What is UX design?
UX is the design of products and services prioritizing the human being, with the aim of creating pleasant experiences for our users.
Donald Norman is credited with coining the term “user experience” in the late 1990s. Norman believed that regardless of your medium, UX Design encompasses all interactions between a potential customer and a company.
It is commonly thought that UI UX design services can only be used on digital products such as websites or mobile applications. However, it is a discipline that can be implemented in both digital and physical services or products.
Whether the user goes to the supermarket to do the grocery shopping, or books a hotel room from an application, UX design can be applied in both cases.
However, the tech industry has adopted the name and practically made it its own. For this reason, whenever we talk about UX design, we think exclusively of digital applications.
User experience is determined by how easy or difficult it is to interact with a product or service.
UX design seeks to answer the following questions:
- Is the experience easy and intuitive or difficult and confusing?
- What parts of the process are very complex and could be simplified?
- Is enough information being provided to the user to make decisions in their process?
- Does it feel “natural” to navigate the app or definitely not?
- Does interacting with the app give people the feeling that they are efficiently accomplishing their desired tasks or does it feel like a struggle?
UX design in a nutshell
Here’s what you need to know about UX design in a nutshell:
- User experience design is, in theory, a non-digital practice (cognitive science), but predominantly used and defined by the digital industry.
- It is the process of developing and improving the quality of the interaction between a user and all interactions with a company
- Focuses on the overall feel of the experience
- The ultimate purpose of UX design is to create easy, efficient, relevant, and completely pleasant experiences for the user.
Now that we have understood what UX design is, we can define what UI design is.
What is UI design?
UI Design refers to the design of the user interface, that is, the graphic design of an application.
It consists of the buttons that users click, the text they read, images, sliders, text input fields, and all other elements that the user interacts with. That also includes screen layout, transitions, interface animations, and every micro-interaction.
UI design is the appearance of an application’s user interface (it’s how it looks) so it involves color combinations and button shapes, the width of the lines, and the fonts used for text.
UI design seeks to make the application’s interface attractive, visually stimulating, and appropriately styled to match the purpose and personality of the application.
UI design seeks to answer the following questions:
- Do the colors and fonts match the company’s brand identity?
- Are the animations and micro interactions fluid?
- Is the visual aesthetic of the site consistent with the story you want to tell?
- What will the application look like in its mobile version?
- Is the design of the application visually pleasing to the customer?
Let’s say you mainly care about making the product look aesthetic or pretty.
UI design in a nutshell
- UI Design Is a Purely Digital Practice
- A UI designer will think about icons and buttons, typography, color schemes, spacing, images and responsive design
- UI design transfers brand strengths and visual assets to a product’s interface , ensuring that the design is consistent, coherent, and aesthetically pleasing
- The final objective of UI design is that the visual aesthetics of the product are pleasant for the user.
Differences between UX and UI
Let’s make an analogy to understand the differences between UX and UI.
Imagine a car rental website, the user interface design (UI design) includes its logo, typography, and composition; On the other hand,UI UX design services have to do with how easy it is to choose a car and the process of renting it.
It is important to understand that UX and UI go hand in hand, you cannot have one without the other. To have a good UX you must have a good UI and vice versa.
However, the main difference to keep in mind is this: UX design is all about the overall feel of the experience, while UI design is all about how the product’s interfaces look and work. A UX designer considers the entire user journey to solve a particular problem, what steps they take, what tasks they need to complete, and how easy the experience is. Much of their work focuses on discovering what kinds of problems and pain points users face and how a certain product could solve them.
You will conduct extensive user research to find out who your target users are and what their needs are in relation to a certain product.
Subsequently, the UX designer will map the user’s journey through a product considering: the information architecture, that is, how content is organized and labeled in a product, and what type of functions the user might need.
This way you will create diagrams that establish the basic plans of the product.
With the skeleton of the product mapped out, the UI designer steps in to bring it to life.
UI design considers all visual aspects of the user journey, including all individual screens and touchpoints the user may encounter.
In short, UX/UI design is the discipline of creating digital products that are simple, intuitive, efficient, and aesthetic for the end user.
The advantages of UX/UI design
Reaping the benefits of great UX/UI design is more vital than most think.
Every time a user does not intuitively understand what they have to do to complete the desired task, they will feel frustrated, as a result they will prefer not to use your application.
That is undoubtedly bad for your product.
It could damage your reputation and even affect your marketing and sales strategies. Here is the importance of a well-designed UX/UI.
Improve customer acquisition
Customer acquisition requires a lot of planning and strategizing, one of which is user experience.
Delivering a strong and valuable user experience gives businesses a huge competitive advantage in attracting and retaining their customers.
The more aesthetically pleasing a brand’s site design and the more intuitive the features are, the easier it will be for them to build trust and therefore the chances of the brand attracting more users and converting them into repeat customers will increase.
Optimize development time and cost through UX/UI
People hate using apps that are buggy, crash frequently, or have an outdated design.
Likewise, a website that is confusing to navigate, uses poor typography and disjointed color schemes, will have a high bounce rate.
These reasons point to the need for brands and companies to turn to a professional design agency because with their help, they will be able to integrate an efficient and optimized UX/UI, which will allow them to save valuable time and costs.
Companies that integrate UX/UI design into their development processes easily identify and address usability issues they encounter during and after development.
Designers can anticipate user needs before releasing the solution to a broader audience and ensure the design is scalable and flexible.
More user engagement
It is a priority for all UXUX designers to prioritize user engagement and use it to inform their design and style choices.
When a potential customer ends up on a brand’s website, the brand has three seconds to convince them that they’ve come to the right place. If you are successful with that, you will have another 30 seconds to hook it.
The easiest way to get visitors to interact with a brand’s site is to guide them toward a particular action through well-thought-out design.
It’s much better for a site to be direct and clear about what it’s supposed to do, and that should take priority over a complicated design that looks great.
How to start making a UX/UI effort in your company
Given all of the above, it is not surprising that good UX/UI design has gone from being desirable to becoming a priority for almost all companies. If you’re not sure how to get started at your company, these steps might help:
Know your industry and your users
Your task is to gain users, make sure you always think from their perspective. The first thing you should do before starting your UX design process is find out what your end users expect. You can achieve this through defining your user personas and studying your competition.
Make sure everyone in your organization knows about your user journey
Everyone on your team should understand users inside and out to resolve friction points and meet their needs. The UX team should have it almost tattooed, newcomers should learn it from you.
Involve everyone in the UX/UI strategy
Working with a happy and committed team will make it easier to connect with end users. To do this, treat your most valuable users, in this case, your employees, as you would your target audience.
Share user feedback with the entire company – even casual conversations with a few customers can drive new improvements or change the way you think. This may be enough to make your collaborators identify with customers and prioritize UX efforts to improve the company’s results.
Prioritize and develop
The Lean Startup philosophy might be helpful to you because it suggests starting small, and focusing on creating the UX design for an MVP rather than the entire product right away.
In that sense, you should start by defining which features are essential to show the value of your application and which can be postponed; Skip every action, screen, or feature that doesn’t help demonstrate your MVP. That will save you time, and money and help you focus on your unique value proposition.
Choose a simple and pleasant interface for the UX/UI of your site
The UI UX design services should be uncluttered and easy to navigate. As for the UI, you could build it using native platform UI components or libraries. This must coincide with the general principles of visual design (unity, balance, hierarchy, proportion, emphasis and contrast), in addition to the principles and conventions of internal design.
