For those who don’t know, What’s UX and UI design?

Naman Goel
Aug 22, 2017 · 5 min read

In June this year, HelloMeets organised a 4 day Bootcamp on UX designing by

— Avisek Bhattacharya, Senior Product Designer @Delhivery

— Riken Patel, Design Researcher @SocialCops and earlier with Flipkart

— Ikshat Jain, Product Designer @Delhivery

This Bootcamp is for those students and professionals who are looking to build a career in the UX industry, Software developers who build human-computer interfaces and for Entrepreneurs looking to inculcate design thinking in their startup.
**This blog will help you to understand what design is and also gives an overview of UX designing.

Let’s start with basics first.

What is design?

The design is present all around us. It is in the everyday things.

A problem comes up first and the design helps solve it.

But one must be very careful when one tries to replicate the design. For example — The trend of glass buildings comes from the west. But it is a major fail in India because we are a tropical country where the heat is too much. Glass buildings reflect the rays of the sun and thereby make it warmer here.

A basic definition of design is —

It is the arrangement of elements in a pattern meaningful to the subject, in order to solve a particular problem for the subject under certain circumstances.

For example-
a) An automobile is designed by arranging the chassis, wheels, axles, engine, steering, seats, and numerous other elements in such a pattern which make it comfortable to sit inside yet allows movement at high speeds

b) A house is designed by arranging various types of rooms in a particular fashion to ensure optimum privacy, protection, ventilation, sanitation etc.

Why do we need to design?

In this image, we see two doors one with PUSH and the other PULL. But there is no need of putting metal bars on the PUSH door as it is natural that when there are no bars we cannot PULL it.

On the other hand in this image, the Dustbins are designed in such a way so that only particular type of waste can be put into them (Green dustbin is for paper waste, therefore, it’s lid has a line like opening).

This is an example of a good design. We do not need to explain anything to the user. Looking at the design he will automatically understand what needs to be done.

Design can help in saving cost and time. Technically, it helps you to check what your product is going to look like.

What do you think is UI / UX??

User Interface(UI) and User Experience(UX)are one of the most interchangeably used terms nowadays. People who do not know about them confuse one for the other.

BUT that is not true. UI & UX are both different.
Before starting a discussion on UX, let’s clear the difference between them.

If you imagine a product as the human body, the bones represent the code which gives it structure. The organs represent the UX design: measuring and optimising against input for supporting life functions. And UI design represents the cosmetics of the body–its presentation, its senses and reactions.

Let us look at an example of a Cab Aggregator for this:

The heads under the user in the above picture represent the interface. Cab, driver, app, payment are all user interfaces.

Each interface will have an experience. Like in the case of the cab interface, Comfort, Cooling, Cleanliness will all be experiences that the user will have.

Hope the difference between UI & UX is clearer now.

For an even better understanding, you may read: 5 Big Differences Between UX And UI Design by Dawn Schlecht.

Now, let’s start UX designing with an important aspect —

3 lenses of UX Designing — Desirable. Feasible. Viable

A UX design is about creating a solution or a product suitable for user’s needs by taking “Desirability, Feasibility and Viability” into consideration.

If the design doesn’t pass through either of these lenses, then it needs to be revisited.

No matter how well you design, if there is no return on it, then it is pointless.

The Designer’s Role

The role of a designer is an amalgamation of the Business Goals, User needs/desires & Technology.

Role of a UX designer is — to be directly involved in the process to make a product useful, usable and delightful for that company’s intended target user group.

Every website is developed and designed for end-users and intends to provide not just a reservoir of information, but an experience created by the collective effect of design elements like text, colors, fonts, images, graphics and videos, etc.. The creation and development of the experience that is for the users to love or loath is called User experience or UX design and one who creates is called a UX designer.

If you liked reading this, do stay tuned for my second blog to dig deeper into the topic :)

Look forward to meeting you at one of our meet-ups. To stay updated, sign up at www.hellomeets.com

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Naman Goel

Written by

Community Builder | Building Startups Community at HelloMeets.

HelloMeets

Helping people meet over meaningful conversations

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