Those of you who are or want to learn User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) are sure to ask, what’s the difference between UI and UX? However, which is more important between UI vs UX? Is good at any one element enough? Or need both?
Curious how the explanation? You will find the most complete explanation of what UI and UX are and their differences in this article. Not only that, we will also provide examples of implementing UI UX on websites and applications. Immediately, let’s look at the explanation of what UI and UX are!
What is UX?
User Experience (UX) is the process of designing a product through a user approach. With this approach, you can create products that suit the needs and desires of users.
Products with good UX design will create a pleasant experience for users when using your product. Users become easy and comfortable when using the product.
Meanwhile, this UX component includes how the features are provided on the product, the design structure, product use navigation, visual design aspects, and all aspects of interaction with users. UX also includes how you determine branding, content, and learn copywriting that suits your target users.
What are UI?
As previously mentioned, UI is part of UX in the form of a visual design display of a system. These views allow users to connect and interact with a product.
Apart from functioning as a link, the UI also functions to beautify the appearance so that it can increase user satisfaction. However, it doesn’t only have to be beautiful, the UI must also be easy to use.
Some of the UI components include button components, typography icons, themes, layouts, animations that appear on products, and other interactive visuals. All of these UI components are designed with a focus on beauty and user-friendliness. So users can enjoy your product.
This is the Difference between User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX)
After knowing what UI and UX are, do you now know the difference between UI and UX? If not, take it easy. In the following, we will describe what are the differences between UI and UX.
1. Design Purpose
The fundamental difference between UI and UX is the purpose of the design. The focus of creating UI UX designs is very different. The UI design of a product aims to beautify the appearance of the product. While the UX design is designed to provide a pleasant experience when using the product.
The focus of UI design is the beauty of the display, while UX focuses on product user satisfaction.
Simply put, UI design will affect the first impression users see of your product. Meanwhile, UX affects how the user experience when using the product.
2. Design Process
Still related to the previous UI and UX differences, different design goals also affect the process. Therefore, the process of designing UI UX design is also different.
Because it focuses on user experience, the UX design process is based on user research so as to produce products that are liked and needed by target users. The process goes through many stages and requires the role of many parties, one of which is a UX researcher. After doing research, designers design sketches of designs with wireframes and prototypes.
Meanwhile, UI design also requires research. However, the research being carried out is design research to make designs that are attractive and in accordance with the concept. Here, the UI designer also needs to design a design model by creating a mockup first.
3. Design Components
The next UI and UX difference is the design component. The components that make up UI Design focus on the beauty of production views. These UI components include colors, animated images and videos, typography, buttons, and other visual interactions.
Meanwhile, the UX design component includes almost all components of a product such as features, design structure, and navigation. This includes interface displays, copywriting, and branding, so team collaboration is needed to produce good product designs.
4. Tools Used
Due to the different build processes, another difference from UI UX is the need for different tools. For UI designers, the beauty of the images is very important. So they need an application that supports detailed interface design.
There are many UI design apps available like Flinto, Principle, Frames X, Adobe illustrator, etc. The application is equipped with several tools to support UI designers such as tools to add unique interaction icons, easy transitions, UI assets and kits, etc.
Meanwhile, UX designers need design prototyping applications to easily get feedback from users. Some design prototyping applications that support UX designers are: Sketch, InVision, Figma, Adobe XD, Axure, etc.
Several features are available, such as available collaboration features, real-time editing, easy to test design, etc. This feature will make it easier for UX designers to get feedback to produce user-friendly products
5. Required Skills
The difference between UI and UX is also in the individual skills that run it.
Being a UI designer and UX designer requires its own skills. Some of the skills needed by a UI designer are graphic design, design branding, creative thinking, and convergent thinking. These skills must be possessed by UI designers in designing product appearances to make them look attractive and easy for interaction.
While a UX designer is responsible for creating product designs with a user approach so that they are easy to use. Therefore, they must have the skills to do research, analytical thinking, problem solving, critical thinking, and creative thinking.
So, those are some of the differences between UI and UX. Now, we will study the UI vs UX workflow.
UI UX Design Workflow
Even though the difference between UI and UX is quite far, both of them still have to work continuously in order to create a quality product. So in this section, you will find out how UI vs UX works in product creation.
1. UX Research
UX research is the first step in creating a good design. Research is done to understand what users need. For example, to create an online shop website, you have to find out how people’s shopping habits, the payment process that users like the most and so on.
A UX Researcher can conduct UX research in several ways, either through user interviews or online surveys. The data collected can also be through qualitative and quantitative data.
2. Creating Information Architecture
After doing UX research, the next step is to create a product Information Architecture (IA). This Information Architecture is the process of compiling the structure of parts on websites and applications. This IA will make it easier for the team to understand the concept of a product.
To make this IA, you need the results of the UX research that has been done. UX research results were obtained through the card sorting method, which is a method of sorting and determining buyer personas. The research results help you to structure your product based on the user’s perspective.
3. Create Wireframes
Next is the wireframing process. Wireframe is a visual sketch of a product. This design sketch also shows the flow of information for the user to be able to operate the product. This is where the UX Designer’s role is designing the design.
The wireframing process includes making product sketches that will be developed into a product. This wireframe will also help the designer, content and developer team to visualize how the product will look.
Design sketches were made using Low Fidelity Wireframe (LFW) and then a High Fidelity Wireframe (HFW) version was created. There are many tools that can be used in the wireframing process, such as Figma, Adobe XD, and so on.
4. Manage UX flows
After creating a wireframe, you need to manage the flow of how a product is used by users. Flow is made with a UX approach so that later users are comfortable using your product.
This flow is then documented so that developers can easily develop products.
5. Create a UX Design Prototype
The next UI vs UX stage is to create a Design prototype according to the wireframe and flow designs that have been made. To make a design prototype, you can make it with applications such as Invision, MockPlus, Adobe XD, and others.
The design prototype can be tested by the internal team and immediately corrected if needed. If the design prototype has passed in the internal team, you can test it on your users.
6. Create a Design System
The next UI vs UX workflow stage is the creation of a design system. The design system is made to store all design components, especially UI design components, such as icons, fonts, color palettes, and others in a library.
At this stage, collaboration between UI designers and developers is needed. UI designers start creating design elements, while developers create library components using HTML, CSS, Javascript, and so on.
With this design system, the design process will be faster because the design elements are available. Another benefit is that your design will be more consistent and efficient in working with other product designs. .
7. Designing the User Interface
In the UI vs UX workflow stage, a UI designer begins to be in charge of designing an attractive product appearance. This stage is also the implementation of the wireframe that was made before.
UI Designer will beautify the sketch with color combinations, typography, and transitions between pages with elements created in the previous stage. At this stage UI designers also need to pay attention to the principles of good UI design.
Designers can use Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Sketch App and other design applications.
8. Product Development Process by the Developer
Next, the product development stage by the Developer. In the UI vs UX workflow stage, the designs that have passed the trials and were designed by the UI designers are being developed by the developers.
Even though they have entered the developing stage, the UI and UX designer’s task does not end immediately. Developers can continue to collaborate and communicate with the designer team to be able to solve common problems, if an obstacle is found.
9. Design Usability Test
After a product is created with a good appearance, the product can be launched. However, before it is actually launched to many people, the product needs to go through a trial process by giving each design feature a score.
After usability testing, the design will receive suggestions and input from users. The design is then revised and tested again until it becomes a design that is comfortable and what the user wants.
Why are UI and UX Important in Website and Application Development?
Even though the differences between UI and UX are striking, did you know that UI UX is one of the keys to the success of a product? Why do you think you can say that? According to several surveys and research, this is the importance of UI UX in a product.
1. Producing Products Needed by Users
By focusing design on user experience, you can create a product with features that users really need. Products made based on user needs will be more in demand.
One company that has proven successful in listening to user needs is ESPN. ESPN managed to increase their website revenue by 35% after redesigning the homepage with a user experience approach.
2. Increasing User Satisfaction with Products
Products with a poor appearance and difficult to use will quickly be abandoned by users. Research from Dot Com Infoway (DCI) says 62% of users uninstall applications on their cellphones because the appearance is messy and errors often occur.
However, if your product has an attractive appearance and is easy to use, users will be satisfied using your product. User satisfaction will keep your product in use. In other words, one of the benefits of UI UX is to pamper product users.
3. Increase Sales and Business
If your website or business application is designed with a good UI UX, you are not only providing optimal service to customers. Indirectly, you mean that you have implemented a business improvement strategy.
Forrester Research has proven that good UI vs UX design can increase a website’s conversion rate by up to 400%. That’s because a good UI UX design will impress users with the initial appearance and easily complete needs on the website. Visitors will also find it easier to convert and purchase.
Do you understand the difference between UI and UX?
From the explanation above, you can see the difference between UI and UX. UI is indeed a part of UX. UI UX is an important element that needs each other in website or application development.
If the UX design of a product is very good but the UI design is not good, the user’s first impression will also be not good. Similarly, if the UI design of a product is good but the UX design is not good, users will not like using the product.
So, both of them must have a good design so that your product is liked by the users as a whole. That way the benefits of the product can also be felt by users. So that’s a detailed explanation of the differences between UI and UX. If you have questions, please write them in the comments column, OK!
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