UX vs. UI: What's the Difference?

 

What’s UI?

A UI designer’s responsibilities are more cosmetic than a UX designer’s -- a UI designer is responsible for the presentation of a product. But that doesn’t mean a UI designer just picks some pictures and a logo and calls it a day.

A UI designer is responsible for how everything on a page aligns in relation to each other. The visual elements you see on a page, such as buttons and icons, and the interactivity of a product, falls on the UI designer.

Have you ever visited a website and thought, “Wow, this company is really cool and has a great product, but what really sold me was their website’s intuitive and sleek layout?”

That’s largely due to their UI designer.

How do UX and UI work together?

Now that we’ve explored UX and UI separately, let’s see how they function collaboratively.

Let’s say your company wants to develop a running app, so your CEO hires a UX designer. The UX designer is first going to do some research into competitor’s apps and your user’s pain points.

With this information, she will decide the core features of the app (“must monitor heart rate and mileage”), and explore user personas in-depth to create a site map and initial prototype.

From there, a UX designer will create wireframes, test and refine them, and convert those wireframes into mockups. Then, the UX designer will conduct research and refine the product for the market. Throughout all stages, the UX designer is focused on the structure and value of the product and how that product is or isn’t meeting user’s needs.

Towards the end of development, a UI designer will then take control over the app’s appearance, including on-screen forms, images, buttons, links, and icons.

As you can see, the primary difference between UX and UI is goals: a UX designer is focused on the users’ experience, including anything that might motivate or frustrate them, why they would or wouldn’t enjoy the product, and what the product needs to include to delight the user.

A UI designer is given those constraints -- she’s told what the app must include and exclude, and how it’s going to work. Using those constraints as a guideline, she works on the design and interactivity to ensure the user understands the product and enjoys the presentation of it.

You can’t create an exceptional product without both UX and UI. Without a UX designer, YouTube would appear beautiful and appealing but completely unusable. And, without a UI designer, YouTube would be a great idea in theory but would be difficult and confusing to navigate on the screen

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