Difference between UI and UX design?
Design is a very wide concept used in everyday life. There are a lot of things involved in design. When we hear ‘design’, I am sure a lot of things go into our mind. Design related roles are fashion design, UI/UX design, graphic design, textile design and others.
UI / UX design — terms used interchangeably but are actually different from each other.
UX actually means User experience design while UI is User interface design. Both fields are quite crucial to a company and product development and they work hand in hand to achieve a wonderful experience for users.
UX design
User experience design is the process of developing and improving the quality of interaction between a user and all facets of a company. UX applies to anything that can be experienced — it could be a website, a coffee machine, or a visit to a bank. The “user experience” part refers to the interaction between the user and a product or service. A UX designer thinks about how a user feels when using a product and the experience he/ she gets. Some examples include ‘how easy is it to use your toasting machine’, ‘ Is your remote control easy to use without giving you ache in the head’.
The ultimate purpose of UX design is to create easy, efficient, relevant, and all-round pleasant experiences for the user.
What UX designers do
- Strategy and Context
- Competitor Analysis
- Customer Analysis
- Product Structure/Strategy
- Content Development
- Wireframing and Prototyping
- Wireframing
- Prototyping
- Testing/Iteration
- Development Planning
- Execution and Analytics
- Coordination with UI Designer(s)
- Coordination with Developers
- Tracking Goals and Integration
- Analysis and Iteration
So UX design role allows you to be a part-marketer, part-designer, part-project manager. its a complex and challenging role😂😒.
UI Design
UI design complements UX design. It is the presentation and interactivity of a product, the look and feel of a product. 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 when trying to make a withdrawal from your bank account. A UI designer will think about icons and buttons, typography and color schemes, spacing, imagery, and responsive design.
The goal of UI design is to visually guide the user through a product’s interface and involves creating a journey that does not require a user to think too much. Sounds interesting right😍
What UI designers do?
Look and Feel
- Customer Analysis
- Design Research
- Branding and Graphic Development
- User Guides/Storyline
Responsiveness and Interactivity
- UI Prototyping
- Interactivity and Animation
- Adaptation to All Device Screen Sizes
- Implementation with Developer
Difference between UI and UX design
If you imagine a product to be a car, user experience is that feeling you get while riding it, and yeah! the experience can be an awesome one❤ or the opposite🤦♂️, it all depends on the UI of the car, i mean the presentation, look and feel of it.
Another analogy is, Dain Miller sums up the relationship between UX and UI design perfectly:
“UI is the saddle, the stirrups, and the reins. UX is the feeling you get being able to ride the horse.”
— Dain Miller, Web Developer
From another analogy, UI is the color and feel of the toys Patricia uses, while the experience she gets playing with her toys is UX.
A UX designer considers the user’s entire journey to solve a particular problem,conducts extensive user research in order to find out who the target users are and what their needs are in relation to a certain product, maps out the user’s journey across a product, considering how the content is organized and labelled across a product — and what kinds of features the user might need and then create a sketch of what the final product will look like.
A UI designer steps in after the sketch which is also known as wireframe have been created and considers all visual aspects of the journey while focusing on all the details that makes the journey possible. UI designers have a huge impact on whether or not a product can be accessed easily. They’ll ask questions like “How can different color combinations be used to create contrast and enhance readability?”.
In actual sense, the only difference you should bear in mind is UX design is all about the overall feel of the experience, while UI design is all about how the product’s interfaces look and function.
Conclusively, UX and UI complement each other — and in today’s competitive market, getting both aspects right is an absolute must.
