Dashboards, design systems, ERP/CRM interfaces. Pixel-perfect Figma-to-build with the same designer reviewing the live site against the file. We use AI design tools where they help and call them out where they don’t.
UX/UI design is the discipline of making software interfaces that people can use without thinking about the interface. At NerdHeadz, UX/UI design services are delivered by designers who work alongside engineers — not in a separate studio that throws mockups over a wall. That proximity changes the work. Every wireframe is interrogated by “can we build this in the timeline?” Every interaction pattern is checked against the framework’s capabilities. The result is interfaces that ship as designed, not interfaces that get simplified during development because nobody asked whether the animation was feasible.
Bad UX makes the product confusing even when it looks polished. Bad UI makes the product feel cheap even when the flows are logical. We address both, and we measure both.
The distinction between UX and UI matters in practice. UX is the structure — information architecture, user flows, task analysis, error handling, empty states. UI is the surface — typography, color, spacing, motion, visual hierarchy. Both disciplines exist in every screen, but they fail for different reasons.
AI design tools are real — and the bullshit-to-signal ratio is also real. Here’s our honest take on the four serious players, after using them on production work.
Figma platform + First Draft / Make / Sites / Buzz / Draw / MCP server
Source of truth. Where the design lives. AI features generate first drafts, fill placeholder text, find assets across files.
Make and First Draft are great for exploration but output quality drops when you need consistency across screens. Editable, not always great.
Daily — source of truth on every project.
Anthropic's Claude with design-aware reasoning, via Cursor / Claude Code / direct API
Generating production-grade component code from design tokens, design-system documentation, accessibility validation.
Doesn't design visually — it reasons about design. Wrong tool for a mood board, right tool for a design system.
Daily — design-system code generation and accessibility checks.
Meta-owned autonomous design agent (formerly Butterfly Effect)
Fast concept-to-asset workflows — research-aware image generation, layout exploration, brand-coherent mood boards.
Closed-source, credit-metered, invite-only as of early 2026. Not yet a primary tool for client work.
Sometimes — asset generation and competitor mood-boarding.
GPTs and Operator used for design — image gen, copywriting, browser-controlled tasks
Fast asset generation, image variation, copy generation. Operator is useful for browser-based QA tasks.
Image quality is good, design judgment is not. Useful as an assistant, not a primary surface.
Sometimes — image fills, copy variations.
What we're watching: Figma's MCP server changed the design-to-code loop in 2025 — components can now be read by a coding agent (Claude, Cursor) directly from the Figma file. Design tools talking to coding agents through standard protocols means the design-to-code handoff is finally collapsing.
A fixed-price development quote is a contract. Contracts need stable scope. Scope on a software build comes from finalized designs — not from “here’s our Notion doc” or “here’s a Figma file with 60% of the screens.” We’ve watched too many agencies absorb scope creep because they quoted off mockups that changed in week three.
Our position: the design phase produces a locked Figma file — all screens, all states, design system attached, edge cases drawn. Only then do we quote the build at a fixed price. If you bring a finalized design from another team, we audit it and quote against that. If you bring a sketch, we charge design time-and-materials until the design is locked, then we fix-price.
This isn’t a contractual trick. It’s the same reason architects don’t quote construction costs from a napkin sketch.
For existing products, we start with heuristic review, analytics data, and session recordings. Most redesigns fail because they treat the current interface as the problem when the actual issue is inconsistent patterns or information architecture that was never planned — just accumulated.
IA is the scaffolding UX/UI design hangs on. User flows, screen inventory, state diagrams, navigation models — we do this in Miro or on paper before anything pixel-based. If IA is wrong, polished interfaces on top of it make the problem worse.
Wireframes define the skeleton. High-fidelity builds the visual system. Interactive prototypes handle the things that can only be tested as interactions — animations, transitions, error states, loading patterns.
The cost of testing five users is always less than the cost of shipping the wrong pattern to production. Unmoderated for quick validation, moderated for deeper discovery. Testing happens at wireframe stage and again at high-fidelity — as a design tool, not a final gate.
Components, design tokens, usage documentation — so developers can self-serve without filing design requests for every new screen. A design system is the contract between design and engineering that makes both teams faster.
Most designs degrade between handoff and launch. Our QA loop catches the drift before it ships.
All screens, all states (empty, loading, error, success, edge), design system attached. Engineers can quote off it.
Build engineer walks the file with the designer before code. Edge cases clarified, animations checked against the framework, ambiguities resolved.
Two-week sprints. Primitives first (buttons, inputs, cards), then patterns, then full screens. Claude Code accelerates the mechanical layer.
Same designer who made the file reviews the live staging build — screen by screen, breakpoint by breakpoint. Drift gets logged as a QA ticket and fixed before launch.
Most agency portfolios are 80% landing pages. Ours leans the other way. We design the interfaces that handle real workflows — the screens your team uses 8 hours a day.
Real-time dashboardsLive transcripts, sentiment scoring, queue depth, and agent performance — all updating without page refresh. Custom chart components with hover, brush-select, and cross-chart filtering. Built for operators watching the floor in real time.
Image-heavy UIMulti-pane interface for room scans, design variants, and revision history. Side-by-side comparisons, before/after sliders, batch upload trays, and image annotation — all the patterns that break a generic UI kit. Designed to handle hundreds of generated assets per project.
Records & audit logsAppend-only event streams, role-scoped visibility, multi-state record reviews, and signature workflows. The kind of UI where every state matters and the error-handling is the product — not an afterthought.
Multi-entity ERPRoutes, drivers, loads, vehicles — four entity types intersecting in one workflow. Multi-pane dispatch screens, role-based permissions, bulk operations, and status timelines. Operational software that runs eight hours a day.
Want to see the full case studies? View the portfolio →
Design solves specific problems — and wastes budget on others. Honest breakdown.
We say so before we quote. Rather lose the contract than ship you design work that won’t move the metric you actually care about.
We're not tool-agnostic out of false neutrality. We use these every day on production work — and we have opinions.
Multi-pane interface for AI-generated interior designs, scan history, and revision review.
Dispatch screens, route planning, driver and load coordination across four intersecting entity types.
Append-only event streams, role-scoped record visibility, and signature workflows for regulated records.
Founders and product leads who hired NerdHeadz for real design work — dashboards, design systems, ERP/CRM interfaces.
This system has been a dream of mine for almost a year. I have tried to build it myself and finally came to the conclusion I needed help. The NerdHeadz team has built me exactly what I was dreaming about and more! Working with them has been an absolute pleasure. I can't thank them enough.
The person who designs your dashboard talks daily to the person who builds it. Designs ship as designed, not as compromised during the build.
We use Figma AI, Claude, Manus, OpenAI — and we’ll tell you when each is useful and when it’s not. You won’t pay for AI theatre.
Dashboards, ERP/CRM screens, custom tables, real chart components. We design the interfaces that handle real work — not just hero sections.
Same designer reviews the live build against the Figma file, screen by screen, breakpoint by breakpoint. Drift gets caught before launch, not after.
Because a fixed price needs stable scope, and stable scope on software comes from finalized designs — not from rough mockups or a Notion doc. We’ve watched too many agencies absorb scope creep because they quoted off 60% of the screens. Our position: the design phase produces a locked Figma file with every screen, every state, and the design system attached. Only then do we quote the build at a fixed price. Same reason architects don’t price construction from a napkin.
Yes. We deliver Figma files, design systems, and interactive prototypes that any competent engineering team can build from — in-house, your existing agency, or a future hire. We hand off in Figma Dev Mode with Storybook stubs and a written component spec.
Three places. (1) Claude generates first-pass design-system code and accessibility checks. (2) Manus generates moodboard assets and ideation directions — fast exploration, never final pixels. (3) OpenAI handles image fills and copy variants. What AI doesn’t do: replace the actual UX decisions, the IA work, or the QA loop. We tell you which parts AI accelerated, so you can judge what you’re paying for.
The same designer who built the Figma file reviews the live staging build — screen by screen, breakpoint by breakpoint — against the file. Drift gets logged as QA tickets and fixed before launch. We don’t hand off and disappear. Designer review is a billable line item in every build, not a favor.
A focused product redesign or full new product design: 4–8 weeks. Design-system overhauls or multi-app design programs: 8–16 weeks. We work in two-week design sprints with reviews at the end of each — you see progress incrementally, not at the end.
Yes — with a caveat. We start with a heuristic audit, an analytics review, and (if available) session recordings before designing anything. Most failed redesigns happen because the team treated the current interface as the problem when the actual issue was inconsistent patterns or unplanned information architecture. We diagnose first, design second.
Data-heavy interfaces are our strongest work — dashboards, ERP/CRM tools, custom data tables, internal admin platforms, multi-state record workflows. We design the screens people use eight hours a day. We also do consumer apps and SaaS UIs, but our portfolio leans toward the unsexy operational software that runs real businesses.
A focused product design engagement (one app, full design + design system + prototype): typically $20k–60k depending on screen count and complexity. Design-system overhauls: $30k–120k. We quote fixed-price for the design phase after a 30-minute scoping call.
Yes. You own the Figma file, all source assets, all exported components, the design system, and any documentation. We don’t keep "agency master" copies or hold designs hostage to retainers. Any future designer can pick up where we left off.
30-minute scoping call. Tell us what you’re designing — we’ll come back with a recommended approach, a fixed-price quote for the design phase, and an estimate of what build the design will need.
