Why You Need A UI/UX Designer Before The Development Of A Product

Before we explore some of the reasons behind the need for a UI/UX designer before the development of a product, we need to know who a UI and UX designer is.

Who is a UI (user interface) designer?🎨

A UI designer is a person who designs the visual look of a digital product’s interface. He/she is responsible for designing interfaces (these could be apps, websites, wrist watches e.t.c) with a focus on the look, style, and interactivity.

The job of a UI Designer is to ensure a product interface is beautiful and intuitive (meaning a person can navigate easily through it without having to think too much about what they’re doing).

The look of your most loved app/website is the duty of a user interface designer to handle it... From colors to typography, buttons, icons, layouts... everything you see there.

So basically a UI Designer is a person responsible for the aesthetic of a digital product

What about a UX (user experience) designer?🔍👨‍👧‍👧

UX designer is a person who ensures that users have a pleasant experience as they interact with a product. They are responsible for improving user satisfaction.

UX designers enhance user satisfaction by improving the usability and accessibility of a product, while UI designers enhance user satisfaction by making the product’s interface look and feel enjoyable for the user.

A UX Designer makes products easy to use and finds optimal experience for users as they interact with a product.

So now we know who these guys are, let’s see the reasons why we need them before we develop that product.

Reasons why we need a UI/UX Designer before product development

1. UI/UX Designers streams down development cost💸: The unnecessary cost that would likely occur in the future can be seen and avoided at an early stage before a product is being developed. A UI/UX Designer helps in creating prototypes of the product and sends it to potential users of that product for testing to see if it satisfies their needs before it’s being developed, this helps in keeping a project within budget. Imagine a situation whereby a product is being developed all of a sudden and then it fails to satisfy potential user's needs, that will cost the developer time, effort, and many more and also to the stakeholders more money because he/she has to pay to develop the product again. You could imagine continuing this process over and over again… That’s expensive😤.“If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.” — Dr. Ralf Speth
2. UI/UX Designers focus on the users of the product👪: They ensure that users are happy, they try as much as possible to optimize the experience users have as they interact with the product. You can imagine a product where users get frustrated and annoyed while they use it they won’t come back to use that product because of the experience they had with it, and what this implies is that it will affect the business because you tend to lose customers. But with the help of a UI/UX designer, he/she ensures that users are satisfied with the experience they will have with the product. A satisfied user will return to use the product but a frustrated one will not. “People ignore designs that ignore people" — Frank Chimero.
3. UI/UX Designers guides software developers👨🏼‍💻: With the help of a UI/UX designer Development of the product becomes easier for software developers because they lay down guidelines for the product such as fonts, colors, layout, measurements, interactions, flows e.t.c. so developers don’t have to spend time on the visualization of the product instead they focus mainly on the functionality and logic of the product and this makes development faster. At some point, a UI/UX designer takes charge of the project management.
4. UI/UX Designers helps to increase your revenue and customers loyalty💵: If the users of a product are being satisfied, they stick to the product and as well recommend the product for others to use and this will increase your business revenue because the more the users of the product, the more revenue you get. This can only happen when the users gain trust in your product. So a UI/UX designer has to ensure users gain trust in your product. “Good design is the most important way to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.” — Yun Jong Yong.

They are many more reasons why we need UI/UX designers before the development of a product, these are just a few. So in conclusion, we can say a UI/UX designer is an architect of a product just like when you want to build a house, you’ll need an architect who draws the blueprint of the building, and this guides the builders on how they should go about building the house same goes here with UI/UX designers and digital products. Well, with this I hope you’ve been able to get some reasons why you need that UI/UX designer before you develop that product of yours.

Thank you for reading till the end! 😃 Feel free to reach out to me for any questions, collaborations or just to say Hi!