User Experience (UX) is increasingly popular in many fields, not only those related to marketing. It is still often confused with another related concept, namely User Interface (UI for short). Why is it so and how do they differ from each other?
What is UX and UX Design?
UX is the impression that a user gets when getting acquainted with our product. It is also a set of actions that influence and bring closer the best-designed product in terms of experience; its basis should be usability combined with functionality. In order to properly create a product, we implement specific tasks that make up user experience design (UX Design).
What does UX consist of?
- Visual design - it aims to improve the aesthetics and usability of a design/product using appropriate images, typography, space, layout, and color. One of the most important pillars of UX
- Information architecture - in short, it is the creation of effective communication between a product and its recipient. Also one of the key elements of the experience design process
- Interaction design - or IxD, designing functional systems that are part of the software, services, or processes in organizations. Equally important in the context of digital products
- Human-computer interaction - designing user interfaces combined with research and describing phenomena related to the use of computer systems by people
- Content - a creation of quality content that is supposed to keep the user's attention on a given product
- Industrial design - adapting a product to mass production.
- Software architecture - the process of organizing a given product-centered system
- Navigation - part of Visual Design, referring to creating the whole product navigation
- Interface - this element is also related to Visual Design, you will learn more about it later in this article
UX is based on creating products that are user-friendly, meaningful, functional, and intuitive. This is achieved through the design of the entire product acquisition and integration process, including aspects of branding, design, usability, and function.
The product has to evoke positive emotions, attract customers with its uniqueness, and allow groups of dedicated and loyal users to form around it.
A specialist who works on the previously mentioned principles is a UX Designer. This is someone responsible for designing the aforementioned experiences. A large part of their work is based on independently conducted analyses. They are related to the design of physical, but also digital products.
Analyses are aimed at:
- studying the general needs of users
- analyzing the competition
- defining current product strategy
- finding out how test users feel about products in the prototype phase
- verifying the intuitiveness of a given product
Such a person should have the approach of a specialist, but also of a project manager, working in many fields simultaneously and tying the product into a final whole.
It is also important for the UX Designer to work closely with the client, combining their business expectations with the best possible user experience. Although this is usually a difficult task, it is worth striving for this combination, which will definitely boost the project’s shot at success.
What is UI and UI Design?
UI is otherwise known as user interface (which is also part of UX) assigned to software, or more generally, a product. It consists of the buttons that users click, the text they read, the images, sliders, text input fields, and all the other elements with which the user interacts. It is crucial to the proper functioning of almost all digital products.
That's why the interface design process itself, or UI Design, is an integral part of product design, and an entire industry has grown focusing only on this type of design. It's increasingly central to most businesses working in UX as well, which is why it's often put on par with it (wrongly, as UX is a much more expansive set of activities) or confused with it.
UI Design was created primarily based on the increasing complexity of interfaces dictated by the growing needs of users and businesses creating products. Although some sources downplay UI Design a bit and put it in the framework of a computer graphic designer's work, this process still consists of applying design techniques, which is a different issue. A UI Designer should be a flexible specialist, whose skills are based on graphics, but in addition to that, they should know how to design the interface itself, and then transfer it to a full-fledged product.
The duties of a UI Designer should be based on:
- creating a guiding style for a given product
- creating or selecting graphics, images, or other multimedia content
- taking care of quality visual branding
- prototyping the interface, adjusting it to requirements
- cooperating closely with a UX designer
- proposing or implementing the layout and visual hierarchy
- cooperating during implementation by the developer
Summary
The main conclusion from our article is that UX and UI are actually two different things, but UI is part of UX. UX itself is a growing field composed of many activities, and UI is one of them. In these times of further dynamic development of digital products, as well as user requirements themselves, such dominating notions will appear more and more.
However, in our opinion, UX should be prioritized when it comes to product creation. It is a much more developed field and, just like PPC or SEO, has become a separate industry, crucial for successful projects. This does not mean that UI should be ignored. On the contrary, the best solution is to take care of both aspects comprehensively, while using the services of experienced specialists.
