Difference between UX and UI
We’ve all heard debates about the great ‘UX’ of a product or the terrible ‘UI’ of a website.
Along with other differences between UX and UI design.
And that’s what makes many of us wonder, is it a code you’ll never be able to crack? Or is it just to look cool that these people are worried?
Let me first reassure you that UX and UI are two different concepts!
Some such debates in the design world never seem to get resolved. The contrast between user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design is among the most crucial ones being discussed.
What are the differences between UX and UI in one sentence?
UI: The user interface (UI) is the set of screens, pages, and visual elements – such as buttons and icons – that allow a person to engage with a product or service at its most basic level.
UX: The internal experience that a person experiences when interacting with all facets of a company’s products and services is known as the user experience (UX).
Whether you’re new to this beautiful world of design or you’re just curious to know the difference between UX and UI, you’re in the right place. Because in this next blog, we are going to disclose all the similarities and differences between UI and UX design.
Let’s start…
What is User Interface?
User interface (UI) can be defined as any element of a digital product or service with which a user interacts. Everything from monitors and touchscreens to keyboards, audio, and even lighting fall into this category.
However, learning more about the history of the UI and how it evolved into best practices and a profession helps us understand its progress.
Also, user interface, or UI, design is the process of guiding users through a website’s interface using interactive features. Concerned with the website’s visual presentation, appearance, and interactivity.
Following are some of the responsibilities of a UI Designer:
- design research
- UI prototyping
- interactivity
- Coordination with Developers
UI design, then, is the process of transforming wireframes into a finished graphical user interface. This improves the usability of a product and at the same time creates an emotional bond between the end user and the product.
What is UX?
As a result of user interface improvements, the user experience, or UX, needs to evolve. Users’ experiences, whether favorable, bad or neutral, affected how they felt about these encounters since there was something for them to interact with.
Don Norman, a cognitive scientist who worked at Apple in the early 1990s, is credited with coining the term “user experience,” which he describes as follows:
The ‘user experience’ encompasses all aspects of end users’ interaction with the company, its services, and its products.
– Dom Norman
This is a broad term that can include any encounter a person has with a product or service, not just digital interactions. Some UX professionals prefer to refer to the discipline as customer experience, while others go even further and call it experience design.
Norman’s initial UX concept, by whatever name, is at the heart of any thought experience design – comprehensive and constantly focused on the human being it’s engaging with.
The process of identifying a user’s demands and then implementing actions like testing and improvisation until the product is finished is known as user experience design or UX design. Even after product delivery, the testing, optimization, and maintenance process continues.
It seeks to increase customer satisfaction by improving convenience, usability, and pleasure during the user’s contact with the site. It all starts with research, then prototyping, structure planning, final product analysis, and maintenance.
Following are some of the responsibilities of a UX Designer:
- Strategy
- Analysis
- prototyping
- wireframe
- Test
- Coordination with UI Designers and Developers
- Maintenance
- Optimization
UX design is a broad concept, but the goal is to connect business demands with user needs through a research and development process that benefits both sides. UX designers strive to make a website useful and make it easier for users to fulfill their needs.
What is the difference between UX and UI?
The difference between User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) is that UI refers to the aesthetic components through which people interact with a product, while UX refers to the user’s experience with the product or service.
As a result, whereas UX is concerned with the user and how they interact with the product, UI is focused on the visual interface components like fonts, colors, menu bars, and so forth.
The simple illustration used by Jonathan to explain the difference between UI and UX is effective:
Imagine that you are designing a house. UX would be the foundation, and The color and furnishings would be UI.
– Jonathan Widawski, CEO of Maze
The foundation (UX) should be established initially, including figuring out how each space interacts and links to the others, placing doors in the most practical locations, and so on.
Once the foundation is in place, you can focus on the interior design (UI): hanging eye-catching pictures, selecting furniture that complements the wallpaper color, and arranging kitchen utensils so they’re easy to reach without getting cluttered.
This example shows how UX and UI differentiate the designer’s balance and responsibilities when collaborating on a product: first, the intellectual flow of activities and centerpieces are established, then the visuals are developed.
It also shows how the interaction works, with UX designers handing their work and ideas over to the UI team once key concepts have been tried and tested.
Here are 3 quick helpful differences between UX and UI:
User Interface (UI)
- It refers to the virtual element that allows users to interact with the product.
- It mainly focuses on the look and feel of a product – typography, color, images, and more.
- The aim is to make products more useful, aesthetically appealing, and optimized for different screen sizes.
User Experience (UX)
- It’s about the feeling and emotions that users experience when interacting with a product.
- It focuses on the overall usability of a user journey.
- The aim is to delight users with an effective and easy-to-use product.
How do UI and UX design interact with one another?
UX and UI are not entirely dissimilar, despite their differences. Both parties, on the other hand, are critical and operate in unison to decide how a product will look and perform, with each impacting the other.
Imagine spending weeks building a beautiful website only to find that users can’t find what they’re looking for and are having trouble navigating. Users will feel frustrated and leave your site if the user interface is not user-friendly.
On the other hand, suppose you do research and user testing to get the best UX possible, but your website content is so bright that visitors can barely see it. Even if your UX is great, if your UI isn’t attractive or accessible, users might be hesitant to use your product.
Plainly simple, no UI, no UX, and vice versa. As a result, if you want to create a user-centric product, you need both aspects to ensure that consumers can easily enjoy engaging with it.
Why are UX and UI important?
Together, UX and UI define the total product experience. While two similar products might produce the same end result, the UX/UI of each shows how they deliver it. People will use one of the products more than the other if it has a better UX/UI design. They enjoy the whole experience.
In a nutshell, UX and UI design changes the game and gives businesses an edge.
Conclusion
You should now be able to distinguish between the tiny distinctions between UI and UX design. Yes, they complement each other, but they are very different. In comparison to traditional design, UX design is more analytical.
It is based on human psychology and cognitive behavior. Visuals – or whether a product is aesthetically pleasing – are most important in UI design software.
Finally, I hope the post was insightful enough to help you understand how UX and UI differ from one another.
