The Difference Between UX and UI Design – A Guide

UX and UI: These two terms are often used, but mean very different things. So what exactly is the difference?

What are UX and UI?

UX stands for “user experience design”, while UI stands for “user interface design”. Both elements are important to a product and work closely together. But despite their relationship, both have quite different roles to perform, referring to very different aspects of the product development process and the design discipline.

Before going into key differences between UX and UI, let’s first define each term individually.

What is user experience (UX) design?

User experience design is the first way of designing any website.

User experience encompasses all aspects of the end-users interaction with the company, its services, and its products. – Don Norman, Cognitive Scientist & User Experience Architect

Well, the definition has no reference to tech, no mention of digital, and doesn’t tell us all that much about what a UX. But like all professions, it’s impossible to distill the process from just a few words.

Don Norman’s definition tells us that, regardless of its medium plenty of non-digital UX (and there are lots out there!) UX Design encompasses any interactions between a potential or active customer and a company. As a scientific process it could be applied to anything; street lamps, cars, Ikea shelving, and so on.

UX and the digital world

However, despite being a scientific term, its use since its inception has been almost entirely within digital fields; one reason for this is that the tech industry started blowing up around the time of the term’s invention.

Essentially, UX applies to anything that can be experienced—be it a website, a coffee machine, or a visit to the supermarket. The “user experience” part refers to the interaction between the user and a product or service. User experience design, then, considers all the different elements that shape this experience.

What is user interface (UI) design?

Despite it being an older and more practiced field, the question “What is user interface design?” Some times it's difficult to answer because of its broad variety of misinterpretations. User interface design is the look and feel, the presentation and interactivity of a Website.

But like UX, it is easily and often confused by the industries that UI design is a different job with completely different things. Mostly interpretations of the UI profession that are link to graphic design, sometimes extending also to branding design, and even frontend development. If you look at “expert” definitions of User Interface Design, you will mostly find descriptions that are in part identical to User Experience Design—even referring to the same structural techniques.

You can not say ones definition right because of the different mind sets. There is such thumb role for this.

UI and the digital world

So let’s set the record straight once and for all. Unlike UX, user interface design is a strictly digital term. A user interface is the point of interaction between the user and a digital device or product—like the touchscreen on your smartphone, or the touchpad you use to select what kind of coffee you want from the coffee machine.

In relation to websites and apps, UI design considers the look, feel, and interactivity of the product. It’s all about making sure that the user interface of a product is as intuitive as possible, and that means carefully considering each and every visual, interactive element the user might encounter.

A UI designer will think about icons and buttons, typography and color schemes, spacing, imagery, and responsive design.