What do you experience while navigating a website? Color, features, content, and layout all make a massive difference in your takeaway. In short, UX and UI designers are the reason websites don’t look like they did in 2002. Virtually all big companies employ UI designers to create and maintain their web presence.
Do UX/UI developers only work in web development?
No. The role of UX and UI professionals are similar across the board. In addition to websites, they assist in the design and presentation of products, services, software programs, games, and more.
In this article, we’ll take a close look at the role of UX and UI designers in the field of web development. We’ll get into the specifics in a moment but, before we proceed, let’s define the acronyms:
- UX: User Experience
- UI: User Interface
UX and UI designers work together towards the common goal of making a website usable. Initial appearances can be misleading, and many people mistakenly believe UX and UI design are the same. While these professions share similarities, these two fields approach the problem from different angles.
What Is UX Design?
User experience design focuses on a user’s interaction with a website. UX designers program and logically arrange website features to ensure the user’s participation is smooth. An excellent UX designer must determine a site user’s goals and orient the website to provide a positive experience. User experience designers often ask themselves a set of fundamental questions:
- What does the user want to accomplish?
- Does the website help the user accomplish their task?
- Is the site easy to use– or confusing and clunky?
User experience designers work closely with other web professionals to ensure the site meets the company’s goals. These designers manage the features and content of the site, along with its usability. Businesses employ UX designers from many educational and experience backgrounds, including sales and psychology. UX designers are human-oriented and focus on the needs and wants of website users. If you’re good with people, you’ll excel as a UX designer.
What Is UI Design?
User interface designers are all about aesthetics. Unlike UX developers (who are mainly concerned with interaction and functionality), UI designers work to make a website attractive and inspiring. User interface designers know what makes a site memorable, so they work to integrate functionality with design. UI designers design and logically arrange website features with visual experience in mind. As a UI designer, your responsibilities will include:
- Making a website visually attractive.
- Determining which features must be easily accessible.
- Formatting a site for large and small screens.
- Integrating brand image and style.
- Creating graphics and animations.
- Ensuring style consistency.
UI designers optimize a website’s presentation. Like UX designers, UI designers identify problems and form creative solutions with the user in mind. UI designers are often creative individuals with a background in industrial or graphic design. Like UX designers, UI designers come from a wide variety of career backgrounds. If you pay close attention to appearance, you’ll love a career in UI design.
How to Become a UX/UI Designer
There are a few basic requirements to land a job in UX or UI design. First and foremost, you’ll need coding experience. While UX and UI developers primarily focus on website design, they’re also responsible for putting it all together. These tech professionals take ideas from the drawing board to reality, and every step in between.
If you didn’t go to college for coding, don’t worry. Many UX and UI designers went to college for art or graphic design, followed by a brief coding bootcamp to complete their skillset. Coding bootcamps, like Flatiron School, specialize in UX and UI design and prepare students for a career in months. Though a college degree is helpful, you don’t necessarily need any degree to succeed in UX and UI design. Through specialized UX design bootcamp programs or UI coding bootcamps, you can learn all the skills you need to land a job as a UX or UI designer.
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