· UX Meridian research team
UX vs UI Design: What's the Difference?
The short answer
UX design shapes everything a person goes through with a product, from finding it to finishing a task, and it rests on research and testing. UI design covers the buttons, links, icons, type and color people see and touch on screen. UI is one piece of UX, and a product needs both.
What UX design covers
Don Norman coined the term user experience in the 1990s to cover every part of a person's dealings with a company and its products or services. That runs from discovering a product and buying it to setting it up, using it for the first time and the hundredth, and eventually replacing it.
UX designers start with the people who will use the product. They run user research and usability tests, then map user journeys and the way screens connect. Their deliverables tend to be user flows, storyboards, wireframes and prototypes. A UX team judges its work on qualities such as usability, accessibility, credibility, usefulness and how satisfying the product is to use.
What UI design covers
A user interface is the set of components and design elements a product is made of. Components include buttons and clickable links, and design elements include images, icons and headers. UI design decides how each screen looks and how it responds when someone taps or scrolls.
UI designers take the black, white and gray wireframes that UX designers mostly draw and add color schemes, typography, icons and the other visual parts of the interface. They produce mockups and maintain the UI style guide. Making screens work at every size is part of the job too.
UX and UI side by side
The usual split of work looks like this, and one designer can cover both sides.
UX design | UI design | |
|---|---|---|
Scope | The whole experience, on and off screen | The screens and controls of a digital product |
Question it answers | Does this solve the user's problem, and is it easy to use? | How should each screen look and respond? |
Typical work | User research, journey mapping, information architecture, usability testing | Visual design, typography and color, interface components |
Typical deliverables | User flows, wireframes, prototypes | Mockups, style guides, UI components |
Place in the process | Defines the problem and maps the solution first | Turns that structure into finished screens |
Why a polished interface can still be a poor experience
Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen use a movie-review site to show the gap. Its search screen can be flawless, and someone looking for a small independent film still has a bad experience if the database only holds major-studio releases.
The reverse happens too. Research can map the right journey, and people still won't place an order if the text on the site is hard to read. Usability, meaning how easy a system is to learn and how efficient and pleasant it is to use, is a quality of the interface, and UX is the wider idea that contains it.
How UX and UI designers work together
In the usual sequence, UX work comes first. The UX designer defines the user's problem and maps the best path to solving it, usually in wireframes. The UI designer then solves the visual side, guiding people through that path with layout, color and interactive elements.
The roles overlap in plenty of places. Both research the audience and competitors, present designs to stakeholders and keep design documentation up to date, so the team has one record of the work behind a product.
Frequently asked questions
Which comes first, UX or UI?
UX usually comes first. The problem, the user flows and the wireframes are worked out before visual design starts, so the UI work sits on a structure the team has already agreed.
Can one designer do both UX and UI?
Yes. A single designer can run the research and also design the final screens, and that mix of skills is valued on projects such as mobile apps.
What tools do UX and UI designers use?
UX designers work with research and user-testing tools, sitemaps for information architecture, usability analyzers and wireframing software. UI designers work with mood boards, visual design tools, style guides, sketching software and prototyping applications.
Is UX the same as usability?
No. Usability measures whether people can complete tasks easily and efficiently, without unnecessary hurdles. UX also covers whether the product is useful and credible, and how people feel about it across every contact with the company.
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