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HOW IS UI DIFFERENT FROM UX?

Updated: Aug 17, 2020

USER EXPERIENCE (UX) as per the name is a person’s emotions and attitude about using a particular product, system or service. User Experience may be subjective in nature to the degree that it is about individual perception and thought with respect to a product or system. It varies dynamically, constantly modifying over time due to changing usage circumstances. Simplified, UX is about how a user interacts with, and experiences a product.


User Experience can be defined as a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service.

It can also be defined as “UX INCLUDES ALL THE USER’S EMOTIONS, BELIEFS, PREFERENCES, PERCEPTIONS, PHYSICAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL RESPONSES, BEHAVIOURS AND USE. “

The three factors that influence UX are the system, the user and the context of use.

On the other hand, UI is the series of screens, pages and visual elements like buttons and icons – that enable a person to interact with a product or service. UI is anything a user may interact with to use a digital product or service.


At the most basic level, UI is made up of all the elements that enable someone to interact with a product or service. UX, on the other hand, is what the individual interacting with that product of service takes away from the entire experience. It is important to distinguish the total User Experience from the UI even though UI obviously an extremely important part of the design. As an example, consider a website the movie review even if the UI for finding a film is perfect, the UX will be poor for user who wants information about a small independent release if the underlying database only contains movies from the major studios.


Some other differences between UX and UI are as follows : -

  • UX is focused on the user’s journey to solve a problem, UI is focused on how a product’s surfaces look and function. The User Interface is only a piece of that journey.

  • A UX designer is concerned with the conceptual aspects of the design process, leaving the UI designer to focus on the more tangible elements. In a professional context “UX DESIGNER” has a specific meaning and set of skills, based on a community of practice reaching back over 20 years.

  • UI is the bridge that gets us where we want to go, UX is the feeling we get when we arrive.

  • UI is focused on the product, a series of snapshots in time. UX focus on the user and their journey through the product.

  • UX encompasses all the experiences a person has with a product or service, whereas UI is specific to the means by which people interact with a product or service. UI is the specific asset User Interface with. For example – UI can deal with traditional concepts like visual design elements such as colors and typography. It can also look at the functionality of screens or more unconventional systems like those that the voiced-based.


UX development is the procedure of improving the overall experience of the users when they interact with the application or website in order to achieve its objective to provide maximum customer satisfaction. It keeps customer in mind and creates the basic skeleton of any application.UX is important because it tries to fulfil user’s needs. Its aim is to provide the experience that keeps user loyal to product or brand.

User Interface also plays a very important role, it can turn potential visitors to buyers as it facilitates the interaction between the user and your website or web application.

UI is quite an intricate field that involves anticipating the user preferences and then creating the interface that understands and fulfill those preferences. The UI not only focuses on the aesthetics but also maximize responsiveness, efficiency and accessibility of a website.

There are three types of user interfaces : -

Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) :

Users interact with visual representations on digital control panel. A computer’s desktop is a GUI.


Voice-Controlled User Interfaces (VUIs) :

Users interact with these through their voices. Most smart assistants – Example SIRI on Iphone, ALEXA on Amazon Devices are VUIs.

Gesture - Based Interfaces :

Users engage with 3-D design spaces through bodily motion. Example – Virtual Reality Games.

 ( This image is the example of UI in phones)
( This image is the example of UI in phones)

UI design and UX design are two of the most often confused and conflated terms in the web and app design. And understandably so, they are usually placed together in a single term UI/UX design, and viewed from the surface they seem to be describing the same thing. It is often hard to find solid descriptions of the two that don’t descend too far into jargon.


UX design is particularly interested in user expectations. All the experiences and interactions that user have had with every app they have used in their lives have helped set their expectations for how interfaces are supposed to work. If a UX designer is not intimately familiar with these expectations, they could inadvertently design an interface interactions that seems logical to them but breaks commonly accepted conventions.

UI design is more concerned with the surface and overall feel of a design. UI design is a craft where you, the designer build an essential part of the UX. UX design covers the entire spectrum of the UX.


The user interface (UI) is the point of human-computer interaction and communication in a device. This can include display screens, keyboards, a mouse and the appearance of a desktop. It is also the way through which a user interacts with an application or a website. The growing dependence of many businesses on web applications and mobile applications has led many companies to place increased priority on UI in an effort to improve the user's overall experience. UX designers perform a number of different tasks and therefore use a range of deliverables to communicate their design ideas and research findings to stakeholders. Regarding UX specification documents, these requirements depend on the client or the organization involved in designing a product.


The four major deliverables are: a title page, an introduction to the feature, wireframes, and a version history.


Depending on the type of project, the specification documents can also include flow models, cultural models, personas, user stories, scenarios and any prior user research.


Documenting design decisions, in the form of annotated wireframes, gives the developer the necessary information they may need to successfully code the project.


Conclusion :-


The reality is UI design and UX design both are completely different .UX design or User Experience Design is all about the user interaction or overall experience of a user with the product, webpage or an application. UI design or User Interface design is what is used to interact with the product and it focuses on user visual experience.


Whatever we design on screen through buttons, layout, slider, using color, etc to present the product for user interaction comes under UI design.

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