Understanding UI & UX Design.
In this section of my website, I will be going through terms commonly used within the UX and UI design space to help readers understand design jargon I use in my portfolio.
User Interface (UI)
In simple terms, a User Interface is visual and interaction elements that users use to engage with a digital product front end and back end. Like how a mobile app screen featuring a navigation bar, search function, and easily understood buttons to get to each feature of said app. Within the total composition of the app, the interface elements that the user interacts with are the User Interface.
User Experience (UX)
User Experience is all about the target user’s emotions, perceptions, and responses resulting from the use of any designed product. This can even include buildings! A good example of positive UX would be a texting application that is intuitive to use and has all the features a target user can need, will give a positive user experience.
Within human emotions, when something works well, that leads to a positive experience. This can be for anything, as mentioned before, even outside of digital applications (even if that is what most people use it for nowadays). Having greenery in a shared space, using an app that works just right, anything that is tailored for the users to have a more positive experience falls into the good UX category. Bad UX is having an area that is too dull, or a webpage that just doesn't work right that negatively impacts the user’s emotions. The entire journey that the user experiences from an emotional perspective and usability perspective is UX.
Accessibility
In design, Accessibility means designing products so that they are usable/more usable for people with any form of disabilities, whether big or small.
An example of this would be keeping the contrast ratios in colors high in designs.
Keeping the colors high in contrast leads to the ability for almost everyone to read and see signifiers within designs better. This lets those with visual impairments have an easier time reading and navigating the designed product, while also improving the designed product for regular users.
Usability
Usability is the extent to which a product can be used by its target audience to achieve their goals with the product.
The best example for this would be the ability for users to use an online checkout process quickly and without mistakes.
If the online checkout process has high usability, the process will be quick and easy (without mistakes) for the target audience. Checkout processes with low usability may have errors that lead to issues for the user, such as not searching up their address easier, or not having access to quick payment options from places like PayPal, instead forcing the user to type out all their information slowly from their credit card, which they can easily miss-type.