While it is true that user experience design (UX) and user interface design (UI) are a set of applied skills, strategies and activities, which directly influence the final user experience in relation to use and perception of a product, each of the roles played by these parts has specific functions and scopes in the projects.

So let's talk about the UX’s role

The UX is a curious designer, who loves to investigate, search, ask, analyze, and observe, something like the bookworm of the creative world. It’s a very important position since it’s the person who, from an innovative, creative point of view and a little more sensitive to the user's perception, can generate the metrics of the impact that the product will have according to the objectives of the project, can also look for trends, take a look at what the competition is doing, analyze the complex world of the user and it’s also the bridge of communication between the design team and the developers.

The UXs have three types of activities and each one of them has tasks of documentation and deliverable material that allows testing with the users and verifying that what is being done does what is expected.

Strategic content activities, where the competitors, their products and the experiences they are generating are analyzed, then comes the user research and analysis, where all the needs, wishes, behavior patterns and tasks or routines they have, are investigated deeply, we have to know everything about our users. After having all this information documented, we must define the product strategy from an experience’s point of view and finally generate the info-architecture, which leads us to structure all the content and information that we will have in the product, to achieve it we use the User Cases, Flow Maps and Site Maps.

Prototyping activities, just when we are going to start shaping the product and generating material to do the initial tests, through wireframes, which define the element’s location and materialize the general structure of the product, wireframes generally, are made in grayscale, without using photographs or any distracting resource, but it’s recommended that at this point you already have all the real copy of the product, and then produce a basic prototype that contains all the tangible elements that allow you to verify the hypotheses of the user experience.

Execution and analytical activities, where the UX designer works as coordinator and bridge between UI designers and product developers as I mentioned previously, in addition to performing all the generation and measurement of metrics that allow evaluating both the user experience with the product as the objectives of the organization.

Now let’s talk about the UI Role:

The UI is a designer who overflows creativity, good taste, and talent for conceptualization. It has a critical eye for aesthetics and gets to connect the graphic of the project with the functionality and essence of the product, something like the rainbow of the creative world that hides a sin end of theories and meaning behind its beauty. This is a position that materializes and therefore shows a little better what people understand by design, but behind it, there’s a great background that makes UIs essential in any project, because they are the ones who visually understand what they want because they like and seek users.

They have two types of activities and each one of them is evidenced in graphic pieces or in file libraries that will be used as a reference and inspiring base throughout the interface design process, in addition to the final products that reach the hands of the users. users and developers.

Activities to define the appearance and behavior of the graphic interface of the product, which requires design research to find patterns, interface guides and the analysis of visual preferences of customers, where we know the colors, element types, fonts and others for which they feel an affinity for, to use in the product. All branding and support elements, such as guides and tutorials, are also developed if necessary.

The development of adaptability and interactivity activities that the UI must carry out for the product, is a very important part of the process since it’s the one that collects the final result of the entire design process, with the development of visual and interactive prototypes, which include colors, animations, interactions, graphic resources and others that can give users the greatest clarity and approach with the final appearance of the product. The UIs make the designs and adaptations to different devices and interfaces and accompanied by the developers in the implementation process.

We can conclude that the roles of UX and UI in the design and development processes are essential to generate successful digital products, meet the expectations of users, and meet the company’s objectives.