UX and UI Design — What’s the Difference?
The terms “UX” and “UI” are often grouped together or used interchangeably, but there’s a significant difference between the two design components. The term “UX” stands for user experience, while “UI” stands for user interface. Both UX and UI are critical to the making of any sort of website, mobile app, mobile game, or any other product in technology as they contribute greatly to the end result of how a product is used.
What does a UX designer do?
Have you ever been unhappy with how an app or website works? Maybe there wasn’t a good flow between transitioning between screens on a mobile app, or the page you’ve been searching for is just too hard to find on a website. A UX designer works to make sure those things don’t happen. After all, UX design is all about what the user’s experience looks like, and making sure the user is satisfied with the product that they’re using is extremely important.
UX designers also have to ensure that the user can easily use the app for simple tasks as well. Take a shopping app, for example. Does the user have to go through multiple, lengthy pages just to add an item to their cart, or can they just simply tap a button to do so? Whether we realize it or not, UX design is almost everywhere in our daily digital lives.
What does a UI designer do?
While a UX designer creates how the product flows, a UI designer focuses on how it looks. Things like buttons, fonts, colors, graphics, animations, or other factors are to be taken into consideration in UI design. UI design is all about the user interface of a product. Specifically, they take into consideration what the user sees when they use the product. A good product made by a UI designer has a clean look and shouldn’t overwhelm the user, such as using text in a color that’s hard to read with a conflicting background color.
Additionally, UI designers also have to consider the factor of responsiveness in their designs. What does the product look like on another device with another screen size? Are there any design elements that are hidden on the screen when the user switches to another device? It’s important to ensure that a product also maintains its consistency within responsive design.
It’s clear that UX and UI go hand-in-hand for a reason. A good product needs to have the flow that’s made in UX design along with the style and look that comes from UI design. Both are necessary in order for a product to be well-received by a user. Next time you open an app or website, try thinking about the elements of UX and UI design that you can find throughout your usage!
Written by Melanie Kuo
