Those, who have opted IT as their work of interest, have surely overheard people discussing the amazing ‘UX’ of an App or terrible ‘UI’ of a website. Yes, I am one of them. Is it something very uncommon? Do these two work closely together?
The answer to the second question may be Yes but certainly a big NO for the former one. Keep on reading if you are planning to be a UI UX designer and want to discover more about this domain.
For decades, these two acronyms have been an inseparable part of product or service development life-cycle and often called as UI and UX design. UI design stands for User Interface design, whereas UX design refers to User Experience. Both the components are too decisive for a product and go along with each other. But despite sharing a strong professional relationship, both play different roles, related to different stages of the whole process. While UX designing goes deep into analytics and technicalities, UI design majorly deals with colors and graphic design. However, this doesn’t describe the complexity of their responsibilities.
The below example will make this UI UX design concept more clear:
Think of a human body as a product, then the bones signify the code which creates structure; organs are the UX design, responsible for performing life functions and UI design acts as the cosmetics, describing its appearance, responses, etc.
What is UI Design?
Comparing to the history of UX, UI design is a field that has existed longer and is more practiced. Which has resulted in numerous misconceptions and half-baked truths? While User Experience focuses on ensuring the effective and efficient use of the product, User Interface design assists it in doing so. It takes care of the feel, appearance as well as interactivity of the product. The look of your product and how it is presented is very crucial. So, in a way, UI design refers to the visual part of the product.
We can further bifurcate the responsibilities of UI in:
Interactivity & Responsiveness -
- UI Prototyping
- Animation and Interactivity
- Adaptation to all Screen Sizes
- Implementation
Look & Feel -
- Customer Analysis
- Design Research
- Branding and Graphic Development
- User Guides/Storyline
Being an interactive and visual designer, UI plays a key role in any digital interface and reason for customers to trust your brand.
What is UX Design?
Designing a product with the ‘human-first’ approach is, in other words, termed as User Experience design. UX design is an exercise of development and enhancement of the best possible communication between the customer and all aspects of the organization. The primary goal of a UX design is to build a product that is not only effective and profitable but also provides a viable and remarkable user experience. The USP of any product is its user experience and UX design tries every possible approach to make the product best in terms of user-friendliness.
Below listed are some responsibilities that shed light upon the significant role of UX design:
Planning and Inputs -
- Competitor Research
- Customer Research
- Product Planning
- Content Creation
Wireframing and Prototyping -
- Wireframing
- Prototyping
- Testing
- Development Planning
Execution and Analytics -
- Coordination with UI Designer
- Coordination with Developer
- Estimating Targets and Integration
- Analysis
UX design makes the product useful, while UI design makes eye-catching and beautiful. UI and UX go hand in hand. A nicely designed UI can create a flawless UX that designer has foreseen and the user remembers forever.