What is UI/UX design?
Literally, UI design refers to the interface that users face. Shortly, it is a visually revealing layout. For example, the menu, which aligns the food name and price easily, the physical strength/experience interface window of online games, and the chat window of WhatsApp are UI-like.
A good UI design is designed to allow users to use the product/site/system without stuttering based on the interface experience they have experienced when they encounter it for the first time. For example, the sign-in or sign-in buttons are usually located on the top right of the website, or the set-up buttons on the mobile app are usually found when you open the menu and look at the bottom right.
There are three sites like this. One is a search engine, one is an art portfolio and one is a software developer community site. The three sites have different personalities, but if you look closely, they have something in common.
1. There is the main logo of the site in the upper left corner.
If the main logo is hidden in the same place in the lower right corner, it will take a long time for users to recognize the site. Therefore, most websites place logos at the top, and place them left-leaning among them, considering that many people read from left to right(Arabic is from right to left). Internet users are used to the ‘logo at the top left’ experience that they instinctively check from the top left when they enter a new website. And designers instinctively deploy it.
2. There’s a search button in the upper right corner.
If we want to search on a website, we find a large search window at the top center or a small search icon at the top right. It sounds natural, but if this natural law is not followed, site users will have a hard time finding search buttons. Imagine a search button at the bottom of the site.
The word “UI design” is to design the layout that is likely to be there by conventional wisdom. Web site design, application design are mainly found, and such things as electronics displays are also included in interface design.
UX design is to design the user’s experience. The experience described here includes the feeling of opening a product, the feeling of visiting a store, the brand’s unique system, the services provided by the company, the brand’s own scent and color, and so on. It refers to all the five-sensitivity consumers feel when they encounter ‘the company’.
A typical example of this UX design is Starbucks.
Starbucks is originally a coffee shop. But no one really goes to Starbucks for coffee. I swear, Starbucks does not provide coffee, it does provide ‘stabucks atmosphere and space.’
How many times have you seen someone at Starbucks who only savor 100% coffee without laptops, tablets and major books? (Except for now, because of COVID situation) We look for coffee to relieve tiredness, but we buy coffee to get the excitement we can feel when we enter the Starbucks store, the comfort of the wooden interior, the space to do homework for a while, and the space to talk to the other person. If the store was designed to just sell coffee down without a healing space, why go to the store? The system itself that “provides space” to people can be seen as part of the UX.
Starbucks started a system called e-Frequency in Korea and Japan. If you drink a cup of coffee or two cups of coffee, you will get a lot of stickers, and if you collect a certain amount of stickers, you can exchange them with Starbucks goods. But at first, the reason I went to Starbucks was coffee, but I started to go there habitually to collect goods. In fact, e-Frequency played a significant role in generating sales. It is a design of UX, which is an event to collect stickers.
Then, is there any case where UI/UX was applied to the product design? Follow the process of changing earbuds, a product commonly seen around you, and you can see that the UI has gradually been removed to improve the UX.
There was a problem with the existing earbuds that the strings were twisted too easily, and the linguine shaped earbuds appeared to complement this. The UX is much better as the design of the string has been flattened and not twisted easily. However, it was still uncomfortable to put earbuds in and out of the mobile. It is the necklace-type Bluetooth earbuds that have emerged to improve this. It has the advantage of not getting tangled and not being plugged into a mobile. As its method is changed to Bluetooth, button/UI for pairing and power operation has also been created. However, they had to pair up one by one, and the buttons were hard to see. AirPods have been added to this once again. They removed the pairing button (UI) altogether and made the music play automatically when it was plugged into their ears.
It is a good example to prove that the more UI increases, the more uncomfortable UX becomes. The real UX design is to design a UI that doesn’t need it. In other words, for users to be easy to use, there should be no moles.
