If you are a person who loves to study and do research on web design then you must notify the comparison of “UI vs UX” or which one of them is better or more important.

If you are new to this industry and wonder the same question, let us explain everything in this very article. But first, let’s go through some basic knowledge regarding UI and UX design (UI vs UX).

The Definition of UI Design

1. What Is UI?

Everything started in the 80s when computer scientists from Xerox PARC created the graphical user interface (or GUI). Thanks to this invention, end-users could interact with elements like icons, buttons, menus, etc. directly instead of using code to `communicate` with the machine.

As time passed by, personal computers became popular but the thing is, if it was difficult to use a computer, people would not buy it. Therefore, computer manufacturing companies had to design interfaces that everyone could handle. As a result, UI design became a thing.

In short, UI is the process to create everything related to the interfaces of a web app or a mobile app such as text, images, buttons, CTA, etc. And a UI designer will focus on enhancing the look of the product.

FURTHER READING:

1. 14 Main UI UX Design Terms

2. Top 7 Essential UI Design Principles for Newbies

3. 3 Essential UI Mistakes That You Should Avoid

3. 6 Arguments in Favor of a Career in UX/UI Design

2. How Does UI Design Work?

UI design, in full, means user interface design. It is a complement to user experience and plays a critical role in product design and development. The user interface is mainly a graphic design of the product, application, or website. It can be anything from the textual content, imagery, buttons, etc.

User interface design determines how the product will look like. It encompasses color determination, the font used in the text, and button sizes and shapes. UI designers aim to make an application or website as visually attractive as possible. The more stimulating it looks, the higher the user interactions.

UI design has evolved over the years and is now different in various aspects. The system preferences and customer expectations have changed, making the UI designer’s role different. As a UI designer, you work on voice, light, and gesture, which are more screenless aspects of an interface.

Consequently, there is a growing need for UI designers globally. With technology advancing from applications and websites to wearable technology and IoT, UI designers have limitless opportunities. Companies want to make their products for all backgrounds, ages, and technical capabilities.

Recommended reading: Top 5 Best UX UI Design Companies

The Definition of UX Design

1. What is UX?

User Experience (UX) design is the process of creating digital products (including web apps, mobile apps, software, etc.) that are able to give users seamless experiences when using it. This process of designing will provide effective functions, easy-to-use features, and fun moments to interact with.

Furthermore, UX designers have to make sure that users will find pleasure, amusement, and a good experience in what they design.

Some UX designers from Oxford Journal Interacting with Computer have stated that: “The goal of UX design in business is to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty through the utility, ease of use, and pleasure provided in the interaction with a product.

However, many experts agree that there is no uniform standard to define good user experience, instead, it should meet users’ needs in a specific context when they are using your websites, apps, etc.

By the way, here are some questions a UX designer should address to make sure their products are great enough in terms of user experience.

Is the experience smooth and intuitive enough to use?
Do the navigation and its categories feel logical?
How will the user feel once they use the product?
Are these actions simple and useful to perform and carry out?

2. How Does UX Design Work?

As mentioned above, UX stands for user experience. It mainly focuses on the user’s interaction with a product or service and a company. The experience that users get when interacting with different business aspects relies on the UX design undertaken early when developing the product.

UX vs UI Design 1 — *Image from Pixabay*

Ignoring UX when designing a product or service can be detrimental. A UX designer’s role is to determine the features that users would like you to include in the product. The more you meet their needs, the more they will interact with the business and purchase the product.

There’s more to UX design than sitting and deciding what would please your customers. It requires more coordination and consultation, especially with prospective users. When designing UX, you rely on previous user data from an application, website, or other product.

The designer should focus majorly on generating emotional reactions from users. The more delighted the user is, the better for the product and business. In product creation, UX design comes in first before you, as a developer, can think about UI design.

Recommended reading: The 6 Factors to Choose a UI UX Design Company

Why Are Things like “UI vs UX” Not Logical?

Nowadays, it seems the comparison between UI and UX is an endless discussion among many design bloggers. Needless to say that they are trying their best to prove UI or UX is better and more important. And sometimes, this topic implies that UX is more crucial than the other.

It sounds fair enough. However, if you really know what both terms indicate then you must realize that this battle is meaningless and is like comparing apples to oranges. Nevertheless, in case you are new to this, here are some explanations.

How about beginning with the argument that these two are equally important? Let’s take 2 simple examples to prove this one.

1. The first reason

The first scenario is that you design a website that has a nice UI but its UX does not serve the users well enough. In this case, visitors don’t know how to use the product and leave it really fast. As a result, this increases the bounce rate and decreases the chance of purchasing products or services from visitors.

The second one happens when your site’s UX flow is seamless but the UI is a pain in the neck. To be honest, who can bear to look through that kind of site?

So both cases won’t satisfy your user as the site will be a disaster if one factor is executed poorly like this:

2. Secondly

Comparing means these two can work without each other but again, this appears to be really wrong. Obviously, a website cannot exist without UX and UI factors. Just imagine when a button in your UI design moves to another position, this instantly affects the experience.

That argument leads to another idea that UI is a part of UX that contributes to enhancing and improving the whole user experience picture with layouts, text, images, etc. So let’s end this right now because they are non-comparable things.

If you are a trend observer, you will easily notice that UI design trends and technologies are developed with the purpose of making UX better, easier, and more intuitive. In other words, we are getting UI back to its root.

Let’s take an example from User Testing, just imagine, if a movie has good cinematography (or UI) but ticket buyers find them boring or lame (bad experience) then it will not be considered a good one. Easy, right?

FURTHER READING:

1. Top 11 Free Stock Photo Websites

2. 7 Best Free Website Icons You Should Bookmark

3. Designers Should Know How to Code?

4. 5 Types of Logos That Kicks Ass

5. How to Organize Design Files That Help to Save Time?

The Differences Between UI Designers a UX Designers

Now you knew that “UI vs UX” is not a thing, but in fact, they are different in various ways which are:

1. Goals

UX designers’ goals:

Make the interfaces useful
Help users accomplish goals easier
Focus on users and their journey

UI designers’ goal:

Make the interfaces aesthetic
Help bond emotions from users
Care for the product

2. Responsibilities

Product research:

Thanks to this stage, UX designers can build a strong base for the whole process. At the same time, they draft initial concepts, ideas, and user flows of the web or app. This is also the step where designers gather data and information to get rid of any assumptions and come to more evidence-based decisions. Conduct personas and scenarios: personas will help us understand the target users and what they want and expect while using the app or website.

Besides, we can find out how users feel about the product.
This way, we can get to know their expectations, potential risks, and issues. Furthermore, a persona can guide your review, both when you are in the designing stage or when the product is launched.

On the one hand, a scenario will describe personas’ daily activities, and how your website or app works in a user’s life. Thanks to that, designers will get the explanations and context for why a user doing their activities. On the other hand, scenarios can be used in the usability testing step.

The Design:

First, UX designers structure a product’s content and scenarios. After that, it’s time to create information architecture. The next step is to draft wireframes. If you have no idea what a wireframe is then you can see wireframes as mockups for your website/app. You will position graphic elements (icons, buttons, CTA, texts, etc.) on the wireframe.

Prototype:

The purpose of this task is to prepare a draft version. Designers and other team members will try “touching” the design. Then, they can point out and correct existing errors and inconsistencies.

UI designers’ responsibilities:

About the Design:

Best design screens, and layouts, put visual patterns and design elements together logically and creatively.
Design responsive interfaces.
The design or choose fitting design elements.
Build the interactivity of those design elements.

about ui ux design — *Designveloper’s Walrus app.*

Collaborate:

You, as a UI designer, should study and do research on the product’s business in order to know their client and end-users expectations as well as the industry’s current trends and best practices. Along with that, UI designers need to work with UI designers to come up with personas and discuss with them the user flows.

And finally, when the design stage is all done, a UI designer will deliver their work to developers, and support them if there are errors or bugs related to interface design and the product’s visual.

3. Skills

UX designers’ skills:

UX Research
Information Architecture
Wireframing and prototyping
UX writing
User empathy
Interact design
Analytics
Coding
UX design software
Critical thinking

UI designers’ skills:

UI research
Understanding Of UI Design Principles
Mobile/Responsive Designs
Content development
Communication
Creative thinking

However, UI designers and their UX counterparts should embrace each other’s basic knowledge to work more effectively.

UX and UI Designs Work Together

We already mentioned what the dichotomy of UX vs UI really is, and how difficult it is to separate UX from UI design. For a company to sell its product, both designs have to be on their best to enhance user interaction. Therefore, you need high-quality tools to get the work done. Some of the best laptops for designers can help you create seamless user-experience platforms when designing your site.

A business that’s developing an application, for instance, just hit the mark on both aspects for the best outcome. Starting with UX design, the business should interact with customers on features they’d like to see. Then, they should aim at making every suggestion available to the UI designer.

The UI designer should focus on putting the features in their rightful places. They should use the best color theme and use a clear font that all users can see clearly. Besides, they should label the buttons users need to click on to access services or products properly.

In general, the UI design team makes the application look enticing to the users’ eye. They make it attractive with imagery, animations, and short videos that describe their product or service. With all that, you’re more likely to attract a big audience to your company.

Which Is Better Paid, UX or UI?

On average you’ll find that UI and UX jobs have similar salary ranges across startups and minor tech industries. You’ll find however that in tech industries outside the web and mobile fields. There’re more and richer opportunities for UI designers, as the field is not only more established but has a more direct, business-driven application.

However, it is possible to find both user experience and user interface jobs across the following range of value in central Europe.

1. Annual

Junior Level Salary €28k – €33k
Mid Level Salary €38k – €45k
Senior Level Salary €50k – €80k

2. Hourly

Junior Freelancer €30 – €50
Mid Level Freelancer €50 – €75
Senior Level Consultant €75 – €100

UX and UI Designers Have Different Roles

(UI vs UX) – As the nature of UX and UI are different, designers in each profession do different tasks in their daily work.

1. UX designers at work

UX designers focus on creating a product’s structure, flow, and functionality. First and foremost, they work closely with marketers, business analysts, and product teams to understand user needs.

After defining the target audience and their goals, UX designers analyze market data, compare benchmarks, and conduct user testing and competitor analysis to create solutions that enhance the user experience at every touchpoint.

2. UI designers at work

Together with UX designers, and UI designers – UI vs UX discuss the structure and look of a project. Following the visual identity, style guides, and UI kits, UI designers create high-fidelity layouts with responsive guidelines, and then define animations and transitions.

To help developers understand the project, UI designers create comprehensive style and reference guides. As UX designers tend to be in charge of the overall outcome of the project. They’ll closely coordinate with and supervise the work of UI designers and developers to make sure the final products are exactly what their audience needs.

What Do UI and UX Stand For?

If you’ve ever asked yourself, what is the difference between UX and UI or UI vs UX? Then you’ve come to the right place. Let’s get down to what’s what. To begin with, UX design refers to user experience design.

UI design, on the other hand, refers to user interface design. It’s important for both your UI design and your UX design to coincide with one another, but they achieve this by focusing on different parts of the process and design discipline.

UI vs UX: What to Focus On More in 2022

Both UI and UX are vital to the success of each other, despite involving different skill sets. You cannot boast of having a beautifully designed application or website that is difficult for users to navigate. That can be costly, and you may not eventually realize your objective or make any revenue from it.

UX vs UI Design 3 — *Image from Pixabay*

Also, you can have an easy-to-navigate product, but that doesn’t, in any way, compensate for poor UI design. An unpleasant app may turn off a large number of visitors who’d have done business with you. It is, therefore, necessary to ensure the application looks welcoming.

Both UX and UI designs have significantly changed. Now, users have bigger expectations and are likely to delete the application or click away from a website that doesn’t meet their design expectations. As a business, you should focus on the constantly changing customer needs and find ways to meet them.

It is worth mentioning then that there’s no specific aspect to focus more on in 2022. It would help if you could please the customer and make sure they interact with your business more. Therefore, I would encourage a balance between UX and UI in 2022 for a high investment return.

The Bottom Line

As I close, I would like to mention that these UX and UI are critical for good digital product or service performance. Neglecting either will not help you build your business with good user experiences. Conversely, a good balance between them can help you grow your product or brand and increase referrals.

Therefore, you should implement both designs simultaneously to get the desired results. UX will help you meet the customer’s needs more effectively and encourage them to interact with your brand. UI will help you grow your customer base and change how users interact with your product.

We hope this article has answered all of your wonderings about “UI vs UX“. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to read more articles like this.

And if you are looking for a web design house right now then stop your search because people at Designveloper are here to help you. We offer a wide range of services like web design, web development and business consulting, etc. so tell us your ideas and we will realize them for you!