What is the Real Difference Between UX and UI Design?

What is the Real Difference Between UX and UI Design?

Serving as some of the most confused and misused terms in web design, UX and UI can initially appear as complex, complicated subjects. Because they go hand-in-hand, both terms are often confused for the other.  On the most basic of levels, UI Design stands for User Interface Design while UX Design refers to User Experience Design. While their roles are quite different, UX and UI are dependent on each other as they work together to provide a great product experience.  By understanding what they truly are, you can improve both the design and functionality of your website; knowledge of both of these elements is crucial to creating a successful product that draws viewers in.

UX: The Foundation to Customer Satisfaction

Essentially, User experience design (UX Design) is the process of enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty by improving the usability between customers and your product. Basically, UX Design is human-first as it ensures that your product is intuitive and possesses easy-to-use features. Don Norman, who invented the phrase, describes it as, “User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.” UX Design can be used to improve the development of digital products as it provides a process to rework their wireframing, prototyping, content, strategy, and even execution. Overall, UX Design is the complete process of developing and improving interactions between customers and your company’s products. In short, UX Design is primarily concerned with conceptual elements of design.

UI: More than Graphic Design

UI Design is commonly understood as being similar to graphic design with several added responsibilities. Where UX Design ensures that customers are satisfied, UI Design focuses on optimizing a product through revamping the presentation, look, and feel of your product. UI Design encompasses aspects of branding and graphic design along with front-end development. The overarching goal of UI Design is to craft an attractive product that guides users. UI Design is concerned with elements of website experiences like interactivity, animation, adaption, branding development, and even storylines. All in all, UI Design is a process of visually refining a product’s interface to enhance and improve a user’s experience.

UX and UI: How do They Work Together?

UX and UI work together to help create a product that is both visually stunning and easy to use. UX provides the framework, while UI heightens and fine tunes the overall design. While UX is the internal experience, UI is the tangible buttons, icons, screens, and pages that you click through. Both are crucial in crafting a pleasurable experience for potential customers.

Without a firm grasp, it is extremely easy for designers to confuse these terms and disregard elements of UX and UI, losing potential customers along the way. However, by completely understanding the differences between UX and UI, you can begin crafting processes that will enable you to create a website which is both eye-catching and intuitive.