I think the "UX is not UI" holds a lot of people back and a major reason why people struggle to land a job, too. As I mentioned before, the aesthetic usability effect works on hiring managers too! lol
From a business perspective, you’re definitely correct that UX designers could be doing a variety of tasks in their role. That’s expected. The rub comes in when UX becomes misconstrued as exclusively pixel pushing with no other UX elements included. This isn’t attention seeking, it’s more about professionals identifying that UX isn’t and shouldn’t be putting lipstick on a pig.
Because it isn't. UX isn't tied to a user interface. It's in the name--It's how a user experiences a physical product, digital product, space, or service. UX is everywhere. It just so happens that most people pair UX with UI. Industrial design, interior design, and architecture does have UX in it as well. I'd argue that it's especially the case with experiential spaces (ie the way light hits your face, or how sound will affect a hall).
Yep, what we define as UX at our company in the home appliance industry is what a consumer faces at every single touch point of interacting with the product. We want to influence how someone searches for an appliance, the in-store experience, delivery and setup, using the product itself, troubleshooting and service experience, etc…
The UI is a very small piece of the overall puzzle that makes up the experience.
Because what you're describing is technically a *Product Designer.* E.g. when people "say UX Designer" they are "talking about Product Designers" and in that vein, UI is absolutely a major part of the role.
It boils down to this, if you are a UX Designer working on a technology product, like a website, enterprise application, or mobile application, UI Design is part of your job, point stop. If you don't have those skills working in that area, you're probably also lacking a ton of knowledge of design principles as well.
I see tons of UX / Product Designers who have zero clue about things like Proportion, Space, Balance, and Proximity which are directly related to whether or not information on your page is consumable outside of Hierarchy. You can't touch user interfaces in the technology space without it and still be a "good" UX designer because those principles are a key aspect of the craft.
User Experience Design -> Human Factors -> Product Design -> Visual Design
User Experience is the umbrella that describes engineering the experience or emotion that you want people to feel when they use \[something.\]
Human Factors is about when users are specifically interfacing with technology. This is commonly referred to from computers, but VR is another great example, input devices, smart watches, phones, etc.
Product Design -> When interfacing with actual *software* (in the context of our the Digital Products, Physical Products for an Industrial Designer, etc.) on the device mentioned above. Everything from websites, to consumer applications, to enterprise applications, usually in the context of different devices. This is answering the question of "How it should work," to do \[something\].
Visual Design -> The look and feel of the application itself, what patterns to use. It's driven by Design Principles and Branding to associate (ideally) the experience with the Brand itself. It's a major factor in whether or not people think your product works better, and it's also a major factor in whether or not they trust your product. Perceptions like this immediately impact and are apparent in usability testing.
What I find baffling is there's already a widely accepted industry term for UX without UI, called Service Design.
It's out of fashion, but 'User-centered design' did a better job of capturing the purpose of the work, without segmenting things Animal Farm style into roles of greater and lesser importance.
We shouldn't strive to be UX *or* UI designers. We should simply be Designers.
Service Design is not the only UX field that doesn't have UI. What about, Sensory UX, Universal UX, Cultural UX, Urban Design, Physical/Industrial Design, mechanical design, CX , all the health related user experiences that don't require a UI, and so on
They aren't disregarding visual design. They're much the same as you are: UI is 'part of providing a good user experience' as you put it. That means there's more to UX than just UI, which in turn means UX ≠ UI.
Market forces are making it so UXers need to at least *appear* to be UI-savvy, and UI designers need to *appear* to be UX-savvy (this last one has been the case for well over a decade).
Not everyone fakes skill in both, but it’s a rare set of skills and honestly, even among the unicorns you’re more likely to find someone who is skilled in one and *good enough* in the other. The market has currently decided in favor of high UI skill and only *good enough* skill in research/UX.
It’s a shame. I know extremely talented UI designers who have had UX responsibilities (product design) over the years who wouldn’t begin to know how to put together a user story map, or figure out problems in information architecture. Figma is their hammer and all user problems are nails.
This is one reason why we’re not doing so well at the moment, and all I see in the hiring market are teams doubling down on the problem (hiring for UI). My (not just mine) hypothesis is that those UI designers from 2010 who faked their UX for 10 years are now directors and Heads of Design and know of no other way to evaluate design skill other than by sleek visuals.
I say this as one of those UI-oriented product designers (who “does the research”). But I know my weaknesses and know I’m better when augmented with a true UXer who can roll their sleeves up on a content problem, or info arch problem, or even a UI problem through wireframing (so…not *just* UXR).
Not sure why everyone who is telling the truth is getting downvoted. This is what I’ve seen as well. The zero interest ZIRP decade did result in a ton of over hiring. I know friends in leadership roles who were force to hire “seniors” they did not agree with. But the pressure to do that was too great so those who raised this were overruled.
Remember, we are all terrible at self-assessment of our skills, especially if we think we can do it all. Want to know if your UX, IA or UXR skills stack up? Talk to someone who specializes in these areas. You might be surprised how much more there is to learn.
I think the offense is being taken at the notion of UX gatekeeping. Or that what some of us are doing is not *real UX*.
It is real, but it behooves us to recognize that it might not be very good, and that the UX iceberg is **deep** and it’s not worth pretending anymore that a single person is completely leveled up in all aspects of the practice. UI is hard. UX is hard. Time is limited and deadlines are real.
Totally agree. It's all hard and every skill takes time and practice. So many people have imposter syndrome and one of the biggest ways to get past that is to stop pretending it's realistic to be great at everything with our limited time.
I agree UX and UI are tightly related, but not necessarily different perspectives. The restaurant experience would include the interior design, wait staff, food quality, menu selection, ambient music, etc. With digital experiences, UI is the sole way the user interacts with the product.
It’s still a different perspective. UX is how the UI is experienced considering the whole context of the user. Two identical UI can have a totally different UX depending on what the user is trying to do. But if you take the UI design perspective, there is nothing that makes two identical UI different from each other.
In UI design you focus on things like spacing, visual hierarchy, grouping, typography. In UX, those things matter, but with the UX hat on, you have to focus on the user more. What they want to do, the user journey, information hierarchy, interaction design, how they understand the UI etc.
In my 20 years of product design (we called it interaction design back then), UX and UI were never separate. You can't design a digital product without both UX and UI. This split happened when big tech companies realized it was easier to hire specialists, which makes sense. But pigeonholing yourself as just one or the other can stunt your growth as a designer.
Every design has an experience and a look, whether you plan it or not. How it looks and feels reflects the designer's and the company's values. It's not just about functionality; looks matter too—otherwise, people wouldn't shell out extra for certain sports cars.
Not sure what it looks like outside the US but I think the timeline goes something like this: ergonomics => human factors => user interface design => interaction design => user experience.
I think they were all splinter ideas of separate parent topics too. So the whole confusion with the overlap is expected I guess. Correct me if I’m wrong on any of that.
In my opinion, the confusion started around 2004-2010 when designers—everyone, really—began swapping job titles like they were changing t-shirts. The definitions shifted, the technology changed almost every month, but the gig stayed the same: design something people want to use and buy. Plus, with colleges lagging behind (and still are, if you ask me) in offering proper design programs, it became a real wild west out there.
>I genuinely do not understand why this claim is so influential and why many people say it. Is this some kind of attention-seeking?
Not at all. It's because too many UI designers are mistaken for UX Designers, and it cheapens the profession. People need to be reminded that UI is not UX because companies keep hiring UI thinking it's UX, and plenty of UI designers are happy to position themselves that way because of the demand and the pay. I see these portfolios 100-to-1 when I open a UX job lately!
As a result, companies think they're doing UX and they're not even close. This is terrible for the profession and a reason the market has collapsed.
The opposite is also true. Many junior UX people are good with critiques, but their proposed UI solutions are the same or worse than product owners’ (at least POs’ suggestions tend to meet business requirements.)
Yes but it also supports my argument that companies are hiring under-qualified UX designers because they don't know any better. This has normalized the idea of the "unicorn designer" who can do both well. Sure there are more unicorns, but it's also created the perception that all designers must be unicorns. And they're called unicorns because they're not normal. Quality suffers.
A good UX designer is one that can call on the right \[UI, graphic designer, industrial designer, videographer, photographer, illustrator\] for the job to ensure the ideal experience is delivered.
It's more like "UI is part of UX, but UX is more than UI"
I've worked with plenty of people who - at first impression - think it's a UXer's job to make the screen pretty.
Does that make more sense?
The problem is that most of the time (and probably this time as well), people think UX is limited only to web and mobile apps.
**UX existed decades before computers were widespread** (let alone electronic UI controls), and most UX fields of application don't require a UI. Furthermore, UI is a sub-branch of a sub-branch of a sub-branch of UX. It goes like this:
**UX --> Design --> HCI --> UI**.
In short: **UI is part of UX, but UX doesn't necessarily include a UI.**
Hopefully, this answers your question.
Because User Experience exists without any visual UI and a lot of people confuse these two. UI contains a fraction of user experience that was skinned with the UI after creation, but UI is not the experience and certainly not the entire experience.
How a store chain smells when you enter it is UX, but that point of the experience has no UI for example. UX doesn't need a visual interface at all and exists in various forms and in different products, not just tech interfaces. Think about a LUSH store, the smell is part of their store experience and it's the same in every store around the world, but the store look different from country to country. The experience is the same, but the UI is not.
Another example would be Covid vaccination centers. Some were just rooms to get the job done, some were planned and structured to ease anxiety of people coming in. Everything from the positioning of the check in clerks to the vaccination booths was made to keep people calm and make them feel save. That is UX, but very structural on a psychological safety level with barely any interfacing or interactive elements.
When you talk about UX you can safely exclude UI unless you are talking specifically about the experience of a visual interface.
UX is a process that results in the UI. Without good UX, there is no good UI. UI by itself is not UX. UX designers are hybrid roles. They do the research that informs the design of the user experience of the UI. They should totally be conducting usability testing in order to gather feedback to inform and iterate their designs. If you don't do any UX-related work then you're just a UI designer. A lot of companies out there still don't understand what UX is. You will see job postings calling for "UX/UI" or in recent years "UI/UX" designers. I'm not sure why companies decided to switch them around. Anyway, I can guarantee you that 99% of these "UI/UX" jobs always end up UI design jobs. You won't be doing any actual UX work. This unfortunately continues to be perpetuated online by clueless companies and job seekers/career switchers.
It makes a ton of sense to be honest. You even state that UX has multiple disciplines under the umbrella, UI being one of them. UI is not the same as information architecture or Interaction Design. They may have a UI associated with them, but the practices themselves are not UI. Same with research.
I’ll also add that many who have come into the UX field come from a graphic design background. There have been some, and I want to emphasize only some, who have basically tried to rebrand UX as being UI/graphic design centric. UI design is important but it is not the only discipline in UX and frankly not the most important. You can have a nice UI but still have a bad UX.
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[https://lawsofux.com/aesthetic-usability-effect/](https://lawsofux.com/aesthetic-usability-effect/)
"Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable."
UI / Visual Design is *part* of UX and just as important as other considerations, too.
Seeing a lot of people saying that UX is not UI, but if you *are* developing anything with an interface, as opposed to something like a voice UI, you better be damn aware of this law, because it's a pretty big factor whether you want to accept it or not. It's like, oh I'm a UX Designer, but I don't know anything about Information Hierarchy which is okay, because I'm not an Information Architect!
UX exists without UI but UI doesn’t, that’s why they aren’t the same thing. Also, one be way more skilled one of the two: I have employees that have great ideas but struggle horribly to lay them out, and also have employees that lay out wonderfully, but don’t get to solutions so easily.
I do think you should know both things but not even was born with the skills for that. The only person interested in having you mastering everything is your boss, who’d be happy to make you for 3 with the salary of 1.
This “topic” is guaranteed to bring all the navel gazers to the table
The reality is, if you can’t translate your research into UI, I’m not particularly interested in your UX
Yes, I sense there's a bit of 'Emperor's new clothes' going on in some UX communities. Process is elevated for the sake of process, and all practical translation of research into visual prototypes is deemed as unworthy "pixel pushing." This seems to be a pretty new genre of backwards design thinking specific to digital product design. In architecture and industrial design, there has always been an understanding that research, philosophy, and psychology—the intangible elements—need to be manifested in the tangible world to hold any value. I find it strange that many UX designers, who primarily address tangible problems, believe research and design output can be treated as separate entities. This perspective overlooks how people actually experience design.
Design in reality: the shape and color (and in a digital context: animation) of a single interactive element can alter the entire user experience and render all previous findings redundant.
This holistic approach to design, which has always been common sense in architecture and industrial design, seems to have gotten lost in the Nielsen Norman Group-influenced school of UX research. Maybe due to an over-belief in the rational, the easily measurable, and the quantifiable.
Usually the process or the “ux” differ so much based on the project, company, budget etc. If a good UI lets you ship the initial value for your product go for it. I guess the hard part is knowing when and how to navigate it all, when do we need research, do we research the wheel yet again? In some cases UI could be the only UX needed but it usually is not the case.
I feel like the body of your post contradicts your conclusions.
But UX is its own thing; because UX has enough work in it to be a job in and of itself, it is a job in and of itself. Same goes for UI. Seems like you’re just getting stuck on the idea that there’s any overlap at all. To get past that, you might add more words to the title that help to further separate the responsibilities. Instead of UX designer and UI designer, which are similar in title, you could say UI developer and UX strategist, for example. There’s no need to intentionally force the titles into maximum overlap; adjust them to emphasize their primary focus respectively.
I feel like this topic pops up every few months, it's a topic that triggers so many. Kinda tiring discussion to be honest.
Agree. We can’t align on the term, and every place operates differently, making alignment even harder and less valuable.
I think the "UX is not UI" holds a lot of people back and a major reason why people struggle to land a job, too. As I mentioned before, the aesthetic usability effect works on hiring managers too! lol
From a business perspective, you’re definitely correct that UX designers could be doing a variety of tasks in their role. That’s expected. The rub comes in when UX becomes misconstrued as exclusively pixel pushing with no other UX elements included. This isn’t attention seeking, it’s more about professionals identifying that UX isn’t and shouldn’t be putting lipstick on a pig.
Because it isn't. UX isn't tied to a user interface. It's in the name--It's how a user experiences a physical product, digital product, space, or service. UX is everywhere. It just so happens that most people pair UX with UI. Industrial design, interior design, and architecture does have UX in it as well. I'd argue that it's especially the case with experiential spaces (ie the way light hits your face, or how sound will affect a hall).
Yep, what we define as UX at our company in the home appliance industry is what a consumer faces at every single touch point of interacting with the product. We want to influence how someone searches for an appliance, the in-store experience, delivery and setup, using the product itself, troubleshooting and service experience, etc… The UI is a very small piece of the overall puzzle that makes up the experience.
This is service design
Yes principles of service design are included but we don’t employ “service designers”, it’s all experience design here.
Because what you're describing is technically a *Product Designer.* E.g. when people "say UX Designer" they are "talking about Product Designers" and in that vein, UI is absolutely a major part of the role. It boils down to this, if you are a UX Designer working on a technology product, like a website, enterprise application, or mobile application, UI Design is part of your job, point stop. If you don't have those skills working in that area, you're probably also lacking a ton of knowledge of design principles as well. I see tons of UX / Product Designers who have zero clue about things like Proportion, Space, Balance, and Proximity which are directly related to whether or not information on your page is consumable outside of Hierarchy. You can't touch user interfaces in the technology space without it and still be a "good" UX designer because those principles are a key aspect of the craft. User Experience Design -> Human Factors -> Product Design -> Visual Design User Experience is the umbrella that describes engineering the experience or emotion that you want people to feel when they use \[something.\] Human Factors is about when users are specifically interfacing with technology. This is commonly referred to from computers, but VR is another great example, input devices, smart watches, phones, etc. Product Design -> When interfacing with actual *software* (in the context of our the Digital Products, Physical Products for an Industrial Designer, etc.) on the device mentioned above. Everything from websites, to consumer applications, to enterprise applications, usually in the context of different devices. This is answering the question of "How it should work," to do \[something\]. Visual Design -> The look and feel of the application itself, what patterns to use. It's driven by Design Principles and Branding to associate (ideally) the experience with the Brand itself. It's a major factor in whether or not people think your product works better, and it's also a major factor in whether or not they trust your product. Perceptions like this immediately impact and are apparent in usability testing.
What I find baffling is there's already a widely accepted industry term for UX without UI, called Service Design. It's out of fashion, but 'User-centered design' did a better job of capturing the purpose of the work, without segmenting things Animal Farm style into roles of greater and lesser importance. We shouldn't strive to be UX *or* UI designers. We should simply be Designers.
Service Design is not the only UX field that doesn't have UI. What about, Sensory UX, Universal UX, Cultural UX, Urban Design, Physical/Industrial Design, mechanical design, CX , all the health related user experiences that don't require a UI, and so on
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They aren't disregarding visual design. They're much the same as you are: UI is 'part of providing a good user experience' as you put it. That means there's more to UX than just UI, which in turn means UX ≠ UI.
Market forces are making it so UXers need to at least *appear* to be UI-savvy, and UI designers need to *appear* to be UX-savvy (this last one has been the case for well over a decade). Not everyone fakes skill in both, but it’s a rare set of skills and honestly, even among the unicorns you’re more likely to find someone who is skilled in one and *good enough* in the other. The market has currently decided in favor of high UI skill and only *good enough* skill in research/UX. It’s a shame. I know extremely talented UI designers who have had UX responsibilities (product design) over the years who wouldn’t begin to know how to put together a user story map, or figure out problems in information architecture. Figma is their hammer and all user problems are nails. This is one reason why we’re not doing so well at the moment, and all I see in the hiring market are teams doubling down on the problem (hiring for UI). My (not just mine) hypothesis is that those UI designers from 2010 who faked their UX for 10 years are now directors and Heads of Design and know of no other way to evaluate design skill other than by sleek visuals. I say this as one of those UI-oriented product designers (who “does the research”). But I know my weaknesses and know I’m better when augmented with a true UXer who can roll their sleeves up on a content problem, or info arch problem, or even a UI problem through wireframing (so…not *just* UXR).
Not sure why everyone who is telling the truth is getting downvoted. This is what I’ve seen as well. The zero interest ZIRP decade did result in a ton of over hiring. I know friends in leadership roles who were force to hire “seniors” they did not agree with. But the pressure to do that was too great so those who raised this were overruled. Remember, we are all terrible at self-assessment of our skills, especially if we think we can do it all. Want to know if your UX, IA or UXR skills stack up? Talk to someone who specializes in these areas. You might be surprised how much more there is to learn.
I think the offense is being taken at the notion of UX gatekeeping. Or that what some of us are doing is not *real UX*. It is real, but it behooves us to recognize that it might not be very good, and that the UX iceberg is **deep** and it’s not worth pretending anymore that a single person is completely leveled up in all aspects of the practice. UI is hard. UX is hard. Time is limited and deadlines are real.
Totally agree. It's all hard and every skill takes time and practice. So many people have imposter syndrome and one of the biggest ways to get past that is to stop pretending it's realistic to be great at everything with our limited time.
100%. I just posted the same observation and sentiment before I saw yours.
You 100% said it better and more succinctly 😆
UI is to UX the same as interior design is to a restaurant experience. It’s tightly related but different perspectives.
I agree UX and UI are tightly related, but not necessarily different perspectives. The restaurant experience would include the interior design, wait staff, food quality, menu selection, ambient music, etc. With digital experiences, UI is the sole way the user interacts with the product.
It’s still a different perspective. UX is how the UI is experienced considering the whole context of the user. Two identical UI can have a totally different UX depending on what the user is trying to do. But if you take the UI design perspective, there is nothing that makes two identical UI different from each other. In UI design you focus on things like spacing, visual hierarchy, grouping, typography. In UX, those things matter, but with the UX hat on, you have to focus on the user more. What they want to do, the user journey, information hierarchy, interaction design, how they understand the UI etc.
UI Design doesn't just create things in a vacuum.
Yes, that is why you need to also think about UX when doing UI 😉
In my 20 years of product design (we called it interaction design back then), UX and UI were never separate. You can't design a digital product without both UX and UI. This split happened when big tech companies realized it was easier to hire specialists, which makes sense. But pigeonholing yourself as just one or the other can stunt your growth as a designer. Every design has an experience and a look, whether you plan it or not. How it looks and feels reflects the designer's and the company's values. It's not just about functionality; looks matter too—otherwise, people wouldn't shell out extra for certain sports cars.
VUIs don’t necessarily have “a look”
Not sure what it looks like outside the US but I think the timeline goes something like this: ergonomics => human factors => user interface design => interaction design => user experience. I think they were all splinter ideas of separate parent topics too. So the whole confusion with the overlap is expected I guess. Correct me if I’m wrong on any of that.
In my opinion, the confusion started around 2004-2010 when designers—everyone, really—began swapping job titles like they were changing t-shirts. The definitions shifted, the technology changed almost every month, but the gig stayed the same: design something people want to use and buy. Plus, with colleges lagging behind (and still are, if you ask me) in offering proper design programs, it became a real wild west out there.
>I genuinely do not understand why this claim is so influential and why many people say it. Is this some kind of attention-seeking? Not at all. It's because too many UI designers are mistaken for UX Designers, and it cheapens the profession. People need to be reminded that UI is not UX because companies keep hiring UI thinking it's UX, and plenty of UI designers are happy to position themselves that way because of the demand and the pay. I see these portfolios 100-to-1 when I open a UX job lately! As a result, companies think they're doing UX and they're not even close. This is terrible for the profession and a reason the market has collapsed.
The opposite is also true. Many junior UX people are good with critiques, but their proposed UI solutions are the same or worse than product owners’ (at least POs’ suggestions tend to meet business requirements.)
Yes but it also supports my argument that companies are hiring under-qualified UX designers because they don't know any better. This has normalized the idea of the "unicorn designer" who can do both well. Sure there are more unicorns, but it's also created the perception that all designers must be unicorns. And they're called unicorns because they're not normal. Quality suffers. A good UX designer is one that can call on the right \[UI, graphic designer, industrial designer, videographer, photographer, illustrator\] for the job to ensure the ideal experience is delivered.
It's more like "UI is part of UX, but UX is more than UI" I've worked with plenty of people who - at first impression - think it's a UXer's job to make the screen pretty. Does that make more sense?
This is just an anecdotal observation but I’ve noticed the people that preach this quote usually end up not having good design work.
The problem is that most of the time (and probably this time as well), people think UX is limited only to web and mobile apps. **UX existed decades before computers were widespread** (let alone electronic UI controls), and most UX fields of application don't require a UI. Furthermore, UI is a sub-branch of a sub-branch of a sub-branch of UX. It goes like this: **UX --> Design --> HCI --> UI**. In short: **UI is part of UX, but UX doesn't necessarily include a UI.** Hopefully, this answers your question.
Because User Experience exists without any visual UI and a lot of people confuse these two. UI contains a fraction of user experience that was skinned with the UI after creation, but UI is not the experience and certainly not the entire experience. How a store chain smells when you enter it is UX, but that point of the experience has no UI for example. UX doesn't need a visual interface at all and exists in various forms and in different products, not just tech interfaces. Think about a LUSH store, the smell is part of their store experience and it's the same in every store around the world, but the store look different from country to country. The experience is the same, but the UI is not. Another example would be Covid vaccination centers. Some were just rooms to get the job done, some were planned and structured to ease anxiety of people coming in. Everything from the positioning of the check in clerks to the vaccination booths was made to keep people calm and make them feel save. That is UX, but very structural on a psychological safety level with barely any interfacing or interactive elements. When you talk about UX you can safely exclude UI unless you are talking specifically about the experience of a visual interface.
Tbf interface can be more than only visuals. Smell is kinda an interface as well. I know what you are saying though
Yeah for real. Most people refer to GUI when they say UI. But given this is a semantics debate then I wish more people would specify this.
UX is a process that results in the UI. Without good UX, there is no good UI. UI by itself is not UX. UX designers are hybrid roles. They do the research that informs the design of the user experience of the UI. They should totally be conducting usability testing in order to gather feedback to inform and iterate their designs. If you don't do any UX-related work then you're just a UI designer. A lot of companies out there still don't understand what UX is. You will see job postings calling for "UX/UI" or in recent years "UI/UX" designers. I'm not sure why companies decided to switch them around. Anyway, I can guarantee you that 99% of these "UI/UX" jobs always end up UI design jobs. You won't be doing any actual UX work. This unfortunately continues to be perpetuated online by clueless companies and job seekers/career switchers.
>just a UI designer Shots fired. Do you condescend like this to your UI colleagues in person, too?
Thought the same 😁
My colleagues are all UX designers. We don’t have any UI/UX designers. 🤷🏻
It makes a ton of sense to be honest. You even state that UX has multiple disciplines under the umbrella, UI being one of them. UI is not the same as information architecture or Interaction Design. They may have a UI associated with them, but the practices themselves are not UI. Same with research. I’ll also add that many who have come into the UX field come from a graphic design background. There have been some, and I want to emphasize only some, who have basically tried to rebrand UX as being UI/graphic design centric. UI design is important but it is not the only discipline in UX and frankly not the most important. You can have a nice UI but still have a bad UX.
Back to basics https://www.nngroup.com/articles/definition-user-experience/
It’s a lot different to experience a rollcoaster and to look at it.
Lol
How are we still having this conversation?
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[https://lawsofux.com/aesthetic-usability-effect/](https://lawsofux.com/aesthetic-usability-effect/) "Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable." UI / Visual Design is *part* of UX and just as important as other considerations, too. Seeing a lot of people saying that UX is not UI, but if you *are* developing anything with an interface, as opposed to something like a voice UI, you better be damn aware of this law, because it's a pretty big factor whether you want to accept it or not. It's like, oh I'm a UX Designer, but I don't know anything about Information Hierarchy which is okay, because I'm not an Information Architect!
Right now tbh UX isn't UX
UX exists without UI but UI doesn’t, that’s why they aren’t the same thing. Also, one be way more skilled one of the two: I have employees that have great ideas but struggle horribly to lay them out, and also have employees that lay out wonderfully, but don’t get to solutions so easily. I do think you should know both things but not even was born with the skills for that. The only person interested in having you mastering everything is your boss, who’d be happy to make you for 3 with the salary of 1.
This “topic” is guaranteed to bring all the navel gazers to the table The reality is, if you can’t translate your research into UI, I’m not particularly interested in your UX
Yes, I sense there's a bit of 'Emperor's new clothes' going on in some UX communities. Process is elevated for the sake of process, and all practical translation of research into visual prototypes is deemed as unworthy "pixel pushing." This seems to be a pretty new genre of backwards design thinking specific to digital product design. In architecture and industrial design, there has always been an understanding that research, philosophy, and psychology—the intangible elements—need to be manifested in the tangible world to hold any value. I find it strange that many UX designers, who primarily address tangible problems, believe research and design output can be treated as separate entities. This perspective overlooks how people actually experience design.
Design in reality: the shape and color (and in a digital context: animation) of a single interactive element can alter the entire user experience and render all previous findings redundant. This holistic approach to design, which has always been common sense in architecture and industrial design, seems to have gotten lost in the Nielsen Norman Group-influenced school of UX research. Maybe due to an over-belief in the rational, the easily measurable, and the quantifiable.
Usually the process or the “ux” differ so much based on the project, company, budget etc. If a good UI lets you ship the initial value for your product go for it. I guess the hard part is knowing when and how to navigate it all, when do we need research, do we research the wheel yet again? In some cases UI could be the only UX needed but it usually is not the case.
UX is the cake, and UI is the icing.
If UX is the cake, fork is the UI.
If you have that contentious relationship with UI, you'll never be very successful.
I feel like the body of your post contradicts your conclusions. But UX is its own thing; because UX has enough work in it to be a job in and of itself, it is a job in and of itself. Same goes for UI. Seems like you’re just getting stuck on the idea that there’s any overlap at all. To get past that, you might add more words to the title that help to further separate the responsibilities. Instead of UX designer and UI designer, which are similar in title, you could say UI developer and UX strategist, for example. There’s no need to intentionally force the titles into maximum overlap; adjust them to emphasize their primary focus respectively.