Expert Tips For What is UI design? What is UX design? UI vs UX: What’s the difference

As a small business, it’s important to stay up to date on the latest trends in design for your company app and website. But what’s the difference between UI and UX design? What do these terms even mean? Let’s take a look at the details of each term and how they can benefit your business!  

First things first…

What is UI Design? 

User interface (UI) design is the methods and elements with which designers construct interfaces. It is all about the looks, style, and function of a product’s display. This focus on aesthetics includes the interaction between the user and icons, typography, buttons, colors, and beyond.

Examples:

• Spotify’s pulldown animation
• Starbucks’ color scheme usage
• Domino’s’ order progress tracker
• Duolingo’s consistent dashboard 

What is UX Design?

User experience (UX) is all about what it’s like for the user when they interact with a product’s interface. The experience design is the method of designing how a product is integrated including respects to usability, branding, and function in a meaningful way.

Examples:

• Marriott’s booking experience.
• YouTube’s autoplay features.
• Target’s password guidance.
• Grammarly’s onboarding

How Are UI and UX Related?

UI and UX are two symbiotic terms, and UI designers and UX designers are used almost interchangeably for how closely related they are. 

Both UI and UX are highly related design approaches but with very distinct nuances. UI design focuses on the visual and graphic aspects of design and the overall induced feeling. But UI design without consideration for complementary UX design and vice versa, however, will result in nothing but a bad experience for the user. 

All UX designers know that the user’s experience is king and focus on the technical aspects. The ironic part? The most telltale sign of good UX design is that the good UX design goes completely unnoticed by the user. A conducive partnership between the two practices is what wins a user’s trust and engagement.

What’s the Difference Between UI and UX?

Here is where all the nuance we mentioned earlier comes into play.

At the heart of it, UI is a single piece of the user’s process, while UX is anything that affects the user’s process.

UI encompasses all the details that allow a user to engage with a site or app’s interface, while UX is the ultimate experience that user has with said site or app’s interface.

UI is the aesthetic and look, while UX is the feel.

How Does Good UI/UX Benefit Businesses?

The ultimate objective of every business is to make sales and grow the business. Strong UI/UX design can affect a business’ online presence and thus impact the success of the business itself in reaching those objectives. 

• Engagement

Improve your layout, menus, and navigation to harmoniously encourage ease of engagement with your site or app. A smooth flow of interaction will help support conversion rates which leads to increased revenue.

• Brand Reputation

Understand what features are important to your users and what they dislike. A UI/UX design experience that matches a user’s expectations and preferences will inherently help establish a positive association with your brand in their mind.

• Customer Satisfaction

Good UI/UX easily attracts customers and supports their retention, meaning the business stays both competitive and lucrative. A satisfied user leads to a satisfied customer!

Achieving good UI/UX can be tricky – it’s a balance of art and science that takes into account user feedback as well as analytical data. That’s why it’s so important to partner with an experienced web design agency like Agency Partner Interactive who understands the ins and outs of the entire development process for your business’ next design project!