UX and UI design: demystifying roles and responsibilities
UX and UI design are different, yet complementary. Let’s have a look at the main roles for each.
What is UX design?
UX design, or user experience design, is about the overall experience of someone using a website or application. It is particularly interested in how using the product feels: is it pleasant? Easy to use? Intuitive? The aim of UX design is to improve user satisfaction by optimising the ease of use, usefulness and effectiveness of the interaction between the user and the product.
Responsibilities of the UX designer
- Digital strategy: understanding users’ needs, motivations and behaviour through a website audit, a benchmark of the competition and strategic recommendations.
- Information architecture: Organising, structuring and labelling content in a logical way to facilitate navigation and access to information.
- Wireframing and prototyping: Creating wireframes and prototypes to test and improve concepts before final development.
- Interaction design: Defining how users interact with the product, focusing on the effectiveness and simplicity of these interactions.
What is UI design?
UI design focuses on the visual appearance and interactive style of a website or application. It involves designing all the elements that a user can interact with, such as buttons, icons, spacing and typography. The aim of UI design is to create an attractive and coherent interface that resonates with the overall experience desired by users.
Responsibilities of the UI designer
- Visual design: Choosing the right colours, typography and images, ensuring visual consistency throughout the product.
- Style guides: Developing and maintaining style guides to ensure uniform application of visual elements across all pages and features.
- Responsiveness and adaptability: Ensuring that the interface works well on a variety of devices and screen sizes.
- Implementation with developers: Working closely with developers to ensure that the visual interface can be technically realised and functions as intended.
Interaction between UX and UI design
Although distinct, UX and UI design are deeply interconnected and depend on each other to create a harmonious user experience. A beautiful interface (UI) is useless without a thoughtful user experience (UX), and a good user experience must be complemented by an attractive interface to be truly effective.
UX and UI design in a nutshell
In the creation of websites and applications, UX and UI design play complementary roles. UX design shapes the overall experience, focusing on how things work and how users interact with content, while UI design focuses on the visual appearance and tactile interface of the platform. Together, they ensure that websites or applications are not only functional but also aesthetically pleasing, delivering a complete and satisfying user experience. By understanding each other’s distinctions and responsibilities, teams can better collaborate to create websites that delight and retain users.
