Updated with a link to additional resources from designhire.com
UX and UI designs are used to refer to the look and feel of a product but do they mean the same thing ?
First of all, what is the User Experience (UX) design ?
UX design stands for the user experience design. It is used to consider the product design from the end user’s perspective.
This means designing a product with a focus on how the end user would interact with the product.
The UX design approach can be applied to any product design, from a website design to a new car design.
It considers the different ways in which the end users would interact with the product and how easy it would be for those users to use and understand the product.
Now what is user interface (UI) design?
User interface design (UI) or user interface engineering is the way of designing a product with the aim of optimizing the end user’s usability and experience.
The goal of the user interface design is to ensure that the user’s interaction with the product is as simple and efficient as possible.
It is focused on ensuring that the user interface of a product is as instinctive as possible, and that involves carefully considering each and every visual, interactive element that the user might encounter.
The user interface design would consider all the visual, interactive elements of a product interface such as the buttons, icons, spacing, typography, color schemes, and responsive design.
But the user experience and use interface design sound similar, so what is the difference between the two ?
While both the UX and UI designs might seem similar they refer to different faucets of the product development process.
The UX design is focused on the end users overall perception of the product, while the UI design is focused on how the product’s interfaces look and feel.
For example when the UX designer is designing a product, they would be thinking of how the end user’s would interact with that product to achieve a goal.
Some of the questions that the UX designer might ask themselves would include the following :
- What tasks might the user want to complete using the product ?
- How easy is it for that user to achieve those task ?
- What issues might they encounter while trying to complete those task ?
As the UX designer considers these questions they would start considering the product from the user’s point of view.
So while the UI and UX designs might seem similar they are quite different.
The UI designer considers all the visual features of the product, such as the different screens and touchpoints that the user might encounter when using the product while the UX designer considers the actions that the user would have to take when they are actually using the product.
But both the UI and UX designs work together to help optimize the users experience with the product because they are an integral part of the product design.
So why are the UI and UX designs so important ?
The UI and UX designs are important because they are used to preemptively identify and solve the user problems.
The UI design is used to create visually pleasing interfaces while the UX design is used to plan out the basics of the how the user might use the product.
For more information on the differences between UI and UX designers, click on this article by designhire