UI & UX: What’s The Difference?
by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp.com — software documentation tool
Web designers often confuse these two terms: UI design and UX design. Let’s find out what do they mean and what’s the difference between them.
“UI” stands for “User interface”. Traditionally, that means the actual buttons, text, and pixels that appear on the screen. So the UI designer would be responsible for everything about how a web site or application appears in the interface — this would include visuals (e.g. “Are the buttons pink or blue?” “Do they have gradients or are they flat?”) as well as overall architecture of the page (e.g. “We should put the Sign Up button at the top of the screen because it’s the most important thing”).[Marci Ikeler’s answer on Quora]
User Interface Design = Visual Design + Interaction Design
“UX” stands for “User experience”. This is a much broader and higher-level discipline than UI, because it includes not just the interface, but also all the systems and interactions that support it. For example, the UX designer should care about what happens when a frustrated user calls the help desk as well as how pixels appear on the screen. [Marci Ikeler’s answer on Quora]
As we can see from this scheme by Dan Saffer, UX is a broader term which includes UI.
UX makes interfaces useful
UI makes interfaces beautiful
If we take a look at UX and UI from another perspective, we may consider UI as the end result of effective UX. If you have good UI design, it is a direct result of the research and thoughtfulness you have placed within the UX process.
TL;DR
I hope you got a clearer understanding of how UX and UI are different from each other.
Have a nice day!
Bradley Nice,
Content Manager at ClickHelp.com — best online documentation tool for SaaS vendors
