the Dublin event and the order summary already names who is billing you and in what currency. Booking takes four steps: places, with group rates applied automatically; your details; attendees, each with their own record and day selection; then review and pay.
Loco Digital designed the ERP HEADtoHEAD site and built its booking engine for Lumenia Consulting in 2026. See how the booking flow works.
Trident Holiday Homes: search on a phone
Trident lets more than 1,000 holiday homes across Ireland, chosen on a phone by people who have never been there. Explore pairs a live map with filters and a list, and a selection made on the map carries into the list and back. The reserve component sits on the property page, so dates and guests are set in place, and on a phone it collapses to a fixed bar.
Loco Digital designed and rebuilt the Trident Holiday Homes website in 2024, from UX research to the WordPress build, delivered through our partner Altitude. Read the Trident Holiday Homes case study.
What you get from a UX project
- A research summary. Audiences, tasks, flows and the decisions now closed, in plain language your board can read.
- A sitemap and user journeys. The structure of the product and the path each audience takes through it.
- A clickable prototype. The main journeys working on a phone and a desktop, tested with people like your users.
- A design system. Components in every state, with colour, type and spacing defined for developers, in Figma files you keep.
- Usability findings. What testing showed, ranked by cost, with the fix for each.
- A build-ready handover. Annotated screens and a costed plan for the build, whether we build it or your own developers do.
What sets the price of UX design
Projects at Loco start from €10,000 ex VAT, and UX is the first half of the work that figure buys. The price depends on how many user types and journeys the product has, how much research and testing you want, and whether you need a reusable design system. Every project starts with a consult that ends in a scoped, costed plan, and the figure moves only if the scope does.
After launch, an optional monthly retainer from €2,000 covers hosting, maintenance and improvements.
