One of the most vital components of app design is its User Interface (UI)/ User Experience (UX). If the designer manages to create a breath-taking User Interface (UI)/User Experience (UX), half the battle is won. So let’s take a brief look at a complete UX and UI guide essential for excellent app design. 

Difference between UX and UI design

UX refers to “User Experience,” and UI refers to “User Interface.” Both appear to be similar but are significantly different from each other. 

1. UX is a particular approach where the user’s entire journey of using a company’s product and service is considered, while UI is about how a particular product’s interface will look and perform when a user accesses it. Both UX and UI design go hand in hand for the success of the app design. 

2. In a UI design, the visual aspects of the user’s journey are considered as the major task where the touchpoints, individual screens, user issues with apps are all solved. However, extensive user research is conducted in UX design to find the target audience, information architecture, content formatting, etc. 

3. UX design makes use of information related to perception, emotions, preferences, both before and after the use of an app. On the other hand, UI design uses information like graphics, colour combination, the aesthetic appeal of the app, and many more physical attributes of the design to enhance the desirability of the app.

4. UI designers make use of full-colour pallets in their designs, Whereas UX designers predominantly, in most cases, use White, Gray, and Black to design their prototypes. 

The significance of combining UI and UX design approach for app design 

If we effectively combine UI and UX design approaches, the app design will be flawless, enhance business, and get a wider user base. The important aspects that will be achieved are listed below,

1. User attraction: A good-looking app sells faster than an average-looking app. UI and UX are the entry door for the users from which they connect with the app and spend lots of time navigating through. Making it a memorable journey is paramount so that they become a permanent customer. As you know, “a happy user will invite more users. ” 

2. Faster loading speed: Users prefer faster loading apps which saves time. Slower the app faster will be the rate of uninstallation. 

3. Standardized elements and symbols: Users thrive in a familiar environment. With standardized elements and symbols, users will find it easy to operate the app and need not know additional guidelines to navigate through the app. 

4. Multiplatform UI design: One of the most important aspects of app design is multiplatform UI design. The app should work efficiently across all screen sizes, resolutions. It should also adapt easily with both the android and ios environments.

5. Iterations make a difference: Iterations of UI design will increase the user experience of the apps and help design the next project. 

The output of UI and UX in the app design 

In the UI and UX design process, there are many phases during which a lot of deliverables are created separately for both UI and UX. Some of the important deliverables are mentioned below,

UI outputs 

1. Visual designs: It helps in understanding the elements in the app designs. The effects of colour, texts, space, images are given clear meaning in this output.  

2. User Interface Kits: It is highly comprehensive detailed documentation that contains every element, visual features, front-end code to realize it. It is a reference guide for both the marketing team and the developers also.

3. Style Guides: They are used for creating brand conventions. They are created from the existing aesthetics, which the client already prefers, but more focused and detailed than branding concepts. These are reference guidelines, but still, there is room for UI designers to make modifications for improving the UI aesthetics.  

UX outputs 

1. Competition in the app market: If we gauge the competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, we can create a distinct advantage that will help the company capture the market easily. 

2. Mapping of the user journey: Creating a map of the user’s experience, feedback, time spent, and other key performance indicators (KPI). This will significantly narrow the gap between designer and user thinking, thereby evolving the app development.

3.  User persona: The client’s understanding of the target audience or the target user plays a major role in shaping the app design. Making extensive research on demographics and other apps with similar functionality will substantially increase the chances of grabbing the market.

4. Information Architecture and Sitemap: Sitemap is a visual model of all the components contained in the product. These help to create layouts for information architecture that contains labels of all components and navigation routes. 

“A proper UX and UI approach in app design can make the product shine.”