If you’re new to the world of web design, you may be wondering what the difference is between UI and UX design. UI (User Interface) design focuses on how a website looks, while UX (User Experience) design focuses on how a user interacts with a website. In this blog post, we will discuss the differences between UI and UX design in a bit more detail!
What is UI Design?
UI design is all about the visual elements of a website or app. It’s what you see on screen when using an application and it incorporates things like:
- Colors
- Typography
- Icons
- Buttons
- Placeholders
- Widgets
- Animations
All the aesthetic elements a user will interact with when using the product, service or system.
What is UX Design?
UX design is all about creating a great user experience. This includes everything from the initial planning stages to the final product. UX designers focus on making sure that users have an easy time using a website or app, and they often use research and user feedback to make changes and improvements.
In a nutshell, it’s all about making sure the user has a good and pleasant experience with a product, service or system by improving things like:
- Accessibility
- Usability
- Efficiency
- Marketability
It’s about identifying user needs and wants, and honing in on those aspects while finding solutions to common problems that might impede the seamlessness of a user experience.
What’s the Difference?
The main difference between UI and UX design is that UI design is more concerned with how a product looks, while UX design is more concerned with how a user interacts with a product.
While UX Design is a process dedicated to the conceptual side of user interaction and facilitating a pleasant experience, UI Design is a process dedicated to the graphical layout – the aesthetic aspects- of a product, service or system.
UI Design is centered around the look and feel of the product itself, wanting to achieve a clean and neat interface. UX Design focuses on the overall structure and functionality of the interface with the customer experience in mind.
Separating the two
It doesn’t help that UX and UI are often used interchangeably. And while the two fields are closely related, it’s often difficult to separate them completely. One way of looking at it is that UI Design is a subset of UX Design – the visual elements that form one part of the overall customer experience that UX Design looks to improve.
Why UI and UX Design are important
In the end, both UI and UX Design are critical to making a product, service or system successful. If you don’t have great UI or UX design, then you’re likely going to see your users bounce off your site very quickly, not bother to purchase your product or, worst of all, pigeonhole your brand as a dunce of the industry. Great for competitors, not so great for your business. The better their experience is while interacting with your product, service or system, the more likely they will return in the long run.
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