UX and UI Are Not the Same But Shouldn’t Be Separate

If you are a seasoned web developer or even a beginner, you have probably heard of UX and UI. These two terms stand for user experience (UX) and user interface (UI). These definitions represent two paramount aspects of modern web design, and in particular, they relate to how the audience will respond to the content and the layout of a website.

UX Design: Understanding the User Experience

The term UX design is pretty self-explanatory. Essentially, designers are curating the experience that a customer has when visiting a particular platform or website. In short, by making the website more appealing and user friendly, designers can also enhance the client’s satisfaction and brand loyalty. People love to visit websites they like, and they hate to be stuck on frustrating pages that are hard to navigate.

UI Design: How Humans Interface With Machines and Your Website

UI design is somewhat similar, but there is one main difference. This particular branch of web design relates specifically to the way humans interact with machines—aka how people “interface with computers.”

To put it simply, when you visit a website, you might see a nice page with a cool logo, a clean menu and a few easy prompts that will allow you to navigate the page. However, there is a lot more to it than that. In reality, a website is a complex sequence of code strings that might not be truly understandable by the average net surfer. If I were to see the skin and bones of a website, meaning only its pure code, I probably would not know what to do. This is why designers create intuitive user interfaces, which allow regular guys like you and me to navigate through a website and access its content.

The Intersection of UX and UI

UI design is often highly correlated to the UX because a clean, easy-to-use interface often yields better results and resonates with people better. With such premises, it is easy to see why these two particular aspects of web design need to work in synergy. Both UX and UI design are indeed essential to web development, and the best designers out there go to great lengths to put people at the center of their vision. Ultimately, the purpose of most websites is to share content with people and promote a brand. For this reason, it is important for websites to be appealing and easy to navigate.