If you’ve been chatting with software developers (perhaps even us) you’ve probably heard the terms “UX Design”, “the UI” or similar sounding acronyms starting with the “U” being thrown around.

What does it mean? And why is it important?

User experience (UX) design is the process of designing products, systems, and services with the user's needs and preferences in mind. It aims to create a positive, efficient, and satisfying experience for the user as they interact with a product or service.

The UX is the infrastructure of the app, it’s how it works. The UI or User interface is how the app looks, it’s much more focused on the look and feel of a product. It’s about creating visual designs that are cohesive, aesthetically pleasing, and easy to use.

Both of these processes work together to deliver excellent product experiences for users. With UX you ensure that you know what the user’s true needs and desires are and how they expect to be able to move through that process.

With UI you make sure that that experience going through your app is as seamless as possible.

Once the UX and UI are complete, then that’s when it gets handed over to the developers, their job is translate the UI into working code. Great designers do a detailed job mocking up exactly how the app will look so that the devs understand fully what needs to be built.

If you do a poor job with the UX design, what you end up with is confusion on the parts of the devs, and generally worse software.