User Experience Design(UX) and User Interface Design(UI) acts as an intermediary between the user and the digital product, device or service. It is a vast and versatile field where one can gain awide variety of skillset.
What is UX/UI Design?
User Experience Design(UX) and User Interface Design(UI) are two very different things which are most commonly misunderstood to be the same. but both are equally essential for the development of a product.
UX design : User experience is a person's emotions and attitudes and experience about using a design, service or product. It includes the practical aspects of human-computer interaction.
UI design : Basically, the user interface (UI) comprises of screens, pages, and other visual elements like buttons, menus and drop-downs that enable a person to interact with a product, design or service.
What does a UX designer actually do?
The UX designer understands the customer's needs and crafts the design by keeping the customer in mind throughout the design process. The UX designer promotes and advocates the customer's needs throughout the process and ensures maximum customer satisfaction.
The design process of a UX designer mainly involves the following steps:
- Understanding the customer's needs - the UX designer communicates with the customer and understands what it is that they need out of the product.
- Evaluating the user brief and persona - he/she also goes through the brief and user persona so that the product can be crafted around the exact needs of the customer.
- Working on wireframes and use cases - the UX designer also develops low-fidelity and eventually, high-fidelity wireframes and sends them to the customer for approval
- Building working prototypes - he/she then builds working prototypes to see the interactivity and show the design at work.
- User testing - finally, the design as sent for user testing and case-studies are conducted.
The design process of a UI designer mainly involves the following steps:
- Gather user requirements - accumulate and evaluate the requirements of the user.
- Illustrate design ideas - this can be done with the help of moodboards, storyboards, workflows etc.
- Design graphical user elements - this includes menus, widgets, buttons etc.
- Navigation - work on the design navigation.
- Mockups - develop design mockups and prototypes.
- Create graphic designs - develop original vector art and illustrations
- Identify UX problems - these problems may include responsiveness etc.
- Make adjustments as per the feedback received from the user
- Make sure to use standard fonts, colours etc.
