UX can be aplyed without UI?
Nowadays there is much noise about the limits of UX/UI, where ends the UX and begins the UI, and specially a huge discussion about specializations in UX/UI, or “hybrid positions”, called UX/UI.
The fact is that is impossible to think isolated in just one aspect, even it is User Experience or User Interface. A professional specialized in UX usually has some sort of unconscious notion what is a basic UI, or the aplication of both will be impossible to construct an interface.
The point is, you have to think at the work that you are doing, and what it requires in what you must know about it, wheather you are an UX or an UI.
You don´t have to be a master in all aspects, but you have do show expertise in what people are expecting from you and the project requires.
Here, in Brazil, I started to work on digital medias, and there wasn´t especializations or terms like User Interface and User Experience, I was a webdesigner, and this at the time was new, I´m graduated in Graphic Design.
Today, unfortunally, the job of webdesigner is a profession that most people at the brazilian market, think in professionals without experience and background, and most of the time, they earn less. But I don´t care when someone call me a webdesigner instead of speacilist in UX or UI, because to me, the true is the old webdesigner was concerned about a thing of most designer aren´t: the viability of the projects, and it to me, I considered as a plus.
So, as the years pass by, working at several terms: webdesigner, product speacialist, ux consulter, I started to think as a designer thinker over the years, in talk about art direction. But you will ask me: Art Direction in UX?
Are we talking about Art in design, how it is possible?
I´m trying to lead you to a thought of art like something visual, something we see, think of it as a visual reading system of elements.
In my work, I don´t associate visual as just graphic elements, I think in that as our vision, our perspective of the thing. The act of observe, to watch, to see things several times but in different ways. You can look at the same thing over and over again, but I guarantee you, it will never be the same thing.
So, back to art direction, I think the most correct is talking in two aspects: visual and strategic, and for strategic I want to refer to goals, proposal, objectives of the project.
In another words:
UX: reflecting visually, it´s improve the watching, through the perspective of build experiences using the user behavior.
UI: reflecting visually, it´s improve the watching, through the colors, diagramations, graph elements.
Estrategy UX/UI:
Is it relevant? Is it aesthetically beautiful? Did solve my problem?
Do you noticed the strategy it´s the same but the techniques are different?
I have the proposal of writing several texts discussing about what I called visual sytem of reading (the art direction), about perspectives as semiotics, gestalt, cognition, etc, and showed the aplication in UX and UI design.
Above I insert an image with all the books that I will used to base my next texts, and I invite you, dear reader, to follow me in this journey, try to go far beyond you see and exercise your looking.
Forget for just one second the terms, and focus in what you feel, think, reflect when you are constructing visual things in your work.
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