The majority of the business owners I talk to don't understand the difference between a UX/UI Designer and a graphic designer. A lot of times in my early career, I'd have clients or a boss tell me to "make this pretty". While the direction was understood, what they needed was much more than a simple visual upgrade. But a visual upgrade isn't what will determine whether or not your website converts, your app retainers its' users, or your brand actually builds trust with the intended target audience.
Let's clear up this common misconception; because understanding the roll of a UX/UI designer is a solid step to understanding why the "web designer" you hired for $400 couldn't deliver what you actually needed.
They get lumped together constantly, but they are distinct disciplines that each have their own important roles. They just happen to work in tandem.
It's the research, strategy, and structural thought that happens prior to designing the visuals. UX designers ask these very important questions:
UX designers are researchers, strategists, and architects.
This is the visual layer of the website, application, or other user interface.
These visual elements are applied to the structural design set by the UX designer. UI designers are the visual communicators and interaction designers.
A UX/UI Designer has studied both disciplines and has a solid understanding both. A budget template shop does neither.
Before touching a design tool, a UX/UI designer learns about your business, your audience, and your competitive landscape. Who are your users? What do they already know and what do they need to understand? What's working in your market and what's creating user frustration? This isn't a quick form; it's structured research that shapes every decision that follows.
Good design isn't made for a generic "user". It's made for a specific person with specific goals, frustrations, and behaviors. We learn about your targeted user, build out their persona and then map out their digital journey from landing to conversion. UX/UI Designers also identify each place they may drop off or lose confidence. Each detail is key in a successful product.
A wireframe is the structural blueprint of the digital product; it lacks colors and imagery, and focuses on layout and hierarchy. They answer the question: does this flow make sense before we invest in making it uniquely ours? From the wireframes, we move the work into interactive prototypes (my fave is Figma) . These are clickable, testable versions of the product that allows real users to interact with the design before we write any code. This allows our target users to identify areas that are confusing, frustrating, or where we lose them.
Prototypes get tested by real users. The real user (or rep) interacts with the design while a designer watches the interactions. This informs the designer of a few things:
Issues caught at this stage cost almost nothing to fix. The same issues caught after a full development could cost thousands - hard pass.
Only after all of the above does the visual design phase begin. Here we implement the visual identity of the brand and interactions. Each decision made with the research and structure underneath it.
You don't need enterprise budgets to benefit from this process; just a designer who runs it. A website or app built around UX foundations will outperform a template - every time. Why? Because it was designed around your users.
