UX versus UI

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

What is user experience?

User experience is defined as a person's perceptions and responses resulting from the use and/or anticipated use of a product, system, and advice. That's the official definition.

It is how somebody uses their website from their perspective. Anything from clicking on a site to filling out a form, that's all part of the user experience.

What is a user interface?

Conversely, the user interface is the platform that the users are using to complete the actions or go through their experience. So it is the code, the links, the forms they fill out. Anything that's interactive, that's going to be part of the user interface.

So the main difference is, UI's the medium, and UX is the experience.

The difference between UX and UI

UX deals with interaction design, so anything that they're going to watch, or read, or click on.

UI is going to be the medium through which it goes. This includes the player of the video that they're going to watch, the infographics that are displayed, and how those are displayed. UX is more based on data motion and user research.

A lot of testing goes into UX, figuring out what the users like. And then UI takes that feedback and also mixes it with the current designs and brand guidelines for the site. So, it's a mixture between what the users are looking for in terms of their experience with the site, and then the actual practical elements, like the design and the code that goes into it.

In terms of building a better UX, you want to make sure that you have:

• A wireframe
• Sitemaps
• Personas

Those go all into customizing the user experience.

And then, conversely, UI is all about:

• The layout of a site
• What it looks like in terms of colors, elements, and topography
• How content's laid out