Remote Squads, the answer to your outsourcing needs

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With the increasing emphasis on user experience design, how can a company remain competitive in a talent shortage?

The answer to your outsourcing needs

We often think of design as pure aesthetics, however designers play an essential role in humanizing a product or service. Designers place users at the center of all decision-making, an essential part of your roadmap. As more and more companies realize the interdependence between user experience design and efficient business strategies, good designers are increasingly becoming hot commodities. Good design is good business and the key to your user’s heart.

In Silicon Valley, companies have been gradually increasing their designer to engineer hiring targets. From 2013 to 2017, IBM increased its designer-developer ratio from 1:72 to 1:8, which is now the norm for large tech companies. This trend has increased the design shortage in Silicon Valley. For mid- to small companies and startups, sourcing good design talent can be time and resource intensive.


With the increasing emphasis on user experience design, how can a company remain competitive in a talent shortage?

To overcome this issue, some companies outsource or hire freelance designers. Outsourcing comes with challenges, though, such as quality assurance, confidentiality concerns or communication issues. With that said, fast value and expedited time-to-market will be the reward for those who trust that creativity and innovation can come from outside their company.

This is why we created Remote Squads at Fail Fast. An Remote Squad is a team of multidisciplinary designers and digital product experts with specialties in User Experience design, Growth Strategy, Content Design, and Enterprise UX. A rapid solution to your design shortage. We present bold prototypes and test them before reaching the market.

Why outsourcing your design team to Barcelona will help your business?


  1. Harness top design talent from Europe
    Barcelona has quickly become one of Europe’s fastest-growing innovation hubs and headquarters to disruptors like Travelperk (the fastest growing SaaS provider). As a large international hub, the city boasts diversity in arts and culture, which attracts hundreds of talented designers and creatives. Just take a walk through the city and you’ll see the creative magic from something as simple as a government poster or a restaurant menu. Design is intertwined into every aspect of life here, which undoubtedly impacts our work culture.

    Barcelona hosts major digital conferences such as Mobile World Congress, Smart City Expo, and the IoT Solution World Congress. A city truly built around innovation, design, and sustainability makes it an attractive solution to your talent shortage. With over 2,800 companies linked to the digital sector, the partnership opportunities are limitless. The most innovative ideas can come from outside your company, industry, and country.
  2. Cut costs, not quality
    Economically speaking, Spain and the U.S. are different in average salaries and costs of living, which can provide an opportunity for companies looking for seasoned talent without the high hourly rates and salaries of the U.S.
    According to Glassdoor, a Senior UX Designer from Spain makes around €40,000 annually while the same position in the U.S. earns $130,000 annually. It will cost your company less money to access profiles with the same experience and qualifications.
  1. Diversity for Divergent Thinking
    In Barcelona we don’t follow design trends, we create them. A fresh set of hands and eyes can give your company an entirely new perspective on your positioning in the global market. Diversity in perspectives and values are essential for innovation and growth. Think about the feeling you get when you’re in a new place with new people, that’s the kind of experience we want to recreate with our Design Sprints and co-creation sessions.
    Fail Fast Remote Squads can provide your organization with new methods of communication, collaboration tools, and cultural insights that promote out-of-the-box thinking. One of our past partners told us that our methodology changed their entire mentality and sparked a transformation in unimaginable ways.

    “They worked for designing for the future and that was a real gift. They were able to come up with something that had the familiarity of what we have done, but was still a path to the future.” Kenneth Aron, former Abaxis CTO
  1. When you sleep, we work
    Believe it or not, the nine-hour time difference actually works in both favors. Think about it, while you sleep, we work. And when you wake up, we are ready to take a call, gather insight, and make a leap into the next iteration phase. We employ a hybrid method to work with partners outside of Barcelona and use experience design to craft the perfect experience for you and your team.
  2. We are humans designing for humans
    We are not a factory nor a machine, we are humans designing products and services we personally would want to use. Our quality assurance comes from our team’s authentic dedication to creating work they are proud of. We aren’t here to mass-produce mobile applications and websites. We are here to create unique user experiences and have the right talent to deliver.

Create magic with our ‘Remote Squads’

If you’re looking to reorient an existing product or service, we’re there for you. Seeking a team to work on a future based product or service while you master the present? We got you. Care to take the risk of entering a new market? Done and done. Wanting to reach users in Europe or one of the most visited cities in the world? We’ll connect you.

At Fail Fast, we’ll crash your ideas in our Accelerator lab in Barcelona before you launch on the market. We’ll help your team create rapid prototypes, new hypotheses, fill creativity gaps, and design user interfaces that will make your competition go loco. Maybe Silicon Valley has the right to boast about their programming skills, but in Barcelona we know design and do it well.

Want to create magic with us? Let’s get in touch, identify major pain points, and create a Proof of Concept in less than five days.