How To Effectively Lead Product Designers When You Are Not One (Part 1)

Part 1: The finer differences between UX and UI

You are a product owner who is in charge developing a new product. You think the product would disrupt the market and effectively solve your users’ core problems. Your client relies on you to get the basics right: the product roadmap, meeting user expectations, understanding both the market and your target base, design, development, go-to market, and whatnot.

As the product owner, you are indeed responsible for a gamut of things, design being the center of them. Design is your first leeway towards a successful development phase. Now, design might not be your strongest suit. You may come from a business background or development background. Either way, it is imperative to understand the basics of product design in order to develop a useful and aesthetic product that will win in the market.

This is the first post in a series of articles that will help non-designers to effectively lead product designers.

I start this off with explaining the most basic differences in design terminologies that confuse the best of leaders:

The finer differences between user experience and user interface

The terms user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) are oftentimes used interchangeably because there is a lot of overlap between them. However, it is also important to realise that they are two distinct areas of expertise, and confusion between them may lead to improper hiring and career choices.

The term UI came into its first use when Xerox introduced the first personal computer in 1981. Before that, people needed to use programming language to get a computer to do what they needed. Xerox Star was the first to use windows, icons, drop-down menus, checkboxes, etc., which essentially constitute UI.

UX was first coined by Don Norman in the early 1990s when he was part of the Advanced Technology Group at Apple. He wanted a term to cover all aspects of a person’s experience with a system, which essentially became known as user experience.

Here is a breakdown of differences between UX and UI.

UX is “Internal.” UI is “External.”

UX is the visceral feeling a user experiences while interacting with every aspect of a product or service. It is concerned with the overall impression that a user takes away from his/her interaction with the product and the company.

UI is the external touchpoints in a product that a user interacts with to fulfil their need. It only deals with the tangible elements of the product, the ones that you can look at, touch and hear.

UX is Function. UI is Form.

UX design requires you to map out the entire user journey to ensure functionality and usefulness. It mostly deals with the function of a product, whereas UI deals with the form.

UI design requires you to make the the journey visually pleasing and interactively seamless.

A good way to understand this is that something that is easy to use but looks terrible has good UX but bad UI. Something that looks good but is difficult to use or doesn’t satisfy your need has good UI but bad UX.

UX First; UI Later

UX is usually the first step in the development of a product. UX designers carry out all the research needed to validate or invalidate the core ideas of a product, and then lay down the conceptual foundation on which UI designers build tangible elements later on.

Without the work done on the UX, there will not be any direction for the UI. Simply put, UI is a means to achieve the goals set out by UX.

UX is People-Oriented. UI is Technology-Oriented.

UX needs you to understand people and put yourself into the user’s shoes. UX is highly analytical and rooted in psychology and cognitive behaviour. It is more people oriented.

UI needs you to be proficient in using colors, typography, animation and coding. It is highly creative and rooted in graphic design and visual communication. It is more technology oriented.

UX is Business-Centered. UI is Product-Centered.

A UX designer needs to be constantly aware of business goals. In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company’s offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.

A UI designer needs to be only aware of the product goals, about visual design and information design around screens which help a user navigate the product effectively.

For example, a UX designer of a video website also needs to plan for how to manage the memory space needed to host all the videos, whereas a UI designer only needs to worry about how the page looks and works.

In Short,

UX and UI are both important for the success of a product. One being good without the other usually leads to failure. While working in a company, it might all boil down to division of labour. Whether you are an employer or an employee, a combination of skills involved in UX and UI may be the need of the hour. Understanding the scope of each will help you communicate and work efficiently towards your goal.

Below is a comprehensive infographic on the finer differences between UX and UI:

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Written and edited by Radhika Madhavan at High Peak Software.