You need to be convinced that a designer is needed in order to pay for it, and you may not need one: If you trust that your product is designed not according to the convenience of the underlying technology (and the computation device) but to match the goals of the [put your target audience here] #1 user Jane (age 21, last year in college, started thinking about her finances, has classes all day, needs to straighten up GPA before graduation, good at math and office software, shares apartment with 2 other people, uses to phone for IM and instagram), and #2 user Hillary (age 58, manager in a paper company, both kids graduated from college, has meetings throughout the week, 5 weeks vacation, heavily depends on her phone for calendar and email).