Best UX Design Agencies in Minneapolis (2026)

Introduction

Minneapolis has a solid bench of UX and product design firms, and the 12 below were chosen for the range of their digital product work, their named clients and their verified Twin Cities offices. The list includes app and platform consultancies, research-led practices and medtech design firms with human factors teams.

The local market is shaped by large headquartered companies such as Target, Best Buy, General Mills, 3M and UnitedHealth Group, along with a medical device cluster anchored by Medtronic. That gives UX firms here a steady mix of enterprise software, retail, healthcare and regulated product work. Several familiar names have also changed recently: MentorMate moved fully to the Tieto brand in June 2026, Livefront joined forces with Dallas-based Zeal, and Coherent Solutions launched The Norm as a separate UX agency in 2025.

Every firm here shows an active Minneapolis-St Paul office or studio in 2026. The list is unranked, since the right choice depends on your product, your regulatory context and how much engineering you want from the same partner.

The best UX design agencies in Minneapolis

1. Livefront

Combined with Zeal · Northeast · livefront.com

Livefront is a digital product consultancy working since 2001, with its headquarters on Tyler Street NE. It has joined forces with Zeal, of Dallas, and the combined company has more than 300 strategists, designers, engineers and product managers. Its site lists Experience Design alongside strategy, AI, engineering and data.

For Life Time, Livefront worked on an AI companion in the member app, including native mobile design, user research and testing, and the app’s first search feature. Other named work includes Optum Perks, Great Clips loyalty and Evereve. Clients should ask how the Zeal combination affects their team, although Livefront says client partners and delivery teams continue as usual.

2. Clockwork

Private · Minneapolis · clockwork.com

Clockwork is a digital product and technology partner for B2B organisations, with 25 years in business and a Minneapolis headquarters on East Hennepin Avenue. Founders Nancy Lyons and Chuck Hermes sit on the board, Jenny Holman is chief executive and Chelsey Mona leads experience design. Inc. has named it a Power Partner from 2024 to 2026.

Its work covers product modernisation, dealer portals and customer experience strategy, often for manufacturers, finance and insurance companies. BI WORLDWIDE is its named website case study, and client logos include Mayo Clinic, Kohler and Mercury. The company describes itself as remote-first, so ask how much in-person time your project would get.

3. The Norm

Part of Coherent Solutions · Minneapolis · thenorm.design

The Norm is the product and UX agency of Coherent Solutions, launched in 2025 from that company’s established design practice. It has more than 30 UX and UI specialists, backed by the parent’s engineers and product managers. Coherent Solutions has a Minneapolis office on Utica Avenue South, and the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal ranked it the largest IT consulting firm in the Twin Cities for 2025.

Its case studies include JRNY, Nautilus’s adaptive fitness platform, along with roofing tools for Roofle and Success Intelligence for MaxContact. Life Time and Planet Fitness also appear among its clients. Coherent has offices across Europe and Mexico as well, so ask where your design team will sit.

4. KRUTSCH

SBA-certified service-disabled veteran-owned small business · Bloomington · krutsch.design

KRUTSCH combines human-centred design with software development, data and applied AI, working from American Boulevard West in Bloomington. Its Parade of Homes app for Housing First Minnesota was a Webby Honoree in Best Visual Design in 2025, and the firm also received Webby nominations that year for The Heart Apps and the Owlcam app.

Services run from customer research and UX architecture to design systems and full-stack builds. The firm has a strong health thread, with work for the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation and logos including Mayo Clinic, Allina Health and Optum.

5. Nerdery

Founder-led · Edina · nerdery.com

Nerdery is a digital consultancy co-founded in 2003 by Mike Schmidt, who has been chief executive since 2020. It works from France Avenue South in Edina and pairs UX and design services with research, product consulting and custom software development.

Its client list has strong local depth: 3M, Medtronic, Boston Scientific, Mayo Clinic, Optum, Polaris and Purina. Published projects include Polaris Ship-to-Store, which a client testimonial says was stood up in less than five months, and an ecommerce platform for Real Sportscards.

6. Tieto (formerly MentorMate)

Owned by Tieto · Uptown · tieto.com

Tieto is the name MentorMate has traded under since 8 June 2026, three years after Tieto bought the business in July 2023. The rebrand announcement was datelined Minneapolis, and it brings consulting, design and engineering together under one global name. The firm’s Minneapolis address has been listed as Lagoon Avenue in Uptown, with further teams in Sofia and Asunción.

Named work includes a digital experience transformation for RBC Wealth Management, and Trane, Graco and Land O’Lakes appear among its listed clients. It suits buyers who want design and engineering from one supplier. Older references and reviews will still use the MentorMate name.

7. Folklore

Founder-led · North Loop · folklore.digital

Folklore is a digital experience company with offices in Minneapolis, Chicago, Grand Rapids and Miami. Its services are organised around CX and strategy, architecture, design and development, and its UX methods include user interviews, ethnography, usability testing, card sorting and tree testing.

Clients include Polaris Adventures, Land O’Lakes, Scotty Cameron and By The Yard, for which it built an ecommerce site. It also redesigned the Nickelodeon Universe website. Folklore runs brand and social campaigns too, so ask to see the research and architecture behind any portfolio piece that interests you.

8. Bust Out

Private · North Loop · bustout.com

Bust Out has designed and built websites, apps and digital experiences since 2005, from a studio on North 3rd Street. App projects cover product strategy, UX, prototyping and custom software, and its discovery work includes stakeholder interviews, user research and concept testing.

The portfolio leans towards education, culture and mission-driven clients. It built a K-12 digital learning platform around OK Go’s music videos and has worked with the Ordway, the Land Trust Alliance and Peli BioThermal. Its video and animation services can help when a product needs explanatory content.

9. Electric Citizen

Private · Minneapolis · electriccitizen.com

Electric Citizen is a Minneapolis web agency for government, higher education and mission-driven organisations. Its services include web design and UX, digital strategy with user testing, and accessibility compliance, which is often the deciding requirement for public-sector projects.

Client logos include the University of Minnesota, the Minnesota Department of Health, the Minnesota Department of Revenue, Minneapolis College and the Wilder Foundation. Its focus is content-heavy public websites, so app and hardware teams will be better served by others on this list.

10. Fathom Consulting

Private · Warehouse District · consultfathom.com

Fathom Consulting is a Minneapolis business and design consultancy founded in 1999. Its work combines research, experience design and strategic facilitation, applied to digital and physical interfaces, software, medical devices, healthcare operations and services.

Published case studies are described by sector and do not name clients. They include helping to transform the dialysis industry for patients, finding common ground on medication affordability, and two further medical device projects. Fathom fits teams that need the research and strategy settled before interface work begins.

11. Worrell (Veranex)

Part of Veranex · Northeast · veranex.com

Worrell is a healthcare design and innovation firm founded in 1976, and Veranex acquired it in December 2021. It brought human-centred design, early-stage strategy, design conceptualisation and human factors into the Veranex group, which lists a Minneapolis office at 1414 Marshall Street NE, the address also listed for Worrell.

Worrell describes its clients as hospital systems and medical device, pharmaceutical and technology companies. Veranex covers human factors alongside engineering and pilot-scale manufacturing, so a project can continue past design inside one group. Ask which parts of your programme the Minneapolis team would run, since Veranex operates internationally.

12. Kablooe Design

Private · Minneapolis · kablooe.com

Kablooe Design is a product design and development firm specialising in medical devices, with more than 35 years in operation and ISO 13485 certification. Its usability research, human factors engineering, regulatory studies and reporting sit alongside industrial design and engineering.

Named clients include Boston Scientific, Medtronic, Coloplast, AtriCure and Mayo Clinic, and projects include NxTHERA’s BPH treatment device and a Zomedica veterinary microscope. This is the most hardware-led firm on the list, so it suits teams whose user experience spans a physical device and its software.

What to look for in a Minneapolis UX design agency

Start with the type of product. A medical device interface calls for human factors experience and familiarity with regulatory studies, which is where firms such as Kablooe Design and Veranex differ from consultancies built around mobile apps or enterprise portals. Your own regulatory and legal teams still decide what a submission needs.

Check how research is staffed. Ask who will run interviews and usability tests, how many sessions the budget covers, and whether you will receive the recordings and raw findings. Many Twin Cities firms work with large in-house design teams, so also agree early on who owns the design system and the final decisions.

Look closely at ownership and team location. Several firms here belong to larger groups or have recently combined, and that can bring engineering scale along with distributed teams. Knowing which people are in Minneapolis, and which sit elsewhere, helps if workshops and in-person testing with local users matter to the project.

Finally, ask how prototypes, research clips and feedback will be managed. Product work creates many versions and many reviewers across product, engineering, legal and clinical teams. A clear record of what was reviewed, what was said and which comments were resolved makes handover to engineering much easier.

How Fabric helps UX design teams

Fabric gives a UX team one workspace for research, design files, client feedback and project knowledge, with AI search across all of it. The setup for UI and UX agencies keeps briefs, research, exports and call notes together for each client.

Research recordings can be uploaded for audio and video transcription, which makes interviews and usability sessions searchable with clickable timestamps. Search works by meaning across documents, images, PDFs, transcripts and connected apps, and results jump to the relevant page or timestamp. That helps when a team wants to find every session where participants struggled with the same flow.

For early thinking, Canvas is an infinite whiteboard that can embed Figma files alongside references and notes. For review, share a file or folder with a client as a commenter through a shared link, which works without sign-up. With annotations, they can draw on a screen image and attach a comment, leave timestamped comments on a recorded prototype walkthrough, or highlight text in a PDF. The team marks each comment completed as it is resolved, so feedback works like a checklist.

Finished research reports and design documentation can be published as a web page, which is view-only and updates when the source changes. Link analytics shows when each named recipient opened a tracking link and how long they spent with it. On Team plans, self-writing docs can maintain a page for each client from meetings, Slack and the workspace, covering decisions, deliverables and open items.

Fabric uses AES-256 encryption, holds CASA Tier 2 and does not use customer data to train AI models. Teams handling healthcare work should confirm their own requirements with their legal and engineering reviewers. Password protection and link analytics are included on Pro and Team plans, and self-writing docs on Team plans. See plans for teams.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best UX design agency in Minneapolis?

The right firm depends on the product. Livefront and The Norm have strong consumer app case studies, Clockwork focuses on B2B products, KRUTSCH received Webby recognition in 2025, and Kablooe Design and Veranex suit medical device work.

Which Minneapolis firms handle medtech UX and human factors?

Kablooe Design lists usability research, human factors engineering and regulatory studies, and holds ISO 13485 certification. Worrell, now part of Veranex, brings human factors and early-stage healthcare design. Fathom Consulting applies research and experience design to medical device projects.

What happened to MentorMate?

Tieto bought MentorMate in July 2023, and MentorMate moved fully to the Tieto brand on 8 June 2026. Its design and engineering services now appear under Tieto’s design and consulting offering.

Is Worrell still in Minneapolis?

Worrell has been part of Veranex since December 2021, and Veranex lists a Minneapolis office at 1414 Marshall Street NE. Ask Veranex directly which design and human factors staff are based there.

What is the difference between a UX agency and a design agency?

A UX agency concentrates on how a product or digital service works for its users, usually through research, prototyping and interface design. A design agency tends to work across identity, print, environments and campaigns as well. Our list of design agencies in Minneapolis covers those multidisciplinary studios.

Related lists

UX design agencies in other cities: New York · London · Los Angeles · Chicago · Toronto

More in Minneapolis: Creative agencies · Design agencies · Branding agencies · Marketing agencies · Content studios

Run your agency on Fabric: Fabric for UI and UX agencies · Fabric for designers · Best design feedback tools