What is the difference between UX & UI Design?

UX Design refers to the English term “User Experience” or user experience design. While UI Design refers to the English term “User Interface” or in French Design de l’interface UI. Often confused, these two terms are nevertheless very trendy.

UX/UI designers are multiplying and product creation is increasingly based on a UX method. Despite the high demand for UX/UI Designers and the popularity of these professions, these two terms are still misunderstood and sometimes confused. However, it is essential to understand them. Indeed, despite their professional relationship, UX and UI have different roles, aspects and processes.

What is UX Design?

Donald Norman, the father of the term "user experience" and co-founder of NNGroup, clearly defined user experience in the late 1990s. It emphasizes the relationship between users and the brand in question. For him, the user experience encompasses all aspects of the user's interaction with the company, whether through its products or services.

This definition may seem clear to some, but to others it may seem confusing. Indeed, this definition does not mention anywhere the field of the web, tech and even interfaces. Why ? Quite simply because the user experience encompasses much more than the world of the web. A UX process can be applied for the design of a car, a house, a shelf, etc.

What makes us tend to believe that UX only concerns the world of the web is because from the creation of the term UX, it was digital that took it over directly. Its use for 30 years is therefore mainly in digital fields.

UX therefore applies to everything that can be experienced and tested. A cash register in store, a distributor can be subjected to UX work. The user experience is ultimately the interaction between the user and the product used. A UX Designer will care about the emotions of users when using the product in question. Its objective will be to put in place strategies to facilitate the use of the product, its simplicity, its readability, its usability, etc. In short, its purpose is to make the experience enjoyable.

For example, to optimize the user experience of an e-commerce site for example, the UX Designer will analyze and optimize the interface according to several criteria:

    Is it easy to add products to a cart?
    Do the pages load quickly?
    Is it easy to find the products you are looking for?
    Does the site inspire trust?
    Is the navigation efficient?
    Is the interface understandable and readable enough?

What you should remember about UX Design in a nutshell:

    UX Design is not only about the visual, it focuses above all on the overall experience.
    UX design is a design and development process that focuses on the interaction between a user and a business.
    UX Design does not only concern digital products, even if it is mainly used on digital products.

What is UI Design?

First of all, you should know that UI is an older and more practiced field than the term UX. As we have seen, UX brings together all the aspects aimed at making the use of a product pleasant, easy, intuitive, etc. The UI (user interface or user interface) is complementary, it includes everything related to the presentation, usability, aesthetics and interaction of the product.

The UI Designer often presents itself on the market more as a graphic designer of interfaces, brand image and even sometimes as a front-end developer. But you will also find other UI Designers who will present themselves as user experience designers. There is something to be confused about.

Already, there is one thing we are sure of, and that is that unlike UX, UI is a term that only concerns the digital field. The user interface is the point of contact between the user and a digital product such as a phone screen for example. UI Design therefore takes into account the appearance, usability and interaction between the interface and its user.

For an interface to be as efficient and intuitive as possible, UI design will deal with colors, icons, element structure, CTAs, typography, animations, etc.

The UI Designer will therefore find himself in a process of designing the user experience naturally. UI helps UX and UI is part of UX.

In a few words, the UI is:

    Unlike UX, UI is digital only. It encompasses all the visual elements of an interface such as colors, buttons, spacing, structure, responsiveness, etc.
    The objective of the UI is to offer users a visually intuitive, aesthetic, coherent and efficient interface.

What are the main differences between UX and UI?

With the definitions given above, you should have some idea. But since these two terms are often confused, it is important to clearly distinguish them and understand their difference.

An analogy to easily understand the difference between these two terms. A user interface without UX is like applying a beautiful paint on a canvas without thinking. And a UX without UI is like a functional framework without illustrations.

Above all, it is important to understand that UX and UI go hand in hand, it is difficult to see one without the other. A UX designer will need a UI design and vice versa to make a digital product a reality.

The primary goal of UX design is to solve a particular problem and implement strategies to make the experience as efficient as possible. It collects qualitative and quantitative data in order to create coherent user journeys in relation to the target. So he created wireframes and prototypes to quickly test ideas.

The UX designer seeks to answer a set of questions:

    What tasks should users perform?
    How do they currently behave on the interface?
    Who are the users?
    How to make the experience simple and pleasant?
    What is the ideal user journey?
    How can it be improved?

While the UX Designer sets up the first wireframes and structures, the UI Designer is there to bring these plans to life. The UI Designer therefore takes into account all the work of the UX Designer and then comes to dress the interface in question. It will focus on all visual and interaction details to make the interface intuitive, attractive, pleasant, aesthetic, etc.

The UI designer therefore asks questions such as:

    How to improve the readability of the interface?
    How to highlight the brand image while optimizing the user experience
    How to optimize loading speed
    What colors used to meet the disabilities of some
    Which typefaces to choose to be consistent with the structure and the content
    How to make CTAs clear and engaging

To summarize, here are the main differences of UX and UI:

    UX aims to solve user problems and create the most effective user experience possible.
    The UI aims to create intuitive, interactive, aesthetic and efficient interfaces.
    The UX necessarily takes into account the UI, because the UI helps to create an optimized user experience.
    Typically, UX comes first in a development process, followed by UI.
    The UX traces the bases of a user journey, the UI then comes to dress this journey and add details to it by optimizing the visual and interactive aspect.

How do UX and UI work together?

As we have seen, UX and UI go hand in hand. These are two professions that need to help each other in a product development process.

A nice interface that looks optimized but is actually difficult to use, this is a product with a good UI but a bad UX.

Conversely, an interface that looks bad but actually has good usability is a product with good UX but bad UX.

We find a lot of this kind of case in the world of start-ups. Often, some brands launch a new product like an app focusing on UX. They carry out user research, set up surveys, collect data, etc.

In the end, they manage to create an app that responds perfectly to demand, with a promise and a successful concept, but without UI work. Results: users are very interested, download the application quickly but are disappointed by the interface. The buttons are too small, the readability is not good, the brand image is not put forward, etc.

This is a classic case where the UI is not as worked. And the opposite case is also very common.

User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) complement each other and it is difficult to have good results without working on these 2 aspects. This is why we so often see “UX/UI designers”, it is because it is obvious that one is useful to the other. It is therefore essential for a development team to understand these two aspects and to highlight them fairly.

What are the skills of UX and UI designers?

These 2 professions are ultimately different even if they are complementary. The UX designers will not deal with the same things as the UI designers although they will be in close collaboration.

In the UX designer, we will find aspects related to data, structure, testing, user research and others:

    Competition analysis
    UX Writing/content strategy
    Product positioning strategy
    Wireframe
    Prototype
    Testing/ideation
    Data analysis
    heat map
    Surveys / polls
    mouse tracking
    Collaboration with the developer and the UI designer

The UX Designer is therefore extremely versatile. He is able to deal with subjects related to the product manager, the SEO consultant or the UI designer for example. He must take care to optimize the experience of the product as a whole, which involves working on many aspects of the development process.

Regarding the UI designer, his optimization objectives will be more focused on the visual of the interface. His tasks will therefore revolve around the interaction of the interface and its aesthetic rendering.

Here are some elements that the UI Designer will process:

    Design research
    Customer analysis
    Brand analysis
    Graphic development and design
    Processing of design system and graphic charter
    Prototype
    Animation and interaction
    Responsive adaptation
    Usability, readability, contrast
    Front end development

User interface work is essential to give a product some credibility and a strong brand image. Also, even if it is not his main role, it is important that the UX Designer is also versatile.

Indeed, he must, for example, be comfortable with front-end development to offer design solutions consistent with development possibilities (HTML, CSS, JS, etc.). In addition, he must also understand the choices of the UX Designer in order to best meet his expectations in terms of user journeys and the data collected.

Conclusion

UX does not go without UI. In a development process, it is essential to link these two professions in order to create a complete user experience.

The UX will encompass all the research, testing, user journeys, wireframes. While the UI will deal with all aspects related to the visual, the interaction, the aesthetics and the design of the interface.

It is important to understand the difference between these two terms certainly. But it is also necessary to train in these 2 professions because they are broad subjects that take into account different fragments of other fields: writing, data analysis, design, product design, testing, UX research, etc.