What is the difference between UI and UX?
In the industry, UI and UX are commonly used and you might think they are a secret language. The two are commonly confused in the field. UX refers to User Experience while UI refer to User Interface. The two elements are crucial in any product and they work closely with each other. Even with their close relationship they refer to different parts of the process and the design.
With human machine interaction, the main goal is to engineer an interface that allows easy, efficient and enjoyable operation of the machine so that it produces the desired results. The aim is to have as little input as possible and get the desired output.
User Experience (UX) expounded
User experience is abbreviated as UX. It is the area of web design where the professional works on enhancing the experience the user has with a given company, the products or their products. When speaking about a website User Experience refers to the websites content, the systems that support, structure and the design. With a great user experience the customer satisfaction levels are high and also their loyalty. Other aims of the user design are improving the quality of interaction between a company and its customers.
It also aims to make the product flows logically from one step to the next. User Experience includes the person’s perception of a system aspect like utility, efficiency and ease of use. User experience is subjective in nature, in that it is about an individual perception and their thoughts with respect to the system. User experience is very dynamic since they are constantly being modified with the changing usage circumstances.
User Experience has been defined as Designing for Emotion. It is no surprise that people will get emotional about a given design. It you extract emotions out of the website brand or the app, you end up creating an apathetic sense in your user to the brand. But if you put in emotions and sentiments in the brand you and connect with the user at a psychological level because of this you influence their mind and their mind more efficiently. Because of this the work of a User Experience designer is to understand the sites users both current and potential users, create personas, determining user stories, developing certain prototypes and carrying out user testing. Understanding the user base and the requirements of the project are always the base. A great User Experience designer will be looking for innovative and surprising solutions to given problems. There are some ingredients for the ideal User Experience they include;
- Understanding the user behavior
- Identify the elements that influence the user
- Research on behavioral trends
- Understand what ticks the mode of users
User Interface explained
It basically is the way a given product is laid out. Its main aim is to provide a system that the user can interact with a given product. The designer has to ask themselves what the user would want. At the most basic level User Interface is the series of pages and visual elements such as buttons and icons are used to interact with a given device. User interface refers to the layout, colors, images and illustrations just everything visual. It refers to the part of the website that that the user actually sees and clicks on. The User Interface is an important and powerful tool at the disposal in the quest for greater user experience.
The Interface is responsible for ensuring that the User interface communicates visually the path the User Experience designer laid out. The interface has certain elements that users have become familiar with. Because of their familiarity the designer has to try to be consistent and predictable in terms of the layout. It is important to maintain consistency in the visual elements and defining the behavior like how it should display a given error or a warning. Consistency throughout the interface is the secret to customer retention. The layout should be obvious and the user should not be left to figure it all out by themselves. Some of the interface elements include: input controls such as buttons, navigational and informational components. When it comes to designing an interface the following things have to be put in mind, simplicity, consistency and purposeful page layout.
The user Interface designers are typically responsible of creating cohesive style to guide and also ensuring the consistency design language is being applied across a product. User Interface provides a means for input which is a way for the user to manipulate the system, output to allow the system to indicate the effects of the individual users input.
The UI design is the one that is responsible for the transference of a given brand’s strengths and visual aspects to a given products interface. The User interface design can be defined as the process of guiding a specific user through a given products interface through the different elements and across the platforms. User Interface design is the digital field that includes the responsibility for cooperation and work with code or developers.
The Difference between User Interface and User Experience
- Both the User Interface and the User Experience are important in design. They inter relate but they are different even though they are constantly being confused. It might be difficult to segregate two concepts that are very closely related. The User Interface is part of the User Experience but the User Experience can exist without a User Interface. While some will say that there is no difference between the two, below are some of the major differences between the two.
- User Experience is focused on a user’s journey to solve a certain problem while the focus of the User Interface is how a given product surface looks like and functions. The User experience focuses on anything that will affect the user’s journey whether positive or negative; it also focuses on or off the screen. On the other hand user inter face will mainly focus on how the surface of the product looks and functions.
- The User Experience designer is mainly concerned with the conceptual aspects of the process while the User Interface designer is left to focus on more tangible elements. The User Experience designer has skills in research on strategy, integration design and information architecture. The User Interface designer on the other had focuses on areas such as information design, brand and motion design.
- The user interface is about the visual design and the information designs around the screens while the User Experience is about the whole experience and not only about the screen.
- The User Interface id mainly focused on the product while the User Experience on the other hand mostly focuses on the user and their journey through the product. The UI tends to be more focused on the labels the visual style and the structure. The User Experience on the other hand is the specific path through a product not just on the screen but the motivations and justifications of why the things are the way they are.
- The User Experience is the experience a user has with a given product while the User Interface are the things that the user will actually interact with and see.
- The User Experience is the given result of traversing and interacting with the User Interface.
- The user Experience can be improved by making improvements in the interface.
- When the designer is designing the user Experience they have to consider the psychological state of the given user in an effort to achieve a given task.
- The User Experience takes a much wider approach and the designer has to consider other factors other than the User Interface and the device. Some of the factors include cultural and organizational factors.
- The User Experience is how the customers interact with a given product across specific categories that are measurable both qualitatively and quantitatively such as ease of use and task completion.
- The User Experience design is a term that is used to cover a given range of processes and skills as well to shape the experience of the user when they use a digital product. Some of the processes and the skills include research, usability, information architecture and visual design.
- The User Interface is typically a combination of visual design i.e. look and the feel and the interaction design that is how it works.
- The User Interface design is the part of the product that faces the user when they look at a given site.
- User interface is the output while user Experience is the input.
- The User Interface Describes how the user view navigate and interact with a particular product that includes all the user sees and interacts with on the screen and uses a device.
It is clear that User Interface and User Experience are different concepts but they have been combined for a greater purpose so that they interest the users and convey a given message to them. The intriguing part is that the User Experience can exist and work well with a poor User Interface.
