It is common for people who are not familiar with web design to confuse the terms UX and UI. They are usually placed together in the single term: UX/UI design. If you have ever wondered what the difference between UX and UI design is, this blog post is for you.
The team at WishDesk explores UI and UX to get a better understanding of the difference between them.
What is UI design (user interface design)?
The User interface is the graphical layout of a website. It includes the text users read, the buttons they click on, pictures, sounds, keyboards, and even lights. UI designers decide how the website will look: they choose fonts, blocks’ shapes, and color schemes. Their main goal is to make the user interface appealing and well-designed.
The Commandments of User Interface Design
Clarity
Keep things handy for users. Let them find the information they need in a few clicks.
Matching Colors
Draw attention to something or redirect it away using color, light, contrast, and texture.
Easy Navigation
Create convenient navigation components for easy interaction with your website interface. Implement buttons, breadcrumbs, sliders, icons, drop-down menus, checkboxes.
Font Families
Use fonts that match one another.
Ability to Leave Feedback
Create a comment section to give your visitors a chance to communicate with you.
Image Optimization
Image optimization is vital not only for good UI but also for high performance. Resize and compress images to make them load faster.
Content Creation
Users want to visit content-rich platform. Create one for them!
Take a look at the Medium website. With minimal use of color, line spacing, and well chosen combination of fonts, this site is a bright example of good UI.
What is UX design (user experience design)?
User experience refers to the satisfaction a user gets from the interaction with the product. If a website is not user-friendly, the visitor will easily get frustrated and move on to another platform.
User experience is determined by how easy or confusing it is to interact with the interface elements created by UI designers. As you can see, UX designers also deal with the website’s user interface. That’s why people often confuse these terms. The difference is that UI designers decide how the interface will look, while UX designers determine how the user interface operates.
UX specialists build the structure of the interface, relate its parts to one another, and determine its functionality. If everything works well and users can surf the website intuitively, it means that the user experience is good. It is vital for UX designers to understand how users prefer to interact with the website.
Tips to improve UX
Here are some tips to improve user experience:
- use an awesome grid system
- design clear call-to-action buttons
- create short contact forms
- make your website accessible from all devices
- include search field
- use authentic images
- get rid of 404 pages and broken links
- avoid saying ‘the user,' use ‘you’ instead
- use animation
- avoid all caps letters in text
- eliminate unnecessary elements
Take a look at the Duolingo website. This is a language learning platform. After only three easy questions, users are already starting to learn a new language and even can set a goal for their learning.
UX vs UI: should they work together?
UI and UX cannot exist without each other. An appealing design cannot save the interface that is confusing to navigate, while good user experience means nothing when visual interface design is bad.
Now you know why both UX and UI matter. Use our UX and UI design services to ensure the user-friendliness of your website. Also, contact us if you need help in defining what user-experience or user interface improvements you need.
