The differences between UX and UI design

What is the difference between UX and UI design? How are they different and what do they have in common? Do you need a UX designer and a UI designer separately? Who does what? Should they be separate? How should they work together? These are questions that preoccupy many people planning to create a new website or redesign an old one.
In small businesses and start-ups, UI falls under UX. But as organizations and products grow, UX departments split into UX designers, UI designers, copywriters, UX architects, and other UX specialists.

While these roles are separate, they all focus on user-centered design and aim to create a fantastic customer experience. To do this, UX teams must work together to solve user problems within budget, product, and technical constraints. If you can bring everything together, you’ll improve the overall customer perception of the site and, of course, the conversion rate.

What is user-centered design?

User-centered design is the glue that holds UX and UI together. In order to do their jobs effectively, UX and UI designers must use a user-centered design approach.
User-centred design is the process of designing a digital product with the customer at its centre. The job of user experience (UX and UI) designers is to solve a problem that people have and adapt the product to eliminate the user’s constraints.

What is UX design?

UX design encompasses the wider user experience and how people feel when interacting with a website – including user interfaces. UX designers also focus more on navigation and visitor flow to optimize the experience of visiting a website and make it more enjoyable and user-friendly.
The tasks of a UX designer:

Site structure: navigation, user journeys
Research: user, competitor and market analysis
Testing: creating low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes
Design: wireframes, hierarchy, content layout

What is user interface (UI) design?

UI designers create the visual elements that users interact with in a digital product or website – buttons, colors, icons, typography, images, forms, and other elements and components.

In addition, user interface design deals with interactivity such as animations and micro interactions. UI design is essentially a specialized position within user interface design.
Tasks of a user interface designer:

Product aesthetics: branding, visual design
Research: design research, user analysis
Testing: creating user interface prototypes (high-fidelity prototyping)
Design: mockups, interaction design, animation, viewport layout (responsive design)

Differences between UX and UI design

As you can see from the responsibilities, UI designers focus on aesthetics and interactivity, while UX designers focus on the overall experience, structure, and navigation.
UX designers take a broad view of the web experience, while UI designers focus on what happens within individual screens.
UX designers typically dig deeper into research and look beyond the user to competitors and market analysis. UI designers also study the user while researching trends in visual design.
Here are a few key differences between UX and UI design:

UX design
User needs
UX designer: focuses on user pain points, needs and emotions.
UI designer: focuses on the user’s environment, movements and actions.
User goals
UX designer: defines the user’s problems and the goals they are trying to achieve.
UI Designer: focuses on the steps users need to take to achieve their goals.
Information Architecture
UX designer: deals with information architecture and navigation that solves user problems.
User Interface Designer: focuses on the elements and components that users will need to navigate the product.

Product testing

UX designer: tests the overall user experience and wants to know how users think and feel when using the product.
UI designer: tests how users interact with the product and asks practical questions.
Similarities between UX and UI
Both UX designers and UI designers focus on user-centered design and are guided by the principles of best user-friendliness. UX designers define users’ goals and UI designers help them achieve those goals. Both strive to optimize the user experience and solve usability problems.
It’s important to see UI and UX as one, not as two separate professions. Both are UX designers – they just focus on different tasks within UX design. If designers get one of these tasks wrong, the entire user experience fails and the product – no matter how good it is – may be doomed to failure.
Both UX and UI designers need to consider accessibility. A UX designer focuses on the usability of the product, such as layout, hierarchy, and placement, while a UI designer is concerned with the accessibility of the user interface, including colors, fonts, size, and interactions.

UX and UI in the product design process

Here is a typical product design scenario and the division of responsibilities between UX and UI.
The UX designer conducts user, market, and competitor research.
UX designers work with the product manager and stakeholders to develop ideas within product and budget constraints.

UX designers create information architecture, initial sketches, wireframes and first simple prototypes.
UX designers conduct initial testing to refine navigation and user flows.
UI designers convert wireframes into mockups using colors, icons, buttons, and typography. The UI designer adds interactivity and creates high-fidelity prototypes.
UX researchers test more advanced prototypes, send them to the UI designer for editing, and further modify them.
Design teams collaborate with engineers during design handoffs to begin the development process.
UX and UI designers will work closely together throughout the design process. UX design always precedes UI design. You cannot design a product interface without a supporting structure and architecture. The UX designer creates the foundation, while the UI designer focuses on interaction and aesthetics. To accomplish these tasks, both designers must be aware of the user’s needs to create a pleasant user experience.

UX and UI design tools

UX and UI designers typically use the same design tool, but for different tasks and goals. A UX designer will create wireframes and link each screen with basic click/tap interactions to create basic simple prototypes of the site. They will create the structure of each page and the navigation.
Once wireframing is complete, the UI designer adds color, interactivity, page transitions, animation typography, and other elements to create advanced site prototypes that are then further modified.
The goal of both UX designers and UI designers is to make the experience as user-friendly as possible. UX designers define the goals of users, and UI designers help them achieve those goals. Both the UX designer and the UI designer strive to optimize the user experience and ensure great usability and accessibility of the site.

author: TRIXIT s.r.o.

picture: https://chat.openai.com