UI and UX
What are UI and UX? Are they different or similar? Read to understand
What do UI and UX mean?
UI means user interface and UX means user experience.
User Interface or UI depends a lot on how the web design manages the users’ interaction on the website. It must include responsive display and gesture controls.
User Experience or UX means the specialization of a web design. The user experience is based on how easily the user can navigate through the website, including the loading time and the overall feel a user gets while using the website.
Both User Interface and User Experience are crucial to a product’s success and work collectively to achieve greater results. Despite the pro relationship between the two, they are quite different and have very distinct roles themselves, depending on the different aspects of a product development process and the discipline it has to follow during the whole process.
The terms UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience) are individually defined below.
What is User Interface (UI) design?
It is the process to provide a polished graphical user interface by transforming wireframes. A neat User Interface boosts a product’s usability and creates a connection between the user and the product.
Therefore, it must be understood that a User Experience is made up of multiple User Interfaces which combine to create a smooth flow to form the best product.
Defining the limits of a User Interface is way more definite than defining the same for User Experience, the main reason being its name: Interface. The effect of sequences of interfaces and lesser noticeable parts of any product experience beyond the sequence altogether make a User Experience. However, UI is solely focused and concerned about the designing of individual screens or interfaces.
Exactly where the User Experience designer’s work ends, the User Interface designer’s work starts, at the prototyping stage. The User Interface designers take the wireframes to add the visual designs, thus making them more usable, eye catchy, and fully optimized to support different screen sizes.
The different tasks of a User Interface designer are listed below:
1. The feel of the product
Design Research
Virtual Design
Branding and Graphic development
Design Systems
2. Responsiveness and Interactivity
Responsive Designs
Interactivity and Animation
Prototyping
What is User Experience (UX) design?
User Experience focuses on the entire customer journey considering user-friendliness. User Experience has a rich history; hence there is always a debate over where it begins and where it ends. User Experience generally starts with a problem that culminates and ends with a wireframe or a prototype.
Understanding the journey of the customer is the primary focus of the User Experience designer. Knowing the customer’s demands and needs helps understand the target audience, define user flow, interview interviews, and conduct user testing to reach a polished outcome.
1. Research and Strategy
Plan
User Research
Information Architecture
2. Wireframing and prototyping
Creating the user flow
Wireframing
Testing
Analysis
Why is UI/UX important?
The combination helps to shape the entire experience of a product or a website. Although two similar products may have the same result, their UI/UX shows how they are providing it. Better the UI/UX, more the traffic on the website for the product.