The term UX stands for user experience and it is all about how a user feels about using a product or service. Here, when we talk about a product, it can be anything from a coffee cup or a car to a website. So UX design is the process of designing a product to be usable and enjoyable for the user. More practically, UX design focuses on designing the experience of digital products like websites or apps.
The simplest explanation of UX
Ok here, let me clarify more about what exactly “the experience” means. Every time, when you interact with something, you experience it. Have you ever experienced “You pull the door to open instead it has to be pushed”? And you thought “how am I supposed to open it?”. It is because of the bad experience design of that door and you might result in feeling embarrassed. And there UX design comes in to solve this problem and make it easier to open for the user. This is a practical example of UX design that usually comes into your daily life. You can understand that UX design is just the process of improving or helping a user to complete their goal more easily.
How UX design works
In the digital world, UX processes become more complex and contain a lot of other aspects to consider to help the user. First, we, UX designers, need to understand the users’ behavior, users’ needs, and wants and have to empathize with their pain points. To understand these, we have to conduct various kinds of research. Some research methods focus on the behavior and motivations of a user, and some on the needs of a user to help us identify what opportunities exist in a particular market for product solutions.
After conducting the research, we analyze those findings and draw out problem statements to brainstorm the solutions. And then we develop those solutions as wireframes and prototypes which are sketch versions of real final products. We test those sketches with users to verify whether our solutions really solve their problems.
When we are sure those sketches really meet users’ needs and solve their problems, we move into another phase called “UI (user interface)”.
Difference between UI & UX
Most people think UI and UX are the same things. In fact, UI is just a subset of the UX Design process. Or simply can say, UI is the visible final result of the UX design process.
The term UI stands for user interface and it’s all about everything you can see. UI is made up of all the elements that enable someone to interact with a product or service. Buttons, cards, or navbars in a website are UI elements and they help to complete your actions.
Let’s say with the “pushing door” example that I mentioned above. When we discover this door is confusing to open, the process of thinking about how to solve this problem is UX and the solution result is visible as UI. The solution can be like sticking a note on the door to push. The visual presentation part of the note is UI.
In the digital world, UI focuses on
- visual, interactive elements of a product interface—including buttons, icons, spacing, typography, color schemes, and responsive design.
- transferring the brand’s strengths and visual assets to a product’s interface, making sure the design is consistent, coherent, and aesthetically pleasing.
Meanwhile, UX focuses on
- the overall feel of the experience
- how to solve the user problems
In fact, UI without UX is just like something beautiful but not useful. Also, UX without proper UI is like something usable but not joyful to use.
Conclusion
The UX design field is becoming more and more popular since our world has become more digitalized. UX is involved in every action of our daily life, not only in the digital world but also in physical interactions. If you want to learn more details about what UX designers do or you want to learn UX Design, you can learn from these resources.
