Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Interaction Consultant

🎯 Role Definition

An Interaction Consultant is a specialist who partners with product teams, stakeholders, and clients to design meaningful, usable digital experiences. They blend human-computer interaction (HCI) principles, user research, prototyping, and business strategy to define interaction patterns, design systems, and measurable UX outcomes. Interaction Consultants lead workshops, run usability studies, define UX strategy, and work closely with engineers to deliver high-quality user interfaces and interactions optimized for conversion, accessibility, and long-term maintainability.

Keywords: Interaction Consultant, interaction design, UX strategy, usability testing, prototyping, design systems, HCI, service design, accessibility, product UX.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior Interaction Designer or Senior UX Designer
UX Researcher with interaction design experience
Product Designer transitioning to consultancy roles

Advancement To:

Lead Interaction Consultant / Principal Interaction Consultant
UX Strategy Lead / Head of UX
Product Design Director or DesignOps Lead

Lateral Moves:

Service Designer
UX Research Lead
Product Manager (UX-focused)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Lead client-facing discovery and scoping workshops to translate business goals, technical constraints, and user needs into a prioritized interaction design roadmap that aligns with product strategy and measurable KPIs.
Conduct and synthesize qualitative and quantitative user research — including contextual interviews, diary studies, surveys, and analytics reviews — to inform interaction patterns and feature prioritization with evidence-backed recommendations.
Create detailed interaction models, user flows, task analyses, wireframes, and annotated specifications that articulate behavior across platforms and devices, ensuring a consistent and predictable user experience.
Rapidly prototype user interfaces and interaction concepts using industry-standard tools (e.g., Figma, Adobe XD, Axure) and validate flows through moderated and unmoderated usability testing cycles to reduce risk and iterate quickly.
Design and operationalize component-level interaction patterns and design system contributions (tokens, components, motion guidelines) to scale consistent interactions across multiple products and platforms.
Advocate for and implement accessibility best practices (WCAG 2.1+) and inclusive design principles, conducting accessibility audits and remediations to ensure legal compliance and equitable user experiences.
Partner with engineering teams to translate prototypes into high-fidelity implementations, providing interaction specifications, microcopy guidance, and handoff artifacts while balancing feasibility and performance.
Create and maintain interaction documentation, pattern libraries, and decision logs that capture rationale, trade-offs, and usage guidance to support cross-functional adoption and onboarding.
Define UX success metrics (task completion, time-on-task, error rates, SUS, NPS, conversion lift) and set up tracking instrumentation in collaboration with analytics and product teams to measure impact and inform iterative improvements.
Run design sprints and co-creation sessions with stakeholders, product managers, and engineers to accelerate problem solving and surface viable interaction solutions within tight timelines.
Facilitate stakeholder alignment and executive presentations translating interaction design trade-offs into business outcomes and ROI, building buy-in for UX investments and roadmaps.
Lead A/B testing and experiment design for interaction variations, interpret experiment results, and translate findings into prioritized product and design changes that improve user engagement and conversion.
Mentor and coach junior designers and cross-functional team members on interaction best practices, critique sessions, and peer reviews to elevate team-wide interaction quality.
Translate complex domain logic and data-heavy interfaces into simple, discoverable interactions that reduce cognitive load and improve learnability across novice and expert user segments.
Conduct competitive and market analysis to identify interaction patterns, industry standards, and emergent technologies (voice, AR/VR, conversational UI) that inform innovation and differentiation strategies.
Collaborate with product, marketing, legal, and customer success to ensure interactions support onboarding, retention, supportability, and compliance requirements across the user journey.
Develop and iterate on mobile-first and responsive interaction strategies that optimize for performance, gesture patterns, and platform conventions while maintaining brand integrity.
Lead cross-functional retrospectives and continuous improvement initiatives to refine interaction delivery processes, integration points, and quality gates in the product lifecycle.
Provide remote and in-person training for internal teams and client stakeholders on interaction principles, design thinking, and hands-on prototyping best practices to increase organizational UX maturity.
Manage multiple client or product engagements concurrently, balancing scope, timelines, budgets, and resource constraints while maintaining high interaction design standards.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
Assist in creating sales and proposal materials by scoping interaction deliverables, estimating effort, and articulating value propositions.
Maintain awareness of accessibility legislation, privacy regulations, and internationalization concerns that affect interaction design decisions.
Contribute to hiring activities and help define interaction design interview guides, assignments, and evaluation criteria.
Produce case studies, whitepapers, and thought leadership on interaction trends and best practices to support business development and brand positioning.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Advanced interaction design and information architecture skills with a portfolio demonstrating end-to-end solutions across web and mobile platforms.
Proficiency in prototyping and design tools such as Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, Axure RP, Principle, or Framer for creating interactive, testable prototypes.
Strong usability testing skills: planning, moderating (remote and in-person), synthesizing findings, and writing actionable UX recommendations.
Knowledge of front-end technologies (HTML, CSS, basic JavaScript) and common front-end frameworks to enable pragmatic handoffs and realistic interaction constraints.
Experience designing and maintaining design systems and component libraries, including tokens, variants, and responsive behavior.
Familiarity with accessibility standards (WCAG 2.0/2.1) and assistive technology testing methods to ensure inclusive interactions.
Competence with analytics and experimentation platforms (Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Optimizely) to define metrics and evaluate interaction performance.
Strong documentation and specification-writing abilities, including flow diagrams, interaction states, error handling, and edge cases.
Applied knowledge of service design, journey mapping, and systems thinking to align interactions with broader experience ecosystems.
Experience with UX research methods (contextual inquiry, card sorting, tree testing, heuristic evaluation) and analysis techniques like affinity mapping and personas.
Familiarity with version control and design collaboration workflows (Figma libraries, Abstract, Git-based approaches) to manage design artifacts.
Ability to create motion and microinteraction specifications using tools like Lottie, After Effects, or prototyping libraries to communicate dynamic behavior.
Understanding of privacy, security, and compliance considerations that impact interaction flows (consent patterns, data minimization).

Soft Skills

Excellent stakeholder management and client-facing communication: presenting concepts, negotiating scope, and aligning expectations across executive and delivery teams.
Strong facilitation skills for workshops, design sprints, stakeholder interviews, and cross-functional decision-making sessions.
Exceptional empathy and user-centric mindset with the ability to advocate for users while balancing business and technical constraints.
Analytical problem solving and critical thinking to decompose complex workflows into intuitive interaction patterns.
Influencing and storytelling skills: turning research and design rationale into compelling narratives that drive adoption and funding.
Time management, prioritization, and multitasking to juggle multiple projects and evolving priorities in fast-paced environments.
Mentorship and team leadership: coaching mid and junior designers, providing constructive feedback, and growing design craft within teams.
Adaptability to shifting product strategies, new tools, and remote or distributed working models.
Cross-cultural sensitivity and collaboration experience for global or multi-market products.
Resilience and bias-for-action: closing feedback loops quickly while managing ambiguity and iterative learning.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Graphic Design, Computer Science, Cognitive Psychology, Information Science, or related field.

Preferred Education:

Master's degree in HCI, Interaction Design, Human-Centered Design, Service Design, or equivalent professional certification (Nielsen Norman Group, Cooper, IDEO U).

Relevant Fields of Study:

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Interaction / Product Design
Cognitive Psychology / Behavioral Science
Computer Science / Software Engineering
Service Design / Information Architecture

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 4–10+ years of professional experience in interaction design, UX consulting, or product design roles.

Preferred:

5+ years delivering interaction design for consumer or enterprise SaaS products, mobile applications, or complex multi-platform systems.
Prior consulting or client-facing experience, including scoping, proposals, and stakeholder management.
Demonstrated track record of improving key UX metrics (e.g., task success rate, conversion rate, retention) through interaction improvements.
Portfolio with case studies that show research methods, design iterations, prototyping, accessibility considerations, and measurable outcomes.