Geordie Kaytes
Aug 22, 2017 · 1 min read

The UX is the blueprint. It maps the technical structure, and outlines how you move from the kitchen to the bathroom.

The UI is all the pretty, sensory stuff inside. It’s the furniture, the paint colours, the fluffy pillows and the soft rugs.

I disagree with this metaphor. In a digital product, the “blueprint” is most akin to wireframes and screen flows, which are really low-fidelity UI documents. The UX is a more abstracted set of goals, tasks, thoughts, and feelings. Your UX should not necessarily prescribe a set of “screens” or other medium-specific solutions. In your metaphor, the furniture, paint, and pillows are indeed “UI”, but the reasoning behind why they are there is the UX.

Another way of thinking of it is that the UX is the description of the subjective human experience you want to create, while the UI is the digital and physical artifacts that you use to try to make that intended experience happen to a real person.

I acknowledge that “UX” has taken on the meaning of “UI wireframing and sometimes personas”, but I think this is damaging to the field. It causes companies to think they’re creating “great UX” when they’re really just cranking out screens and not thinking about the user’s subjective experience from first principles.

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    Geordie Kaytes

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    I write & talk about selling smarter using lessons from the worlds of design and technology. Host @ designthesale.com