UI and UX- It’s Time You Learn Those Differences!

A cloud of confusion surrounds people whenever UI and UX come up in any conversation. The terms are often used together if designing and development of a website/app are to be considered, but they somehow lose their specific meaning when used interchangeably. This gives away the wrong notion that both terms have overlapping meanings.

While you may know what UX and UI stand for, and might even be well acquainted with in-depth definitions that break down to industry jargon, but if asked to explain in layman terms about what differentiates the two, will you be able to do it? Will you be able to tell what is more important?

If the answer is no, you must keep reading to get a good understanding of the differentiators and get a definite edge over others in the next discussion.

Basics of UX

The user experience is about making the designed interface useful so that the user can navigate smoothly and find no reasons to complain. While UI builds the motive of interaction amongst your users with your app/website, the UX ensures that the user is satisfied and gets pleasure after interacting.

UX without UI is like building a home you can easily navigate through, but if you don’t paint it well, it will keep your visitors away from visiting because of being dull.

The UX design focuses on macro-interactions and is usually the first step before UI designers step in and brainstorm on how to make the micro-interactions more appealing. Ken Norton, Partner at Google Ventures, Ex-Product Manager at Google, when explaining about the same, says, “ I like the restaurant analogy I’ve heard others use: UI is the table, chair, plate, glass, and utensils. UX is everything from the food, to the service, parking, lighting and music.”

Basics of UI

The user interface is about the aesthetics of your site or application, how to enhance the beauty of your app/website, make it more visually stimulating to bring out the personality of your brand. From the texts to the buttons, images, sliders, text entry fields, and every item the user interacts with falls under user interface. Thus all the visual elements, or animations that will force the users to interact and engage with your website or application fall under UI.

When designing prototypes, the UI designer try to keep the surface layer of the product as real as possible by considering the possibility of colours. Whereas for UX designers, the product design concentrates on a combination of logic and behaviour and they work with limited color options (mostly gray, black and white).

Both UI and UX are two separate disciplines which share a symbiotic relationship and are equally significant when designing extraordinary apps/ websites.

UX and UI are not the same!

Of course not! Just like how ‘You’ and ‘You’re’ are not the same thing, UI and UX are poles apart even though they are related.

UX is for goal accomplishment, and it is executed after observing people and studying their interactions. While UI uses emotional aspect to build personal connections by drawing users to the website/apps and triggering user loyalty.

Both the designs require different skill sets, but for a successful website/ app loved by all, they both must work in harmony and place users at the top pedestal.

Agam Choudhry – Co-Founder & CMO – Digitalabs (A Unit of Laqshya Media Limited)