Since the concept of user experience was born, there has been an increasing evolution in the workforce. People who work in the industry find there are two connected and most often confused concepts: UI design and UX design. The term UI stands for user interface, and the term UX stands for user experience. In this post let’s discuss the difference between UI design and UX design.
To begin with, let’s look at the key responsibilities of each position per the job descriptions on Workable.
UI Designer Responsibilities
- Executing all visual design stages from concept to final hand-off to engineering
- Conceptualizing original ideas that bring simplicity and user-friendliness to complex design roadblocks
- Collaborating with product management and engineering to define and implement innovative solutions for the product direction, visuals, and experience
UX Designer Responsibilities
- Conducting user research and testing
- Developing wireframes and task flows based on user needs
- Collaborating with Designers and Developers to create user-friendly software
Regardless of the definition of each term, the major focus of each role emphasizes on different areas. Here are three key differences between UI design and UX design.
UI makes a website beautiful, UX makes a website user flow smooth
UI Designers control how the website interface will look like. All the interface visual work falls to UI Designers, such as the shape of buttons, the font of texts, and the color schemes. UX Designers control how users interact with the website. The interaction experience is the major concern of UX Designers, for instance, how easy or difficult it is to find an element on the web page, is the navigation making logical sense, or how smooth or confusing it is using the website.
UI assists to elicit positive emotions, UX assists to accomplish tasks
People visit a website with a goal or a task in mind. Either to make purchases or look for information, website visitors looking to achieve their tasks. The UX side aims to help users easily, efficiently, and successfully achieve their goals without struggling during the entire experience. While the website provides desired functionalities, the UI side is trying to get users’ attention and attract users by its unique design and creative content.
UI only focuses on the interface, UX bridges the gap between interface and engineering
UI Designers are graphic designers. Their goal is to make the website look beautiful and match the theme. UX Designers work on the interface, the product, and the services. One of the most important roles of UX Designers is to collaborate with UI Designers and Web Developers to create a user-friendly interface. With the UX prototyping software, UX Designers are able to provide developers with detailed and approved dimensions and content of what to code and how to implement the product.
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