How many times have I not heard in the IT world discussions:

“Wow, how great is the UX in X application! Too bad the UI is not very successful. ”

UX, UI? What are these people talking about?! Is this a secret language that you will never be privy to? Do these people just use slang to look cool?

Well, probably for the latter, but a decision NOT for the rest. Below is a breakdown of what I will include in this article.

Read on to find out what the terms “UX” and “UI” mean and how to become a UX designer or UI designer.

1. What does UI mean?
2. What is UX?
3. The difference between UX and UI
4. Is UX more important than UI?
5. UX design versus UI design: Which of the two would suit you best?
6. How to learn UX or UI skills?
7. Conclusions.

 

 

1. UI

According to the diagram above (the one with the brain) to facilitate the explanatory process I have assimilated the UX and the UI of a brain.

The UI could be said to represent the left side of the brain, the part that has the role of making everything more beautiful. In the brain as such, on the left side are “products”:

– Creativity

– imagination

– Intuition

– Emotions

– Arts / Music

Mostly everything is related to the creative-emotional side.

Okay, but still what is the UI?

The definition says so:

User interface (UI) design is the process of creating interfaces in software or computer devices, focusing on appearance or style. Designers intend to create models that users will find easy to use and will be visually pleasing. UI design usually refers to graphical user interfaces but includes others, such as voice-controlled ones.

In other words, the UI is the visual part of an application.

This includes everything from screens and touch screens, to keyboards, sounds and even lights. However, to understand the evolution of UI, it is useful to know a little more about its history and how it has evolved into best practices and a profession.

A brief history of the user interface

In the 1970s, if you wanted to use a computer, you had to use the command-line interface. The graphical interfaces used today were not yet commercial. For a computer to work, users must communicate through a programming language, requiring seemingly infinite lines of code to complete a simple task.

 

In 1980, the first graphical user interface (GUI) was developed by the IT people at Xerox PARC. With this innovative innovation, users will now be able to interact with their personal computers by visually transmitting commands through icons, buttons, menus and checkboxes.

By 1984, Apple Computer released the Macintosh personal computer that included a mouse and a mouse. Macintosh was the first commercially successful home computer that used this type of interface.

2. UX

Now we know that the UI is the visual part of an application, the developers are busy making it work, the UX what do we need ?!

Since the 90s, a gentleman named Donald Norman has given this name to this process, being the first UX Architect in the world.

The “user experience” encompasses all aspects of the end-user interaction with the company, its services and products. – Donald Norman

The definition has changed a little over time, but also that of Don Norman is based on – Designing user experience (UXD or UED) is the process of improving customer satisfaction and loyalty by improving the usability, ease of use and pleasure offered. in the interaction between the customer and the product.

To understand what makes a good experience, Peter Moreville has developed an excellent visual appearance to highlight what goes into an efficient UX design.

This “honeycomb” has become the basis for best practices for UX professionals to help guide their efforts across multiple user contact points, including:

• How would they discover the product of your company?
• The sequence of actions they take while interacting with the interface
• Thoughts and feelings that arise when trying to fulfil their task
• The impressions that separate them from the interaction as a whole

 

Source: Peter Moreville

Well, many years ago (not quite in the dinosaur era) when I started this design business, there were not many UX or UI designers, although the concept of UX Design is not something new on the market, they were pure and simple designers who sometimes drew and implemented until the programming side, but times have changed; we live in the era of consumerism and considering that there are so many options on the market at the moment, that is that the Customer is our master has changed a little and she, I would say that it is rather our Customer I am, the mother, the aunt, the cousin, etc …

In other words, we can no longer target only a certain niche of people if we are to resist the market.

In short, UX Designers are looking at potential users and trying to create an application functionality as close to what a user might want.

(You know that thing from a super-used app – let’s not advertise, it rhymes with Net Flux – when you watch a series and after the episode is over, it gives you another after another without pressing a button and you wake up being 5 the morning and you still have an hour to sleep and go to work ?! – this functionality was not necessarily learned for the user, rather for them to ensure that you were there, that is why the humanities in them thought to do something for users and now after about 3 episodes in which you are completely inactive on the device asks if you are still there.)

The difference between UI and UX

The UI is then a series of screens, pages and visual elements such as buttons, and icons – care allows a person (remains) to interact with a product or service.

The experience used (UX), a more important part, of this internal experience, is taken care of or a person is while they can interact with each aspect regarding the products and services needed if they can be used.

Differences would be a few, extended extensions:

1. At the risk of appearing captain Obviously: UX is not UI

Designing UX or designing functional experimentation is important for its care, identifying a lasting point or a need for time. From there, a hard prototype is followed which is subsequently validated (or invalidated) by testing. When the business model and value proposition and validation, the product is built.

 

The UI or the user interface in this way are designed as follows:

Design interface used = Visual design + Interaction design.

The visual design is the look of the site, the personality if you want; Brand. Designing interaction is how to care for people who interact with your site. When someone clicks a button on your site, does the button change visibly so that it can be successful?

Although both UX and UI designers design interactions, you can think of UX designers as architects of macro interactions while UI designers, as creators of micro-interactions, participate in the details.

2. UX makes useful interfaces, and UI makes beautiful interfaces
3. UX helps users meet goals, and UI makes emotional connections
4. UX is made first, the UI after (sometimes) – here I recommend a short video you can find UX and UI, Chicken and Egg
5. UX is involved with products, interfaces and services, UI refers only to interfaces

 

Is UX more important than UI?

UX designers work closely with UI designers, researchers, marketers and product teams to understand their users through research and experimentation. They use the ideas they get to iterate and continuously improve experiences, based on both quantitative and qualitative user research.

This is a pretty controversial topic in the world of design. The UI contributes to how effective the UX is. For example, you could have a very simple UI, without graphics and text only, but depending on the purpose of the site or application, it might be the best UX possible for the user audience.

The meaning of any interest (UI) is to be used by a user. If it does not provide a pleasant experience, the users will not return to it and, consequently, the interface (UI) will not succeed. So without a good UX, there’s no point in creating a UI.

At the end of the day, the UI will be the one appreciated or criticized by the users, but keep in mind that the UX liked or disliked them.

 

UX design versus UI design: Which of the two would suit you best?

 

Well here is simple, do you like to draw or think about solutions?

Is the haptic side sufficiently developed? If so, maybe UX is for you, I’m kidding it’s more than that, just that and that’s what you have to take into account when thinking about such a career.

Fortunately that we live in Romania and then everything is solved by itself, if you study a job offer for a UX position, you will see that you are required to know how to … of UX with UI skills.

 

How to learn UX or UI skills?

 

It is much easier now than a few years ago when I was sending the pigeon with the letter to the foot; the internet is full of information about anything more so about such vicious disciplines.

There are books, a lot, I’ll just give an example of a few that I found interesting:

Universal Principles of Design

Design of Everyday Things

Start with why

Don’t Make Me Think

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People

Tutorials for the UI part for using different design tools: Sketch, Figma, Framer X etc … or using the older (guilty) Photoshop.

There is a lot of work that I can assure you of, and even when you reach a certain age, the work is not finished, the world is constantly changing and you must keep up.

Conclusions

I wrote this article intending to elucidate a little on the mystery that surrounds the UX and the UI, not the other, but I happened to see it a lot of times including in the IT world to be asked what I am dealing with, to answer my interlocutor to nod approvingly (out of politeness) with a questioning mimic – Is that what this works for ?!.

Plus there’s a need for new generations of designers and maybe, just maybe even 0.00001% of you are thinking about how cool this UX / UI is.