Introduction
The difference between UI and UX Design, what exactly is it? They both sure do sound the same, but are they really different?
Let’s get things straight.
As mentioned earlier, both concepts seem to be very similar due to their names.
You may think – what’s the difference between them? To know that first of all we must know what UX Designs and UI Designs are. Although their professional similarities are almost the same, they have different roles.
What is UX Design?
It is a User Experience Design that designs products both in virtual and physical ways.
Don Norman is the first person to coin the term User Experience during the late 1990s.
UX is the interaction between the user and a product or service. This is the process of developing the interaction between the facets of a company and the user.
UX Design is a non-digital practice but used and defined by the industries digitally. It’s all about the feel of the experience.
What is UI Design?
UI Design is all about the look, feel, presentation, and interactivity of a product. UI Design is strictly based only on digital means. To exactly define what UI Design is, everything we use has some connection with User Interface Design.
For example – the touchscreen in your smartphones or the touchpad you use to select a cup of coffee in a shop, book a train ticket, and other similar things we do.
A few other examples are – websites, apps where it’s all about the feel, the look, and the interactivity of the product. It should be very carefully handled.
Usually, a UI Designer considers things like the icons and buttons, spacing, imagery, responsive design, typography, and color schemes.
Difference between UX and UI Design – The Obvious Ones
UX and UI are the most confusing terms. Most frequently people take its meaning interchangeably. But both go hand in hand. UX Design deals all with the overall feel of the experience, while UI Design is about the product’s interface look and function.
A UX Designer should have in mind the user’s entire journey to solve the problem. Their works are mainly based on the problems that arise from the user’s point of view. They create wireframes that are believed to be bare-bone blueprints for the product.
The UI Designer gives life to the designs that are built by UX Designers into the visual designs and makes them digital. UI Designers make the entire journey possible.
Differences Between the UX and UI Design – More Specific
- UI deals with the interaction between the end-user and the products, while UX design deals with the functionality and the purpose of the design
- UX has direct communication with the users and it can make changes with the users’ comfort and correct mistakes easily. However, UI has no connection with the users directly; they must have a continuous watch on the users to understand their needs and satisfaction.
- UX Design carries out the whole project development and ideation. UI offers a complete finished product to the users.
- The differences in the colors they use for designing usually UI Designers use all types of colors while UX Designers use only 3 main colors white, gray, and black. This is because when a UI Designer creates a navigation bar, he wants it to be colorful to attract users. But UI Designers will not have many tough jobs adding colors just note left would do so.
- The tools used by UI and UX Designers: For UI designers, designing an image is of primary importance, so they use tools like Flinto and Principle. While the UX designers use wireframes which makes it simpler to provide the designs. And tools like Mockplus, Balsamiq, Axure are helpful for UX Designers.
What tells you that UI is not UX?
- Interfaces are made beautiful by UI while useful by UX.
- They are a complement to each other
- UX Design is the primary design that precedes the UI Design which finally gives a complete design.
- UX is made to achieve goals whereas UI is to connect with the users’ emotions, satisfaction, and thoughts.
- UI is connected to the interface while UX is everything of the design.UI Designer’s key responsibilities: It’s all about the design’s look, feel, the work’s responsiveness, and interactivity of the product with the user. And the responsibility of making the website intuitive.
Key Responsibilities – UX and UI Designers
UI needs critical thinking and UX needs convergent thinking. However, both need creativity. Only the most creative minds can interpret the difficulties faced by users. Creativity will further enhance the usability of an application.
The UX and UI departments have to work together to keep each other informed about the project’s progress and come out with innovations that benefit the users.
Conclusion
I hope you understood the difference between Ui and UX Design, in short here is what you have to remember – UI and UX are interlinked to each other and they work best together.
One can’t exist without the other, but at the same time, both terms can never be interchangeably used.