Defining Redesign Roles: Designer, Developer, or UX/UI Expert?

In the first part of this series, we looked at why some website redesigns miss their target by failing to step back and look at the purpose. Now it’s time to get into some of the more specific elements of what to do next. You have your why in mind. Things are starting to line up between marketing and business drivers, but you’re not quite sure what level of redesign you need and, perhaps more importantly, who should lead the redesign.

For a lot of teams, this moment isn’t about starting over. It’s about deciding how to evolve what already exists. The site has history. It’s doing work. The question is how to give it its next chapter without erasing what made it valuable in the first place.

So let’s talk about roles. When redesigning a website, three common roles could help lead this project:

• Designer
• UX/UI Expert
• Frontend Engineer

Each role offers different levels of value, experience, and expertise. A frontend engineer may be skilled in UX/UI design and implementation, but may lack focus on user surveys, trends, and best practices for modern tools. Similarly, a designer may not have the site’s accessibility in mind when refreshing the look and feel.

Choosing the right role for the project will depend on a few factors: the redesign's goal, any project constraints, and the team’s maturity in refreshing site elements. When that decision is off, even a well-intentioned redesign can stall- not because the work is wrong, but because the wrong role is driving it too early. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Common roles for a redesign project

One of the biggest mistakes we see in redesigns isn’t poor execution. It’s asking the wrong role to lead too early. Each role is strongest at a different stage of a site’s life. Knowing who should lead depends on whether you’re inventing something new or helping an existing system grow.

Roles aren’t interchangeable, and they’re not all needed for every redesign. Each one brings a different perspective to the project, and, importantly, each one is best suited to lead at different moments. The sections below are meant to help you identify which role makes the most sense for your specific goal, rather than defaulting to the most familiar option.

When you need a designer

A designer is most interested in the application's visual language. They often work in programs like Photoshop, InDesign, and Figma to create new and exciting designs that meet project requirements.

Designers spend a lot of time in their community, sharing valuable information and design trends to push their industry forward. They care deeply about the look and feel of a website, what it is trying to communicate, and how eye-catching elements are.

Areas of focus:

• Visual Identity
• Brand Evolution
• Marketing-driven redesigns

When you need a UX/UI expert

A UX/UI Expert is a type of designer who has dedicated their education and practice to focus on how users experience the site, where they go naturally, what they see first, and how to reduce any visual friction for the application. If you’re redesigning to help funnel users into a specific flow, like newsletter sign-ups, then a UX/UI designer is your friend!

A UX/UI Expert will often work in Photoshop, Figma, and other tools to help condense large amounts of information into easy-to-understand reports. This often includes user interviews and research.

Areas of focus:

• Complex user flows
• Creating flows for multiple audiences
• Usability challenges

When you need a frontend engineer

Frontend Engineers are the daily drivers of changes to an application. They have a broad focus area, often resolving visual bugs and regularly building new features on the team. A frontend engineer will spend more time working on the code itself than on visual design software: programming in JavaScript, Rails Views, HTML/CSS, etc.

A Frontend Engineer is a great choice for a visual refresh of existing designs (changing header images, adding an image carousel, or resetting the site’s style guide/colors, and buttons) because they are already very familiar with the site.

Areas of focus:

• Existing systems and user flows
• Design-to-code feasibility
• Performance Issues

Choosing the right role for the job

Complex design projects, which involve creating a new application from scratch or revamping the entire site structure, may involve all three of the common roles listed above! But most projects don’t. Here is a real example where Planet Argon used multiple roles, and why we thought it was important.

One of our clients was having an issue where new users were not exploring older content in their video library. This client had a huge catalog of great tutorials and classes that they felt still had a lot of runway for their modern audience. The problem wasn’t relevance. It was visibility. So they needed a way to do a few things:

1. Highlight featured content in a rotating carousel
2. Encourage users to explore older content
3. Quickly surface videos based on user filters or search
4. And push new users to subscribe to get the full content

To help solve this problem, we first set some boundaries with the client. Would they need a full redesign, or were they happy with their website's visual language (colors, button shapes, hero image sizes)?

They were happy with their design and preferred to keep it the same!

Great, so now we were down to two roles for this project: a UX/UI Expert to research and recommend the best approach for the user flows the client wanted to improve, and a Frontend Engineer who would be able to implement the redesign, provide valuable historical information about the code, and help keep the style in line with the rest of the site.

Sequencing Matters

It is tempting to start tasks in parallel in any project. You want to try to make as much progress as possible right away because it’s exciting to start a new project! But, as in the example above, a sequence needs to be put in place to avoid rework and overlapping tasks.

This is especially true for sites in their second act. The structure exists. The design language exists. The code has years of decisions baked into it. Sequencing isn’t about slowing down. It’s about respecting what’s already there so the next changes actually stick.

Taking the example of the video library, let’s think through the sequence:

• The style guide is set: we are reusing the site colors, and the “feel” will be the same after the redesign. This means no designer is needed for this project.
• We are changing the user flow to encourage users to explore more of the site's content.** A UX/UI Expert is needed.**
• Once the new user flow has been created, someone will have to implement it in the code. A Frontend Engineer is needed to complete the redesign.
• But the Frontend Engineer can’t start until the research, presentation, and buyoff for the redesign are complete. So the UX/UI Expert has to start first.

This person will help highlight the project requirements and the best-case scenario before the actual work of implementing the design begins. The UX/UI Expert will lead the project at the start and help shape the next steps with the rest of the project team and the client. The Frontend Engineer, who has a wealth of experience and knowledge of the existing application and its styles, will support the project by attending meetings and providing guidance on potential risks as they begin implementing the new design.

By starting the UX/UI design process first, we avoid parallel workstreams or ideas floating around the project tasks. Design principles and requirements can now flow neatly from Research and Concept to Implementation.

Bringing it all together

Choosing the right person to lead a redesign isn’t about job titles. It’s about intent. Once you understand why you’re redesigning, the question of who should lead becomes much easier to answer."

Some projects need a strong visual refresh. Others require careful research into how users move through the site. And many benefit from a technical lead who understands the realities of the existing system. The key is recognizing that these roles are not interchangeable, and that involving the wrong one too early or too late can slow a project down just as quickly as not involving them at all.

Equally important is sequencing. When research, design decisions, and implementation are approached in the right order, teams avoid duplicated effort and unnecessary rework. Clear leadership at each phase keeps everyone aligned and helps the project move forward with confidence.

If you’re thinking about a redesign and aren’t sure where to start or who should be leading it, we can help you assess the scope, clarify the roles you actually need, and guide your technical team toward a successful launch.

In the next part of this series, we’ll dig deeper into how design decisions translate into technical constraints and how to keep creative vision and engineering reality working together without friction.