As part of a recent survey to understand the state of UX and design teams, we asked UX and design professionals about the ratio of researchers to designers and developers at their organizations. Though the survey had 557 respondents, only 377 people responded to questions about the number of researchers, designers, and developers at their companies; this article is based on their answers. (These questions were optional.) Survey respondents were design-community members (80% identified design or research as their primary role) from a variety of industries, working at companies of various sizes.

This article presents typical researcher–to–designer and designer–to–developer ratios, as well as relationships between ratios and indicators of overall team impact and maturity. The presentation style of the ratios themselves is inspired by Dr. Jeff Sauro’s reporting style for his findings from mid 2017.

Spoiler: The frequency distribution of reported ratios remains relatively similar; however, there is indication of an increasing designer–to–developer ratio across organizations.

The Designer–to–Developer Ratio

There was a wide distribution of reported designer–to–developer ratios, as shown below. It’s encouraging, however, that half of respondents (50%) reported having at least 1 designer for every 10 developers at their organization. Further reassuring, less than 10% of respondents reported working at an organization where the ratio was just 1 designer per 50 developers or more.

frequency distribution of reported designer to developer ratios
Half of respondents reported having at least 1 designer for every 10 developers at their organization.

The Researcher–to–Designer Ratio

There was also variability in the reported researcher–to–designer ratio, and similar encouraging patterns emerged: About half of respondents (54%) reported having at least 1 researcher for every 10 designers, and only 8% reported having 1 researcher for every 50 designers or more.

frequency distribution of reported researcher to designer ratios
About half of respondents (54%) reported having at least 1 researcher for every 10 designers.

It’s worth addressing that 13% of respondents were not sure of the designer–to–developer ratios at their organizations, and an even greater amount (24%) were unsure of their researcher–to–designer ratio. Given the relative complexity of many of the organizations surveyed, including overall organization size, team distribution and alignment, and variance in UX maturity — we know about these factors from additional questions asked within the survey — this lack of knowledge is not surprising. Designers or researchers on siloed teams within large, sprawling organizations may be able to answer these questions for the limited sample of their small team or project, but grapple with answering them when it comes to their entire organization.

The “Typical” Ratio: Has It Evolved?

The ratios with the highest number of responses were:

  • Researcher–to–designer ratio: 1 researcher per 5 or fewer designers (37%)
  • Designer–to–developer ratio: 1 designer per 10 or fewer developers (50%)

We could therefore rationally extend these most common responses into a ratio of 1 researcher to 5 designers to 50 developers (1:5:50), as illustrated below. This finding suggests an increase in the researcher–to–designer–to–developer ratio of 1:5:100 that Dr. Sauro reported just 3 years ago. (Great news!)

The extended ratio represented with dots: 1 researcher to 5 designers to 50 developers
The most typical researcher–to–designer–to–developer ratio reported in the survey was 1:5:50.

The fact that the designer–to–developer ratio seems to be increasing when compared to the relatively recent data reported by Dr. Sauro is reasonable, especially considering our own findings that the number of UX professionals is increasing exponentially worldwide. As management recognizes that proper UX methodology substantially improves product quality, it stands that investments in scaling UX design—including the number of UX designers employeed—would grow, and an increasing designer–to–developer ratio would follow.

Comparison to historical data, however, reveals relative stabilization. The extended 1:5:50 ratio equates to a typical percentage of 11% out of all staff working in UX, counting both researchers and designers (6 out of 56). In our 2007 study on the ROI of usability, we found that the typical proportion of project budgets spent on UX was 10%–13% and concluded that best practices call for spending around 10% of a project’s budget on usability. Though we are comparing budget allocation in 2007 to staff allocation in 2020, there is little change in the typical overall allocation of UX resources over the past 13 years when taking this view.

Of course, these ratios will vary across teams, as the complexity and breadth of the product’s UI and domain influence what proportion of resources is appropriate for UX.

How Do Designer–to–Developer Ratios Relate to UX Maturity and Impact?

In addition to asking respondents about the researcher–to–designer and designer–to–developer ratios at their organizations, we asked them to agree or disagree with a number of statements that may indicate organizational UX maturity and impact.

In order to easily compare relationships between reported ratios and the likelihood of agreement with these statements, reported ratios were condensed into 3 groups:

  • 1:50 or lower ratio (relatively low ratio)
  • 1:11 to 1:50 (medium ratio)
  • 1:10 or higher ratio (relatively high ratio)
Designer–to–developer ratios condensed into 3 groupings

Designer–to–Developer Ratios and Impact

As a measure of impact, we asked respondents to indicate whether their team had proven impact on a number of metrics, including:

  • Product usability
  • The visual design of products
  • Cross-product consistency
  • Customer satisfaction
  • Brand equity or loyalty
  • Revenue

As shown in the table below, there appears to be no effect of the designer–to–developer ratio on the team’s ability to impact these key business metrics.

Percentage of respondents across grouped ratios who reported having impact on various key business metrics (Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.)

Even accounting for the large error margins for the 1:50 or lower designer–to–developer group (this was a much smaller group size than the other two groups), the percentage of respondents who reported having proven impact on these metrics did not vary much across the 3 different ratio groups.

Designer–to–Developer Ratios and Maturity

We also asked participants whether or not they agreed to a number of statements that could be indicators of overall UX maturity, including:

  • Design consistency: There is a shared pattern library or front-end style guide used across all teams.
  • Knowledge sharing: Research insights are shared in one place (e.g., a platform or digital location) that all team members can easily access.
  • Documentation: A standard design process is documented and shared with external partners.
  • Value: The role of design is well understood and agreed upon by both internal design team members and external partners.
  • Measurement: Design work is accountable to a set of consistent design metrics.
  • Socialization: Design team members have a consistent way of defining and proactively sharing the role and value of design with external partners.
Percentage of respondents across grouped ratios who reported agreed with maturity statements (Error bars represent 95% confidence intervals.)

As the above table shows, a similar trend emerges: There appears to be no connection between designer–to–developer ratio and likelihood of agreement with maturity statements.

What Does This Data Mean for UX Design Teams?

This data reveals 3 key take-away’s for UX design teams who wonder what the ideal researcher–to–designer–to–developer ratio is for their organization:

1. The Researcher–to–Designer–to–Developer Ratio Is Increasing

Regardless of its relationship to UX impact or maturity, the researcher–to–designer–to–developer ratio appears to be increasing, which is good news for design teams striving to build a development process that includes UX. When compared to the relatively recent data from Dr. Sauro, the ratio has increased from 1:5:100 to 1:5:50 within the span of about 3 years. Hopefully, this data can serve as a benchmark to continue to compare the evolution of these ratios in another few years.

2. There Is Continued Stabilization of UX Resource Allocation

When compared to historical data (our own study from 2007), the percent of resources allocated, whether that be staff or budget, continues to hover at around 10%. (The current estimate is 11%, but given the uncertainty of the estimate, we should not make much of the one percentage point difference.)

There is a huge observed growth in the number of UX professionals in the world. The way to reconcile these two observations is the main growth in the field has come from ever-more countries, industries, and companies embracing UX. Companies that do zero UX are not represented in our surveys, so the numbers we report are not the average of all companies in the world, but the average for those companies that have some amount of recognized UX activities. If we had a way of estimating across all companies, including those that don’t care about UX and thus don’t answer UX surveys, then the ratios would be dramatically worse (dragged down by the many zero-UX companies) but would have improved over time (because there are fewer zero-UX every year.)

3. A Higher Designer–to–Developer Ratio Alone Does Not Mean Greater Maturity or Impact

Two data points — teams’ self-reported ability to impact key business metrics and likelihood of agreement with UX maturity statements — appear to have little to no relationship with a team’s designer–to–developer ratio.

This take-away is critical for design teams: A typical ratio alone does not ensure greater organizational impact, better designs, or more usable products. To understand your design team’s maturity or influence, it’s better to measure factors such as impact on key business metrics, health of the design team, and changes in design quality, usability, and user satisfaction — not team ratios. More design and UX staff can support the team’s ability to increase these measures, but does not guarantee better UX or greater impact.

Additional Considerations

This article only considers the effect of the designer–to–developer ratio on self-reported indicators of design-team impact and maturity. Though the data does not suggest a connection between the ratio and these measures, an open question remains: Does a higher ratio influence additional important factors, such as fullfilment and satisfaction of design-team members? Additional research could answer this question.