What Is UX/UI Design

Introduction

Whether you press buttons on arithmometer, turn a handle of a grindstone or swipe on a smartphone screen — all these are the interfaces you use to interact with machines. And interfaces not necessary must be digital. It’s just the word that became more popular in digital era.

The aim of UX/UI designer is to lead user to some logic milestone in the interface. And make user to achieve his goal.

What Is UX/UI, Directly

UX — it’s User Experience. This is the experience or impression which user gets while working with your interface. Whether he is able to achieve his goal and how easy or difficult it can be achieved.

А UI — the User Interface, it is the way how interface looks and physical characteristics it obtains. It defines the color of your product, the convenience of aiming buttons, the text readability etc...

UX/UI Design — it is the creation of any user interfaces where usability is the same important as visual representation.

What Is UX/UI, In Other Words

The direct responsibility of UX/UI designer is, for example, to "sell" a product or a service via interface. And user makes a decision: "To be or not to be?", like or dislike, to buy or not to buy based on the result of work of UX/UI designer.

Actually the objectives of the designer can be different. It’s not necessary to "sell" something. But I intentionally don’t want to use too abstract examples here, to make this text clear for beginners and not make it sound like a manual for a programming language from 90’s.

UX/UI is not related only to mobile apps and web design. Furthermore, the UX/UI profession existed since the time immemorial. It just wasn’t named like this. Or rather it didn’t have a name at all, but was a part other professions.

Here is the first example: when in 1623 Wilhelm Schickard was inventing arithmometer he was a UX/UI designer already.

The first arithmometer as an example of UX/UI design
Wilhelm Schickard's arithmometer (replica).

That’s because he was deciding what toggles and in what direction the user has to switch to get the result of calculations. And that was him, who though about the logical order (placement) of these toggles. And finally, he was deciding how all these toggles and handles will look and what materials will be made of. He created an interface for interaction with the machine.

One more example, even more ancient and primitive — the grinding wheel. Even in the early Middle Ages there were a lot of varieties of wheel mechanisms already:

All these where the different types of interface.

Средневековый интерфейс точильного камня, управляемый ногой.
Grinding wheel with pedal.
Средневековый интерфейс точильного камня, управляемый рукой.
Hand driven grinding wheel.

So, when the inventor of the next grindstone was choosing between:

at that moment he was the UX designer.

And that man who was thinking about the size of this wheel, about the color of the wood for the stand, about what to use to join the poles (leather wisps or iron nails?) and what will be the length of the handle — he was the UI designer.

And the way how you sharpen a sword would be called interface.

The difference between UX and UI is that UX designer plans the way you will interact with the interface and the steps you must take to make something. But UI designer makes up how each of these steps will look like. As you see from the examples above UX and UI are so closely related, that sometimes the line between them vanishes. That’s why UX and UI are usually done by one person and his job title writes with /.

Recently the popularity of UX/UI designer jobs is related to the development of digital technologies. But the actual "boom" (when we started to see "UX/UI designer" job title in every second job announcement now) is associated with the title itself, which has appeared not so long ago.

UI/UX designer — is one of the most in-demand jobs in digital sphere now. For how long — it depends on the industry itself. But apparently, it is only gaining momentum.

UX & UI is not a trend. Technologies develop. Demand for websites is growing. Digital applications pop up like mushrooms after the rain. And design and development tools are simplified so much that even a random person without a special knowledge of programming language can make a simple website. But this site must look like something. And not just like an abstract wireframe with text and buttons. Here coders need the help of UX/UI designer.

The separation of the web-designers and UX/UI designers appeared as a result of the Internet development. Over time, more narrow specialists, who would work only on web interfaces, became in-demand.
And yes, "UI/UX design" — it is more extensive and capacious concept than the "web design".

P.S. Some people write it like "UI/UX", but I prefer to write "UX/UI". And that’s only because you design the UX first and then YOU work on UI design. But that’s not important — you can write it in any in order you wish. More important is not to change the order during the actual design process. Because many beginners start thinking what cool buttons and features they will make in the interface first. But don’t think how users will move from one step to another.