Most design proposals are read for the price and the timeline. The parts that decide whether the project works are usually not in the document at all, and the only way to find them is to ask.
These are twelve questions we would ask a studio before signing with one. Several of them are questions we do not enjoy being asked, which is the point. A question a studio can answer smoothly from a slide is not doing any work for you.
1. Who exactly will do the work, and can I meet them before I sign?
The people in the pitch are frequently not the people on the project. Ask for names and ask to talk to them for fifteen minutes. A studio that will not put you in a room with the designer who will draw your screens is telling you something about how it staffs.
2. Tell me about a project that went badly. What did you change afterwards?
Everyone has one. The answer you want is specific — what went wrong, whose fault it was, what the studio does differently now. “We are very selective about clients” is not an answer, it is a way of blaming the last one.
3. What is in the file at the end, and who owns it?
Ask for the deliverable in nouns: Figma file, components, tokens, states, specs, source assets. Then ask who owns the file and whether you keep edit access after the invoice is paid. This should be a boring question with a boring answer, and occasionally it is not.
4. How many states will you draw for each screen?
Loading, empty, error, filtered-to-nothing, permission-denied, partial data. A quote counted in screens has usually not counted states, and states are where a build overruns. This one question separates studios that have shipped software from studios that have made pictures of software.
5. Who answers my developer’s question in week nine?
The gap between a delivered file and a shipped screen is where most design budgets quietly disappear. Ask whether handoff support is a line in the quote, how many hours it is, and what happens when those hours run out. If it is offered as goodwill, it will evaporate exactly when you need it.
6. What have you designed that has the same shape as my product?
Same shape, not same industry. A consumer app and an operations tool for trained staff are different disciplines even inside the same sector. If you are building something like a multi-module records platform, the relevant question is whether they have solved navigation across seven modules, not whether they have worked in your vertical.
7. What will you refuse to do?
A studio with no refusals has no method. Ours: we do not build apps, we hand off to your developers. We do not invent claims, numbers or testimonials for a website. A studio that says yes to everything in a sales call will say yes to everything in week four as well, including the things that should have been argued about.
8. Can I see a working file mid-project, rather than a case study?
Every studio can produce a polished case study. Ask to see a live Figma file from a current or recent project — with permission, with the client’s name removed if needed. The messy layers, the comment threads, the abandoned version three: that is how they actually think.
9. How many people will be billable on this, and at what mix?
A quote is a number of hours multiplied by a rate, and the mix matters more than the total. Two senior designers for six weeks and one senior plus three juniors for six weeks produce different work at similar prices. Ask which one you are buying.
10. What happens if our decision-maker changes their mind in week six?
Not “are revisions included” — every studio says yes. Ask what a second round of stakeholder revisions does to the calendar and the invoice, and ask for that answer in writing. In our experience this is the single most common cause of a project running over, and it is almost never in the proposal.
11. Have you ever told a client the problem was not design?
A studio that only sells redesigns will find redesign-shaped problems. If nobody has ever been told their interface was fine and their offer, their pricing or their sales process was the issue, either the studio is very lucky or it is not looking. A review that can honestly end in “spend the money elsewhere” is worth more than one that cannot.
12. What do you need from us, and what happens if we do not provide it?
Access to users, access to analytics, and one person who can say yes. Ask what the studio does when those do not arrive — whether the project pauses, proceeds on assumptions, or gets re-scoped. Studios that have been burned will have a clear answer. Studios that have not will say it is fine, and it will not be.
How to use these twelve
Do not send them as a list. Half of them are conversation, and the value is in the follow-up rather than the first answer.
Ask three or four in the first call and see how comfortable the room is. Ask the rest before you sign. Write down the answers to questions 3, 5 and 10, because those three are the ones people remember differently three months later.
And test cheaply before you commit. Our free 15-point UX audit exists partly for this: you get a ranked list of what is costing you sign-ups within a working day, and you get to watch how a studio thinks before any money changes hands. What a full engagement looks like from research to handoff is on UI/UX design, and the data-heavy end of it is on SaaS product design.
Frequently asked questions
Is it rude to ask a studio these questions?
No, and the reaction is information. A studio that treats question 2 or question 9 as an insult has told you how the difficult conversations in month three will go.
Which of the twelve matters most?
Question 5, who answers your developer in week nine. Beautiful files that nobody supports through implementation are the most expensive way to buy design, and it is the question least often asked.
Should I ask for references?
Yes, and ask for a client whose project did not go smoothly rather than the happiest one. Also ask each reference the boring operational question: did they answer emails in week nine.
How do I compare two quotes that are very different?
Line up what is excluded, not what is included. Empty states, mobile, the settings section, handoff hours and revision rounds are where two quotes for “the same” project stop being the same project.
What if a studio answers everything perfectly?
Then ask to see the working file from question 8. Answers are cheap; a mid-project file is not something anyone can produce on the day of a sales call.