Clay is a UI/UX design and branding agency in San Francisco.

Clay is a UI/UX design and branding agency in San Francisco.

User experience is more than a capability for us. It’s at the core of everything we do here at Clay. We started as a UI/UX design agency focused on mobile apps but quickly expanded our offering to web applications, enterprise software, and emerging technologies such as AR/VR and wearables. The UX projects we take on range from building a new product to redesigning an existing app or legacy business software. We do everything you might need to bring a successful digital product to life: user research, product strategy, user interface and user experience design, usability testing, prototyping, and development.

It’s no surprise that our web design clients are often the same companies who hired us for UI/UX projects, because who can explain the product better than the people who designed it? We’re a web design company that believes a great website should efficiently convert visitors to customers while providing a delightful experience that’s true to the brand. Good UX leads to higher conversion rates. That’s why we have UX designers collaborate with web designers on all website projects.

We get this question a lot. There are many competent UX agencies in San Francisco alone and even more globally. It’s hard to be different when the standard is so high.

So how do we stand out? First and foremost, it’s the quality of our work and the craft it takes to make it. The digital products and interfaces we create are easy to use, look great, and represent your brand in the best way possible. Then, it’s the people who make your project a reality. We always assign a multidisciplinary team of senior designers, developers, and other specialists led by one of our design directors and overseen by a co‑founder.

Finally, unlike most traditional user experience design companies, we combine creative and product design capabilities under one roof and on the same project. Imagine a branding firm meets a UX consultancy — that’s us.

Yes, we can. We’re world‑famous for creating marketing websites that meet our clients’ goals by merging brand storytelling and award‑winning web design with the latest and greatest web technologies. Our sites convert well, and people share them like crazy, which helps us get new clients who are already huge fans of our work.

For example, the new Zenefits.com website we recently redesigned has seen a whopping 147% spike in conversion. Yes, that’s 2.6 times more. With each new project, we challenge ourselves to try something new, like improving our processes to optimize costs or simply work faster without losing quality.

Yes, we do. We position ourselves as a new kind of branding agency focused on tech companies, digital products, and direct‑to‑consumer brands. But that doesn’t mean we can’t help you create a visual identity for a coffee shop like we did for Joe & The Juice. Our capabilities include research, brand strategy, logo design, visual identity, communication design, motion design, and style guide development, among other things.

However, our clients often provide us either with a brand strategy or even a complete visual identity package. In these cases, we use the current brand foundation as a starting point, not just carefully applying it to whatever we’re designing but making sure we extend and enrich the brand while staying true to its roots.

Our pricing is directly related to the project scope, timeline, deliverables, and team composition. When the scope isn’t set in stone, or the project is very dynamic, we prefer engaging on a time and materials basis where you pay us for the time spent. However, most of our engagements are fixed‑price contracts. In this case, we’ll give you a detailed proposal after learning as much as possible about your project. All estimates are calculated based on the hourly rates and the number of hours we think the job will take.

As an illustration, a sample project may take ten weeks and cost $150k‑$200k. For time and materials engagements, we would create a custom rate card for you based on the team composition. Our rates span from $100/hour for junior designers to $350/hour for our design directors. We also offer special rates for qualified startups. Please email us to get a quote.

As a San Francisco‑based UX design agency, we partner with startups big and small all the time. What can be better than helping founders bring to life ideas the world has never seen before? We enjoy a fast‑moving environment that challenges our skillset and process.

The ultimate achievement for us is seeing our startup clients grow and take over the world. We worked with Uber when they were a team of ten and helped design such iconic products as Path and SendGrid.

We have special discounted rates for startups we believe in. Email our CEO Anton to learn more.

Yes, we’re up to the challenge. We’re one of the few user experience firms specializing in enterprise UX design and digital transformation of legacy business software. We’ve perfected our process over the years, modernizing digital platforms for Fortune 100 companies such as ADP, VMware, and T‑Mobile.

We start each new enterprise UX project with a deep‑dive discovery and research to fully immerse ourselves in the industry and project specifics. Our services span from user research and information architecture, UX design, prototyping, and user testing to full‑stack development and design systems. Our team acts as an independent entity that moves fast, avoiding the bureaucracy of a large organization, often working hand‑in‑hand with innovation labs and in‑house UX teams.

Our UI/UX design process is based on the design thinking methodology, which allows us to be flexible, adapting to almost any project type and collaboration model. While each engagement is unique, we always go through the following key phases:

Discovery & Research
We usually start by consolidating all available project documentation and scheduling workshops with your team. During those sessions, we interview key stakeholders, collaborate on requirements, as well as ideate and plan the next steps. When possible, we’d want to talk to your current or potential customers to understand their needs and pain points. In some cases, we may need to audit your existing product to identify opportunities for improvements. We will also review competitor products, gather design references, and document best practices.

Strategy & Concepts
Based on the discovery & research results, we synthesize a strategic direction and define an approach to drive our design process. We explore different concepts to establish such core elements as information architecture, key screen layouts, and visual design direction. We then validate the resulting concept with users and stakeholders. Once the feedback is in, we make necessary updates to proceed with designing the rest of the product.

UI/UX Design
After the concept has been approved, we start designing the UI and UX, continuously conducting user tests, and iterating along the way. The main activities include user flow mapping, wireframing, user interface design, interaction design, and prototyping. We hand off design assets to developers using tools like Zeplin and provide a comprehensive style guide that includes a UI component library, UX guidelines, and complete user flows.

Learn more about our process and deliverables here.

Please send us an email first with a quick summary of your project or an RFI/RFP. We usually reply within 24 hours to schedule an introductory call and ask any immediate questions. During our first call, we will ask a lot of questions about the project goals, audience, budget, timeline, and other essential details. We can sign an NDA if necessary, but we always treat all client conversations as confidential.

After the call, we may request various documentation such as a design brief, project requirements, past designs, etc. If we’re redesigning an existing product, we’ll want to schedule a demo or try it ourselves. We will email you a proposal and can schedule a video call to walk you through it. The proposal will include a detailed description of our approach, project phases, activities, and deliverables, team composition, and relevant case studies.