If you have been curious about the difference between UI and UX, this article will help you in understanding the difference.

User Interface (UI)

UI designers deal with the visual aspect of a product.

They are responsible for the look and feel of a website. They deal with things like typography, white space, and colors to make a website look good They focus on having a contrast between text and other elements on a page to ensure readability and accessibility. They think about the layout of the website like which is the best area to place a piece of text or an image or a button. They make designs for multiple screen sizes like laptops and mobiles. They integrate the brand's identity into the whole design by using brand colors and brand-specific graphics. They ensure that the design of the different pages is consistent.

User Experience

UX designers are responsible for designing and optimizing the user experience of a product.

UX designers think about how to enhance a product and make it more user-friendly. They analyze whether interacting with the product is straightforward or not. Is the experience smooth or clunky? They map out and optimize the user journey which is all the possible ways a user can interact with a product. They take care of things like how many steps is it taking to do a particular task. They try to reduce complexity. They talk to users, see the analytics data, and critically think about ways to improve the experience of a product.

Now, let's go over a few examples

Example 1

Suppose you have a quotes website where you have curated the quotes from the best authors and celebrities in the world.

The UX designer discovers that what people often do is that they copy a quote by selecting the desired text manually and then send it to their friends. The UX designer proposes the addition of a copy button to allow users to copy the text with a button click. The UX designer came up with a solution to improve the user experience.

The UI designer will now think about where to place the copy button, what icon to use for it, and what should be the color for it.

Example 2

You have a gaming news website

The UX designer discovers that people are coming to the signup page but only a small percentage of people finish signup. The designer investigates and finds that the signup form is long. It's asking for Full Name, Email, Password, Gender, Address, and Preferences. Users don't like this and don't signup. The designer proposes that we only ask for the full name, email, and password and after a user logs in, we can get the other details eventually.

Now, the UI designer makes the desired changes to the form and ensures that the design still looks good.

In this example also, the UX designer identified the area of improvement and proposed a solution for it. The UI designer made the necessary visual changes and ensured that the new design is consistent with the rest of the design.

So, that’s it in a nutshell. I hope you got an idea of the difference between UI and UX.