UI vs UX and Why You Should Care

(or at least, why you MIGHT care)

Some Definitions

UI – User Interface. The thing that says forms get a submit button so that people can submit them.

UX – User Experience. The thing that agonizes over whether or not the submit button should have active phrasing such as “Get Your Free Copy of Tami’s Book Now” instead of just “Submit” and whether or not we should just hide the form fields you might not be required to enter until it becomes obvious that you WILL need to enter them (If you don’t select “yes, sign me up for your newsletter”, then don’t bother showing the email address field) and whether or not maybe the form is long enough that it should be broken down, and oh, by the way, shouldn’t the font size be a lot bigger when on mobile? Buttons, too. And oh, dear, you’ve hidden important information behind a hover effect, and that means …

Everything has a UI

Okay, that’s simplistic and a little unfair to pure UI, but you get the idea. Everything has a UI, but not everything takes the user experience into account. And I do mean “thing” there. Though I primarily focus on websites, I’m sure we’ve all had that one weird thing happen in the car and we stare at the dashboard in frustration and wonder just who the hell thought THAT was a helpful indicator of what the problem was.

Everything has a user interface. It’s just that there’s an awful lot of BAD ones out there.

Me

So, within the past mmmm year or so, I’ve gone from being officially a programmer to officially a hybrid of programming/UI/UX.

I’m much happier in my current role because I genuinely love the fact that almost my entire job is making something easier for other people.

I’m not about to pretend I’m even close to the kind of helpful a soup kitchen would be, but the entire purpose for my job is to solve problems and help.

So this whole UX/UI stuff is really incredibly stupidly fascinating to me. And I want to share some of the fun details with you guys as I’m learning them.

The Web

The internet isn’t standing still, not by a long shot. AS WE SPEAK, folks are swapping from primarily using desktop computers for web access to mobile devices.

My husband has a laptop — very mobile, always nearby. He still does most of his internet browsing on the iPad. It’s not that he’s lazy, it’s just that the iPad was MEANT to be mobile and the laptop is just CAPABLE of being mobile.

Google analytics is showing more and more business sites that the percentage of their viewership which comes from mobile devices is growing.

We cannot continue to code our websites in a rigid, unchanging framework expecting 1,000 pixels width. We can’t. Not forever, anyway.

Apps versus Websites

Many folks are turning to apps as their savior. The big businesses can afford to hire a team to develop an iOS app to augment or even replace the functionality of their site. This allows them to keep maintaining their old, inflexible codebase.

But then iOS changes. Oh, and now Andriod’s staring with robot-like patience at you, because guess what? Apple’s not the only big dog in this fight. (Windows phones? I’m sorry. You don’t count yet.)

And now you’ve got not one but THREE code bases that need to be maintained separately, and bugs in each, and you need to updating your shipping algorithm in all of them, but the one guy who knew how to do that in the iOS app just quit, and …

takes a deep breath

Or? Or you can put on your big girl pants and learn how to write responsive websites. Most of the hard work has already been done by the pioneers of the design world. Frameworks exist. Media queries are no longer the ‘bleeding edge’ of anything.

You can design your website so that it works equally well for the user checking in while waiting in line at the grocery store as the person sitting down to their desktop after a long day at work.

There are benefits to both approaches, but I feel that the App approach really only works when you don’t also want a website with all (or even most of) the same functionality.

Why You Should(might) Care

This stuff? This is the kind of stuff defining YOUR internet. It’s YOUR experience that UX designers care so much about. It’s your attention and your dollars and your frustration and your joy when you use an interface that goes beyond functionality and transcends into a realm of FUN.

I think it’s fascinating that someone wants your experience with a form’s submit button to be a good one that they spend hours worrying over sizes and styles and verbiage.

And I figure some of you probably think that’s interesting as well, though perhaps more on the “wow, you folks is nutterbutters” level of popcorn-eating sideline amusement than I personally feel. (That, by the way? Is how I feel when Brad-O and Anne get into philosophical arguments. I just grab a tub of popcorn and enjoy the show, even if I don’t understand everything that’s happening.)

Your Opinions

You’ve been living through these chaotic internet changes, though probably not reading websites on usability and books on UX design.

What have YOU noticed as trends in the websites that you use? What’s been changing in the way you interact with the internet? What do you like and what’s frustrating as a turtle in a bathtub?

Related posts:

The Birth of a Website – Part 1