Mobile Apps for Business: UX Is Not UI

Mobile Apps for Business: UX Is Not UI

The Main Difference

I would like to start this short article from the point that I’ve already explained what is UX for business in my previous article.  

Now, let’s look what the Webopedia tells us about the user interface (UI):

“Abbreviated UI, the junction between a user and a computer program. An interface is a set of commands or menus through which a user communicates with a program. A command-driven interface is one in which you enter commands.

Meanwhile, UX is all about solving your business problems and improving your KPIs by combining interactions, features as well as controls, menus, buttons, switches and other UI components, and by placing them in the right place in your software (mobile app, web app etc.).

To sum up, the prime goal of UX is in finding the right solution and the place for it in your software. By a solution I mean that it could be a brand new feature, or just one button, or the right color of a button, it always depends from a certain problem/goal.

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UX is all about solving your business problems and improving your KPIs by combining interactions, features as well as controls, menus, buttons, switches and other UI components, and by placing them in the right place in your software.

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Simple Example

I want to give the example from a real life to understand the difference and common between UX and UI. We all live and work in buildings. We see a lot of different buildings around us, but why they differ from each other. To find it out we will look at how construction firms build them.

First of all they ask what a client wants and then they start a construction from an architecture (UX design in a software development). Architectures solve main problems like landscape, disposable communications and so on. I mean that building of a house near a sea or in a desert are quite different tasks. Suffice to say, that architects make a house comfortable for living, and only after they finish their work, the interior design comes in (UI design). I believe that you won’t care about green and “freshy” interior of your house if it will stay in a middle of a desert without air conditioner, will you?

Generally, UI design is like interior/exterior design which cares about colors of walls and its textures, but it doesn’t care about ideal parameters of walls and their placement.

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I believe that you won’t care about green and “freshy” interior of your house if it will stay in a middle of a desert without air conditioner, will you?

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To Sum Up

In this article I try to emphasize another point, namely, that you should always start from a great UX design of  a mobile or web app for your business. I don’t mean that the perfect shade of your favorite color, textures or other UI components aren’t important. Just be sure that you start from choosing the right air conditioner for your desert house as well as a mounting place for it, and not from choosing the most beautiful grill to close a vent-hole.

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by Ivan Zaichuk, Founder & CEO of IvZ Solutions