UX and UI: what is the difference?

UX: the final goal

User experience is the overall experience a user gets from interacting with the product. But it’s not just about the positive (or negative) experience. UX is rather an end goal of your project.

If your goal is to make the users buy your products via an app, then good UX means leading the customer through the app until he buys from you. If the user is satisfied with the app’s navigation, interactive elements, and overall impression, all that will naturally lead him to complete a certain action. This is what good User Experience is about.

Therefore, for the UX designer, the primary goals are the value for the user and convenience of product use. By value we mean the following: every action the user takes should be useful. As for convenience, that means there should be no lags or delays in page loading and the overall customer journey should be frictionless and easy.

Some responsibilities of the UX designer:

• Customer and competition analysis
• Prototyping
• Wireframing
• Strategy planning
• Testing

UX plays a huge role in the overall conversion rate. If the user finds the product too bulky, non-responsive, too slow, or any other issue, they won’t continue using it – and it will bring your conversions down.

Here are the predicted UX trends to consider in 2019:

• Focus on good and engaging texts
• Mobile-friendliness
• Voice-powered commands
• Increased personalization
• Use of AR/VR

We will be reviewing these trends in more detail in our upcoming articles.

UI: the tool

User Interface incorporates all elements that help the user interact with the product: buttons, clickable visual elements, voice assistants, etc.

If UX is the end goal, then UI can be called a tool that helps reach that goal. And since UI is at the front line, it is responsible for the visual appearance of the product.

Let’s take a CTA button as an example. Its function is to lead the user to the cart to complete the purchase. But if the user does not see the button or cannot click on it, then it becomes useless and the whole idea of a seamless journey is lost.

Now you see why UI and UX are integral. UI helps create UX and UX relies on UI heavily.

The responsibilities of a UI designer usually include:

• Research of the latest and corresponding design trends
• Creation of a storyline (storytelling)
• Customer analysis and research
• Branding

The UI designer has to make sure the design looks equally good on all necessary devices and screen sizes and that it grabs the user’s attention and corresponds to the brand message.

And here are some of the hottest UI trends for 2019:

• Use of 3D graphics
• Full-screen background
• Storytelling via imagery
• Animated elements
• Careful choice of fonts and text alignment for better readability
• Poster-style web pages

Summing up

When you start working on your software product, a website or mobile app, make sure you have a good and reliable UX/UI designer (or both) to work in your team. Such a specialist will take care of making your product appealing for the audience and complementing smooth functionality with a seamless look.

At Celadonsoft, we never start working on the project development until we got the UX/UI right. This helps us see the overall picture and never lose focus.

You may be also interested: How Much Does It Cost to Design an App?