Here is the Difference Between UI and UX Design

UX and UI are the two terms that are often used interchangeably but mean very different things. So, what is exactly the difference between UI and UX?

Walking down the hip streets of tech capitals, you might have often heard the term excellent “UX” of the product, poor “UI” of a website. But, aren’t you keen to know what UX and UI are and how the two differ from each other? If you are, then you are the right place.

So, let’s head straight to the answers.

UI or User Interface can be simply defined as anything with which a user may interact to use the digital product or services. User experience comprises all aspects of the end-users interaction with the company, its services, and its products.

Let’s start with the UX:

UX, as you know, is User Experience, and as the name suggests it is used to design different ways in which the User can easily use the application.

Here are parameters to be considered while designing the UX:

· Content to be written on the screen,

· Placement of each text and buttons

· Text (what need to be bold/highlighted/differently colored),

· Complete flow of the application

· Specific information to be displayed on a particular screen

· User journey which starts from user signup and would probably end on the last that you want the user to do.

What not to consider while building UX:

· Colour of text or button

· Colour Theme

· Font style or roundness of the buttons

· Beautification

· Animations

Other Important and more technical things to focus:

· Aesthetics of the Design

· Creating a user habit in terms of clickables/actionable/placements ( the main focus of UX)

Now comes the UI:

UI is the User Interface, and as stated above, it is with which the user interacts. User Interface includes blocks, controls, buttons and elements of an application. Thus, developing a UI involves selecting colors, following the latest design principles and defining corporate identity.

Parameters for the UI:

· Font Family

· Color Schemes

· Replacing text with icons or images,

· Style of icons and images

· Background textures

· Highlighting the important things on the screen

· Differentiating things we want the user to click versus things that can’t be clicked

Things that are not considered at the time of designing UI:

· Any type of thoughts in changing the placement of the button or element.

· Addition of new functionality or feature.

· Addition/deletion of content

Other important things:

· Target audience psychology,

· Formation of habit with colors

· Product aesthetics

· Image semantics

· Driving user intent like importance and urge, etc.

What is the difference between UI and UX design?

Both UI and UX are crucial to a product and work closely together. But despite the professional relationship between the two, the roles of the two are quite different.

Let’s consider an example of the human body. If you imagine a product as the human body, bones representing the code that provides its structure. The organs can be taken as UX design, which measures and optimizes against input to support life. And UI design represents the cosmetics of the body, it senses, reactions and presentations.

It is crucial to understand that UX and UI go hand-in-hand and you can’t have one without the other. However, one need not have UI design skills to become a UX designer and vice versa.

The main difference between UI and UX is UI is all about the product’s interface look and function, whereas UX is about the overall feel of the experience.

Here is what separates UI and UX designer from their roles:

Different focus:

UI and UX designers have a different use for prototyping. For UI designers, the prototype should be a hi-fi model, however, for UX designers care more about logic and more them fidelity is an afterthought. In simple language, when you are going to meet customers, show them the work of UI designer, but, when you are going to meet the programmers, show them the prototype created by UX designer. UI designers pay more attention to the frontend, while UX designers focus on the backend.

The colors they use:

UI designers design prototypes in full color. On the other hand, UX designers generally use only three colors i.e. black, white and gray in prototype design.

The tools they use:

There are many differences in the roles between UI and UX designers, and hence the tools they use are quite different. For UI designers, designing images is of prime importance. Hence, they generally use tools like Flinto, Principle and InVision.

UX designers employ wireframe as it not only saves time but also makes designing more efficient. There are lots of qualified prototyping tools such as Mockplus.

UX is not UI

UX design includes interaction design, user testing, and wireframing/prototyping, whereas UI design includes interaction design and visual design.

It is important to note here that both UI and UX design includes interaction design.

These points will make the difference between UI and UX more clear:

• UX is not UI, however, the two complement each other.
• UI makes interface beautiful, whereas UX makes interfaces useful
• UX design precedes UI design
• UI makes emotional connection whereas User experience helps in the accomplishment of goals.
• UX design occurs throughout products, interfaces and services, whereas UI is only limited to interfaces.

Summing up

UX is mostly seen as a global term that defines the user’s feelings and comfort when working with an application. On the other hand, UI is the part of UX that enables users to interact with a product and make the first impression. It is important to understand here designing a beautiful app is not enough to guarantee higher conversion rates and low bounce rates; on the contrary, UX addresses these concerns as well as various other factors that influence user loyalty.

Originally published at https://graffersid.com on February 24, 2020.