UI and UX design are two of the most frequently misunderstood and conflated terms in web and app design. And it’s understandable. They’re generally grouped together in a single word, UI/UX design, and on the surface, they appear to describe the same thing.

At its most basic, user interface (UI) refers to all of the pieces that allow a user to engage with a product or service. UX, on the other hand, refers to what the person interacting with the product or service takes away from the overall experience.

Despite the fact that user interface (UI) is obviously an enormously important aspect of the design, it is necessary to distinguish the whole user experience from the UI. Consider a website that provides movie reviews as an example. Even if the UI for discovering a film is flawless, the UX for a user seeking information about a small independent release will be subpar if the underlying database only contains films from major studios.

‘User experience’ encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products. Back in the 1970’s, if you wanted to use a computer, you had to use the command line interface. The graphical interfaces used today didn’t yet exist commercially. To utilize a computer, users had to communicate using a programming language, which required almost infinite lines of code to execute a basic task.

Both UI and UX are design disciplines that are linked yet very different in nature. The visual aspects of design, as well as the overall sense it transmits, are more important in UI design. However, without proper UX, even the most beautifully designed UI would result in a poor user experience.

A beautiful design cannot save an interface that is clumsy and difficult to use, and a fantastic, absolutely suited user experience can be ruined by poor visual interface design that makes using the app unpleasant. To develop a good user interface/experience, both UI and UX designs must be beautifully executed and completely linked with pre-existing user expectations.

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