Development
UI vs UX – What’s the difference?
January 20, 2020LLT Group
You only get one chance to make a good first impression. You don’t get second chances with users engaging with your web content. Web users make decisions quickly. As a web business, you want to minimize any experiences with your web content or software that will trigger users to stop engaging with it.
Understanding the data behind your audience’s behaviors, motives, needs, wants, and desires are just a few of the things that will help with their experience. Therefore, the user experience must be factored in strategically so that any designs are implemented to fulfill satisfy users behaviours and to achieve the goals from the web content or software that’s being developed.
Why should businesses opt for UX or UI design?
- They can attract more leads
- They can have better looking UI
- They can retain more customers
What is UX? (User Experience)
User experience involves understanding the types of people and platforms that people are using to engage with your product.
What does UX involve?
A UX project will help with designing, managing, and launching:
- Wireframing
- Usability testing
- Competitor analysis
- User research
- Usability tests
- Information architecture
- Content strategy
Why is the user experience (UX) important?
UX design leverages data to align designs with the goals that the business wants to obtain from the web content or software.
Why should you consider hiring a UX designer?
UX designers will identify target users for the web content or software that’s being developed. Their research will extract data, which will identify their issues or frustrations caused from existing design gaps or flaws, that can be solved through UX design.
Improving the UX will provide users with a higher level of satisfaction when engaging with the product.
Why should your business opt for user experience?
For us as an agency we have a core belief that while UX may be a closely related term to a service we and other agencies offer, user experience is the key to our business and relationships on a much more holistic level.
This is the fact that for us User Experience supersedes everything that we do. It is simply not just the experience a user gets when going onto a digital product. But it is the internal, external and interpersonal relationships and interactions we create as humans. You see for us User Experience is the conversations and empathy we have for clients. It is the caring and devotion we have to understand ourselves internally and to push the boundaries of effective communication.
User experience is the “experience” any “user” within our system gets. Whether that be a client, vendor, partner, employee, etc. Focusing on ourselves of “users” of our relationships has helped to provide a unique angle by which we operate. It allows us to be put in the shoes of others more often and to learn about how and why they are looking to interact with us. It has driven our conversations to a much deeper and trusting level.
What is UI? (User Interface)
UI refers to creating the design of an interface that will meet the demands of the UX strategy. This means providing the environment that the UX decisions live in.
Why should you hire a UI designer?
UI designers take the strategy laid out by the UX designer and tries to offer a consistent and easy flow for the user.
UI involves:
- Interface design
- Consistency
- Content design
- Design research
- Visual design
- Accessibility
- Hi-fi prototyping
- Design handoff
The Difference Between a UX / UI Approach and a UX / UI Process
Approach accounts for how you are arriving at what needs to be done from a strategic level. Process is the act of carrying that out. Without an approach, the only possible fallback in process is to use a templated approach or one catered to another client. While this could work, it can also often lead to missed expectations.
Approach
The framework applied to determine the strategic and creative direction (ie. project vision)
Process
The schedule of responsibilities and tasks that exist to achieve the approach (ie. project roadmap)
Value Need, Scope Discovery, Project Discovery, UX Considerations, UI Considerations, Integration, Measurement & Iteration
What type of UX/UI work should your business consider?
Laser-focused
Those that have a relatively good idea of what they want (tactically) and need from an agency. For those that do, we focus primarily on making sure the discovery around the goals we are striving towards match the process and approach.
Guided-focus
Those that only understand a portion of what the want (tactically, organizationally, or strategically) and need from and agency. For those that don’t we focus primarily on helping the client understand their strengths in the relationship and weaknesses, and then fitting that into making sure goals, expectations and scope align to probable success.
How can LLT Group help you with your UX and UI?
We get that we work in the real-world; whereby budgets are always limited and timing is never enough. So by working with businesses in all different phases of their business cycle and growth curves, we help to identify the optimal mix and above that arrive at shared meaning for the things that we are enacting upon.
