Back to the Basics: What is App UI and UX?

Feb 21, 2021

If you have ever met a designer or have dived into the world of apps, chances are that you must have heard of the terms UI and UX. The almost interchangeable usage of the terms by non digital product enthusiasts has led to a confusion among the industry's newbies in the sense of what they mean. Let us dissect that in this blog.

What is a Mobile App UI?

The “UI” in a mobile app UI design defines the “user interface.” The app's user interface is basically the graphical layout present in any application. It constitutes of:

• ● Buttons that the users click
• ● The text which they read
• ● The media and images
• ● Sliders
• ● The text entry fields and every other element which the users interact with.

The app UI also consists of the transitions, screen layouts, interface animations and microinteractions.

What is Mobile App UX?

UX of an application stands for “user experience.” It is gauged by how the users interact with an app. The job role of a mobile app user experience designer entails answering the following questions:

• ● How smooth is the app experience, or is it confusing and clunky?
• ● How does the app navigation feels - arbitrary or logical?
• ● The media and images
• ● Is the app interaction making people believe that they are achieving a task? Or are they still finding it difficult?

User experience of an application is more or less determined by the fact of how difficult or how easy it is for the users to work inside an application by interacting with the UI elements present inside the app.

What is the relation between a UI and UX designer?

The work of a UI and UX designer lies together and operates in harmony. The UX designers decide on how the UI elements must work, while the UI designer focuses on how it would look.

Together, UI and UX are two very collaborative processes which ask for the design teams of both the domains to come together. While on one hand, the UX team would work on the app flow, how the buttons navigate through the tasks and how the interface would give the necessary information to the users. On the other hand, the UI designing team would work on how the interface elements would look on the screen and if that would make it easy for the users to understand how to move within an application.

So here was everything that you need to know about UI and UX, what separates them and how they work together. We hope that the understanding would help you have better interactions with both the teams.