The Tussle -UX v/s UI

One fine day I was all set for an interview in a software company. I had applied as a User Experience Designer. There were rounds of interviews, and then finally the HR came in and said “You talk about user experiences but nowhere you have mentioned about any sort of technical expertise like HTML5, CSS3, Adobe etc. in your resume..” He was expecting me to create actual interfaces for his products and all my efforts in convincing him was of no use that day. Two days later, I received a call again and was told that the CEO wanted to have a meeting. With all the prelusions in mind I was trying to be receptive. He was a man of nearly 40 years or may be more but young at heart. I was perceptive about the opportunity I had got and talked to him very outright. This discussion changed it all and he painted new from the scratch. Very beautifully he convinced me to choose between two names for my role ‘Functional Consultant’ or ‘User Experience Designer’, and at the same time he mentioned it would be better learning HTML and CSS which shall add value to your role. My role was of a different kind in the whole organization and I had to give it a shape. Hurray! I had bagged a job for myself. The whole experience made me realize how most of them live with a misconception between user interface designing and user experience designing, also using these terms interchangeably. Generally, it feels as if this confusion occurs due to overlapping skillsets involved in both the disciplines or might crop up as both these roles relate to users. I planned this article for all the readers just to ensure clarity on this view point.

User eXperience is designing flows and means of catering a product or service to the customers. User Interface is designing a face to the products or services for customers to experience the design. This aspect majorly focuses on branding and visual appeal while UX is more about architecture, layouts, actionable artifacts and being decisive on what features the product shall have and what shall be the means or how it has to be presented to them. For example if we take a website as our product, the logo, visual artifacts, colours and also typography to an extent is worked out by a UI designer whereas, requirement gathering, user research, creating personas for every stakeholder, site architecture, information architecture, content of the site, the action that has to be accomplished, whether a pop-up or a tab is more appropriate and so forth.

UX = Research + Design,

UI = Design + HTML/CSS/JS

The quality of a user’s experience influences the level of trust and confidence in the business which impacts their decision of using or not using a product or a service. At the same time, the interface is there point of interaction, from where they can accomplish what they want from a product or a service. Where UI is a point of interaction for the experience, UX is the holistic experience. Saying this, we can also say that UI is a component of UX as there may also exist user experiences which shall not have any user interface.

Instantiating the same, like one of those television serials or a cinema, what we see on screen - the actors, emotions, set and backdrop, the dialogue delivery etc makes the front end which the audience more likely relates to. Whereas, we have a lot more happening behind the scenes like story, screenplay, direction, dialogues and many more. This reminded me of a weekend spent at home when we had planned to see a movie. A story of a good for nothing guy, where the death of his mother was a turning point in his life, which transformed his life towards success. While seeing this moment, unknowingly I and my husband had tears in our eyes. If we had to review that movie, for sure it had to get five stars. Relating this to our analysis, the experience was awesome, the tears from our eyes was a delight but here is the bigger question, Who gets the credit? the actors and sets which helped in communicating those expressions and dialogues? or the team behind the scenes who thought of the story, put those scenes and dialogues in places, imagined the flow and put it through better direction and screenplays, and worked hard in getting that experience right? If you were a part of this team, I am sure you would have had only one thing to say “It was a team effort”. Surely, it was but when adding perceptions to it, untill the experience was planned right, how shall one think of the other aspects to fall in place.

On similar note we can say that UX and UI goes hand in hand but it takes a lot of behind the scenes work to end up at a capable, elegant, and delightful interface. It’s a huge strategic process that aims to create a product or website that customers are drawn to, find easy to use, and quickly understand. Generally, both UI and UX designers work together throughout the process, but their area of concerns and goals are totally different. They have their individual roles and responsibilities which complement each other irreplaceably. Conclusively, I would like to state a quote I read on the internet which says “UX is the intangible design of a strategy that brings us to a solution.”