Ch 13: Design for Web
INTRODUCTION
UI Designers are masters of visual language when it comes to human computer interaction. Their ability to stylize digital products in a manner that is mindful of current best practices, branding, UI patterns and visual design principles sets them apart from the rest. More often than not, they design the aesthetics of the UI elements, but not necessarily how the elements behave after interaction. User Interface (UI) designers focus on anticipating what users might need to do and ensure that the interface has elements that are easy to access, understand, and use in order to facilitate those actions. UI designers bring together concepts from interaction design, visual design, and information architecture.
UI Design is a rapidly evolving practice focused on developing the look and feel of mobile and web applications, and can be described as the visual design of any software system. Often limited due to device’s interface guidelines, UI designers are experts at working with device limitations by designing applications to work best natively on any device.
You can think of Visual Designers as the ones who put on the coat of paint after the house is built (by UX/ UI and Interaction Designers). With visual designers, it is less about making sure a product (site or App) works and more about making sure the product looks good. For example, they’ll pay more attention to the aesthetic appeal such as looking at the design of buttons, icons, the layout of the page, and every little detail that makes a website that specific website.
They also pay close attention to visual hierarchy and color-psychology. Visual designers can help with the organization of different features which makes it easier to interact with a product (site or App), so they do have some overlapping functions with interaction designers. Most fields in UX do overlap in at least a few different ways, which is why it is so hard to completely define any one specific field and what individuals in that field do for a company.
