“A cake would look naked without the icing. And the icing has no purpose without the cake.” – Sarah Gibbons
This quote spoke out to me particularly because it analogized the importance of expertise in both UI and UX as their own fields of study but also shows how important it is for both UI and UX designers to work in unison or be educated in both fields themselves. Another example this made me think of was a toothbrush and toothpaste. A toothbrush can only do surface level cleaning of your teeth but cannot target the microscopic germs. Likewise, without the many individual bristles of a toothbrush, toothpaste wouldn’t be effective as it wouldn’t be able to get into the nooks and crannies of your teeth.
“The main difference between UI and UX design is that UI focuses on the interface, so its what you see… UX has more to do with what happens when the user is stuck on a page during the checkout process. What actions should they be able to take? Now companies are expecting designers to know both UI and UX. Therefore they are called product designers because they now own the entire product” – Christine Chun
This was a common thought I had as I was watching all the experts speak on this topic. It doesn’t seem effective for a company to hire a separate team for both UI and UX when the work is so closely related. Instead of having a team of UX come to a team of UI designers with a general idea for a product and making critiques on it as it goes, it would seem more efficient for said team of UX designers to work on the UI themselves after agreeing on the design aspects they desired.
“The UX Designer is responsible for the overall experience, understanding the users, and helping give concepts and ways of improving the experience for users. The UI designer is responsible for visually representing all of these concepts and ideas in a way the user knows exactly how to use them. So the places where we see the work of the UX designer and the UI designer really overlapping is where there’s the connection between the conceptual and visual work.” – Dee Scarano
In this video, Scarano uses the Spotify desktop app as an example and breaks down which tasks would be done by UX designers and which would be done by UI designers. She later mentions how UX designers and UI designers can be tasked with the same assignments which is why many times you will see job postings titled “UI/UX Designer.” This reiterates the point I made in response to the Christine Chun video where it seems more efficient to hire someone to take on both roles.
While UI and UX are closely related and often work together, UI is primarily the visual aspects of a product’s interface, while UX encompasses the entire user experience, including both visual and non-visual elements, focusing on the functionality, usability, and enjoyability for the user.