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Understanding UI and UX Design: A Beginner's Guide

Once in a lifetime, we all have been annoyed with the miserable experience while navigating a website.

Have you ever heard of common problems such as slow website loading, difficult to reach information looking for, confusing or rushing website?

Have you heard of the terms UI and UX?

Yes, the reason behind these problems might be interaction of users with poorly designed websites.

We all use these terms interchangeably without realizing they hold different meanings and job titles in a company for the individual.

As a layman, you might be confused and clueless regarding whether they are a subset of each other, whether they work parallelly, can be used interchangeably and many more! Right?

Today, let’s clear all the questions with Microloop IT solution in Australia who delivers the best UI/UX design services.

Let’s deep dive into what UI and UX design really mean and the exact difference between the two.

What is UI and UX design

(UX) User experience design means the way how the end user interacts with a website or app.  It's a long process or journey that users experience while interacting with products or services on the website, and is not concerned with aesthetic looks or colours of the design.

It acts as a bridge between consumer and company by helping latter to understand their needs and fulfill their expectations. 

The design of the entire process from start to finish, including how users interact with the product, how easy it is to use, how it solves their problems, and how it makes them feel. The ultimate goal of the design is to create an efficient and easy experience for the users.

(UI) User interface design for a layman refers to visual or an interactive component such as typography, colours, iconography that contributes to overall look and feel of the website and catches users attention. 

It includes the design of buttons, icons, images, and other visual elements that make up the graphical user interface (GUI) of a website, mobile app, or software application.

UI design delivers the strength to the brand by designing powerful visual assets to the product interface that makes sure the design drafting is consistent and aesthetically pleasent. Moreover, make sure that you create designs that don't require much time for a user to think upon.

Elements of UI and UX design

Now that you know what the terms actually mean, let’s explore the elements of UI/UX that indirectly helps in building a blueprint of designing a website and generating a positive result for your business. Let’s start learning them

Providing best user experience with elements of UI Design

Before you begin with the design part, keep in mind two essential points:

  1. Content (What is it all about), and
  2. Audience (Who will interact with the design)

Moreover, there are also some fundamental elements that needs to be taken into consideration, such as:

Language

Select a language or tone that best suits your website requirement and catches customer attention. Remember you can choose your UI language to be playful, entertaining, serious, witty, or any other but make sure that it perfectly matches with the overall communication for your brand.

Colour

The element that is subjective and connects people's emotions to it. For e.g - We have often seen that red colour in a website usually depicts that the button is unclickable. 

Imagery

We all have heard the common saying “Image speaks a thousand words”. Similarly,  images used in UI helps users connect to the brand and increase the chances of interacting more with a website. Here are a few tips:

  • Start by using the appropriate position and size of the image and text.
  • Remember to have alternate text to image used, as images sometimes take time to load.
  • Images placed should be properly positioned before text.
Typography

A crucial element of UI design involves selecting the font style, line spacing, text legible before finalizing typography for your website. Choosing a good typography is an art that involves choosing, organizing and using the typeface which ensures that the copy is readable, scalable, and also contributes to the aesthetic appearance of a website.

Icons

A highly functional user interface through which user can easily depict that what particular feature of application will be locked or unlocked by clicking on the icon given in a website.The top 4 factors are to be taken into consideration while finalizing icons for a website:

  • Sizing - The ideal size of icons should be either 16px,20x,24x, or 32px.
  • Alignment - The icons should be center aligned because it ensures that they are well aligned and used correctly even when exported.
  • Colour - Use the colour of icons that reflects the importance of action to be taken or help a user to depict what it wants to convey.
  • Clearance - When designing icons for a touch surface, remember all targets should be 44px or greater.

Providing best user experience with elements of UX design

Input control

An interactive element of the interface that allows users to enter information into your system. Examples of input control include checkboxes, dropdown lists, text fields and many more.

Checkboxes

A vertical list that allows the user to select one or more options from a set including zero. Each box is independent of the other. For e.g - When you order a pizza, there is one section that asks you to multiple options from which you can select as many boxes as you want. Below is the checklist:

  • Extra cheese
  • Extra veggies
  • Chesse burst
  • Jain
Radio buttons

An element that allows users to select one item at a time. For eg - Any educational website can ask you questions such as whether you would like to apply for a course. You will have an option that would be either YES or NO.

Text fields

 An element that allows the user to enter text ,either as a single line or multiple lines.For e.g - A website might include a text box where users are asked to describe their specification in brief.

Navigational component 

 A component that helps customers to easily navigate a particular page faster. Examples of components are icons, image carousel, search box aims to upgrade user experience.

Icons 

A visual representation of an object, idea or action that you want users to understand easily. For e.g - Icon of search buttons, homepages, locations, email id's and more.

It allows a user to browse multiple images at a time and select the one they want to explore. For e.g - Exploring a collection of images on  a website where users can choose the one that best matches their needs.

It allows the users to enter a keyword or query to find the most relevant results. For e.g - Instead of navigating to any section on a and then selecting an item, users can simply type “Denim Jeans” in the search field .

Informational component 

It allows the users to access the content in a simple and understandable way. These elements involve breaking, organizing and labeling them properly.  Examples of informational components are such as notifications, pop up windows and message boxes and much more. 

Containers 

A graphical element that organizes and holds content within a user interface. They help to group related items together and provide a visual hierarchy to the layout of an interface.

E.g - An inquiry form on a website might ask you for different elements such as NAME, Email id and other essential information.

Benefits of UI UX design 

UI (user interface) and UX (user experience) design are crucial elements of any digital product, website or mobile application. Good UI/UX design has numerous benefits for both the business and the end-users. Let’s explore each one of them one by one:

How good UI design benefits your business

  • Acquisition of new customer 

A positive user experience can be a competitive advantage and acts as a differentiator factor between competitors. While customers become comfortable using your website, it will definitely lead to increase in sales and spread a positive word of mouth.

  • Brand loyalty 

With the help of UI design, your brand can gain loyalty without spending a single penny. This will help you build a large customer base that will be loyal to your brand , resulting in increased sales.

  • Increased productivity 

When your website is easy to navigate and the consumer doesn’t get confused or lost,  then chances of increasing productivity of both brand and individual increases simultaneously.

How good UX design benefits your business

Whether you have just started with your digital business or already have an existing one, UX benefits will surely help you grow your business. UX benefits are:

  • Boosting customer engagement 

A good UX design means attracting and retaining customers by providing a seamless and user-friendly experience, which ultimately leads to increased customer engagement and decreased bounce rates.

  • Improves creditblity 

A clean, well designed UX brand catches consumer attention for a longer time that indirectly leads to improving credibility of consumers.

  • Increases sales 

 There is a direct relationship between investing in UX design and increasing sales. The more you invest in UX design, the higher the chances of increasing sales.

  • Improves performance 

A well designed UX design improves performance of a website for a longer period of time. Once completed with proper attention and time, there is no need of looking back or making changes in a very short interval of time.

Summarize

We hope you now have a clarity on what the term UI UX means, and the difference between two. With the help of good UI UX design you will definitely take your business to the next level either by bringing more traffic or increasing sales for your business. 

If you want to get the best services of UI UX design for your brand, take assistance from the Microloop IT solution team because they deliver the best  UI UX solution in Australia as they have 8+ years experience and will:

  • Analyzing brand requirements
  • Designing by keeping targeted audience in mind
  • Implementing strategies that best suits your requirement
  • Maintaining website with updated UI/UX designs
  • Verifying whether UI/UX fetch you good results