CRyder Design

User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) are two of the most highly demanded occupations today. While the terms are sometimes used in tandem and even interchangeably, they have a variety of differences. Most people haven’t even heard of the terms UX or UI, let alone know what the jobs entail, so I’m here to tell you just what they are and just exactly what it is that UX and UI designers do. In the article “What does a UX Designer Actually Do?” author Caroline White quotes, Fred Beecher, the director of UX at The Nerdery, “How do I explain what I do at a party? The short version is that I say I humanize technology.”

Starting with UX. The term ‘user experience’ was coined by Don Norman in the 1990s. Norman defined user experience as “encompassing all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.” (“UX vs. UI: What’s the Difference Between User Interface and User Experience?”) He used an explanation that was extensive enough to include all aspects of user experience. But what exactly is UX? In the article, “The Difference Between UX and UI Design – A Layman’s Guide” author Emil Lamprecht states that UX is a “human-first approach to product design.” User Experience design focuses on the course of action that a user takes when navigating an app, website, or product. UX designers go great lengths to understand any emotions, thoughts, struggles, and successes that a user may experience when using a product. Their goal is to make their course of action as simple, seamless, and pleasing as possible. In order to do so, they use many different tools and techniques to observe and understand user data. These include, user research, wireframes, information architectures, prototypes, personas, etc.

User interface, however focuses on the aesthetic aspects that a user interacts with when using a product. In the article, “The Difference Between UX and UI Design – A Layman’s Guide” author Emil Lamprecht states that UI is a “human-first approach to designing the aesthetic experience of a product.” User interface designers focus more on the design aspects of a product, their goal is to make it look and feel pleasing to the user. They will spend time studying color palettes, typography, logos, icons, buttons, etc. Anything that you can see when you use a product, was probably designed by a user interface designer. The visual design is one of the first things that you see when you interact with an app, website or product. If you have something that isn’t visually pleasant, the chances are that you lost a few users before they were even able to interact with the product. User interface is crucial to making a user’s experience pleasant.

In basic terms, User Experience (UX) is the study and design of every action a user takes from the beginning to the end of their time using a product. User Interface (UI) is the study and design of the way a product looks when a user interacts with it. Both UX and UI are crucial to having a successful website, app, or product and they work hand in hand when it comes to a user’s overall exposure to said product.