UX vs. UI: What's the Difference?

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UX and UI are two terms that are often mentioned in the same sentence, but that doesn’t mean they are interchangeable. UX and UI are so often conflated that you could come across a job posting for a UX Designer where the job description mistakenly outlines the responsibilities of a UI Designer and vice versa.

Although UX and UI are distinct practices, they overlap and complement each other. For this reason, it can be confusing to understand what makes them different and how they work together to create a great product.

UX and UI are two disciplines that work hand in hand to create a product, service, or website that is delightful and intuitive for customers to use.
User Interface (UI) relates to the aesthetic properties of a digital product, including the look, feel, and design of all the elements a user can interface with. Meanwhile,
User Experience (UX) is more big-picture and conceptual. UX considers a user’s journey in engaging with your product, how it solves their problem, and how it makes them feel. UX without UI is like an engine without the car surrounding it. You need both to get where you want to go.

To further understand the difference between UX and UI, let’s start with an example: YouTube.

Take a look at the YouTube home page. All the visual elements on the page are the work of a UI designer. That includes the search bar at the top, the choice of fonts and colors, the spacing between videos, the branding, the “Subscriptions” bar to the left, and anything else you can see or interact with on the page. The aesthetic choices that make up the look and feel of the page and the way in which information is presented are encompassed by UI. However, when we consider what information to display in the first place and how the product works when you interact with the UI, we begin to enter the realm of UX.

Imagine every YouTube video you click loads slowly. Imagine you search “cats” and nothing comes up. Imagine you can’t search by username, so it’s hard for you to find that girl who sang an acoustic rendition of your favorite Lizzo song.

The above outcomes result in a poor user experience (UX). If the product doesn’t offer the solution you are expecting, then there is a UX designer somewhere with her work cut out for her.

Cognitive scientist Don Norman, who first
coined the term UX in the 1990s, …read more

Source:: HubSpot Blog