Unlike UX, user interface design is a strictly digital term. A user interface is the point of interaction between the user and a digital device or product—like the touchscreen on your smartphone, or the touchpad you use to select what kind of coffee you want from the coffee machine.
In relation to websites and apps, UI design considers the look, feel, and interactivity of the product. A UI designer will think about icons and buttons , typography and color schemes , spacing, imagery, and responsive design.
Like user experience design, user interface design is a multi-faceted and challenging role. If you imagine a product as the human body, the bones represent the code which give it structure.
The organs represent the UX design: measuring and optimizing against input for supporting life functions. And UI design represents the cosmetics of the body; its presentation, its senses and reactions. A UI without UX is like a painter slapping paint onto a canvas without thought; while UX without UI is like the frame of a sculpture with no paper mache on it.
A great product experience starts with UX followed by UI. UX is the feeling you get being able to ride the horse. What tasks do they need to complete? How straightforward is the experience? Much of their work focuses on finding out what kinds of problems and pain-points users come up against, and how a certain product might solve them. How the content is organized and labelled across a product—and what kinds of features the user might need.
With the skeleton of the product mapped out, the UI designer steps in to bring it to life. While the UX designer maps out the journey, the UI designer focuses on all the details that make this journey possible. To summarize:. While something very usable that looks terrible is exemplary of great UX and poor UI.
As you can see, UX and UI go firmly hand in hand, and while there are millions of examples of great products with one and not the other, imagine how much more successful they might have been when strong in both fields. UI design is like the icing on the UX cake. You hire a UX designer to conduct user research and help you figure out exactly what features your app should have, and how the entire user journey should be mapped out.
Your app offers something that your target audience needs and wants; however, when they download it, they find that the text on each screen is barely legible think yellow text on a white background. This is a classic case of bad UI destroying what would have been good UX.
Which brings us to our next section…. A bad user experience will tend to cause users to become bored—or even let down the application.
They may close it without ever returning. While UX and UI may seem very similar, you'll see that this is not quite the case! One thing's for sure: the most important thing is to produce the most pleasant, enjoyable user experience possible. As we've just seen, user experience is the experience we have when we surf on a digital interface. When we experience something, there are several "criteria" to consider:.
UX design places a great importance in offering an accessible, graphically qualitative, functional, practical, and ergonomic interface! It must impel users to stay and discover every corner of the web or mobile application It must allow them to quickly find the information they're looking for, display a strong and positive brand image aligned with a quality visual identity, and present original and authentic features.
We speak of UX design user experience design to define the design of the user experience. By "design," we mean mainly the "conception" of the user experience rather than the visual creation. The role of a UX designer will be to think, reflect and design not only the product— that is, the user interface —but also the user experience that results from it. To create UX designs, we must reflect on users' expectations, needs, and potential desires. We could even define UX design as a process composed of different steps and characteristics:.
Understanding the need: Conduct user interviews to identify their needs, define objectives, and understand user expectations. Personas: Create typical profiles to identify the highlights of their experience, their goals, their frustrations, etc. Use cases: Understand the specifics of each persona and how to solve any problems to create the best possible user experience. Questions to ask include: " How would different people experience this? How would they use the proposed product or service?
Customer journey map: Trace the user's journey through the interface and ask: " How does the user experience begin? How does it end? User flow: These are diagrams that reconstruct the different stages of the user journey, those that lead to the achievement of a specific objective.
Example: An Internet user is looking for a drink on the website of a supermarket. Here's what its user flow would look like:. Wireframe: For the UI designer, the "wireframe" is a model of what the user interface will look like. Thanks to this, the UI designer will be able to build the visual framework of the interface more easily.
Front-end and back-end development: Once these mock-ups have been validated, it's the developers' turn to tackle the project and build the interface with the code. User testing usability reporting : once the product has been implemented, it is tested by real users who will provide their own personal feedback on the user experience they have had. In all cases research helps guide the steps designers take as they build their contributions.
However, the information UI and UX designers are looking for is very different. Which ones worked? There are design lessons to be learned from the work others have done before. Research might indicate that people prefer outlined icons instead of bold shapes. This is a visual shorthand that people are comfortable with and enjoy.
UI designers would then do well to incorporate that lesson. UI designers want their interface designs to stand out and be memorable. UX design is particularly interested in user expectations. If a UX designer decides to do something different, they need to have a very good reason, because breaking a deeply trained expected behavior will likely cause people to do the wrong thing frequently.
As an example, most people are comfortable with the idea that you click twice on a file to open it and once to select it. This is an interface behavior that has existed almost as long as there have been graphical user interfaces.
And when those stars align the results can be astounding. See also:. UX Planet is a one-stop resource for everything related to…. UX Planet is a one-stop resource for everything related to user experience. Lead image: Depositphotos — affiliate link. Alan Smith is an is an out of the heart writer voicing out his take on various topics of social media, web design, mobile apps, digital marketing, entrepreneurship, startups and much more in the cutting edge digital world.
When he is not writing, he can be found traveling outdoors with his camera. You can follow Alan on Twitter Alan Smith. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website.
These cookies do not store any personal information. Skip to primary navigation Skip to main content. One school of thought separates the terms like this: Think of a house. Here is what can be agreed on with little controversy: Yes, the terms are related.
Yes, the terms can overlap. No, they are not interchangeable — no matter how often people use them interchangeably. How much does this matter? It can matter a lot. A business needing a product or website designed and brought to market needs to know what services they are purchasing, whom they need to hire if they are doing it in-house and what skills that person needs to bring to the table.
A small firm desiring in-house UX and UI may be looking for one person to do both and end up hiring a UI designer who does not have the UX skill set or vice versa.
Without a clear understanding of what the two terms mean, someone wanting a website might end up hiring a firm that does not offer all the services they need or does not have the expertise to create what they are looking for. A designer looking for a job could end up wasting their time applying for and even interviewing for positions that do not relate to their skill set because the person posting or hiring the position did not understand the terms.
The three primary differences between UX and UI designers are: UX deals with the purpose and functionality of the product. UI deals with the quality of the interaction that the end-user has with the product. UI design has an artistic component as it relates to the design and interface with the product.
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