Thinkful: What is UI/UX design?

What is thankful?

Thinkful is a online programming and design boot camp. If you don’t get a job within 6 months you get your entire tuition funding back.

What is UI/UX design?

People commonly use UI(User Interface) and UX(User Experience) Often interchangeably. When we think of UI/UX we don’t think of early computers. We most likely think of Apple, who mainstreamed making beautiful computers. Another example of this confusion, when we apply for jobs in UI/UX there is a demand for a broad skill set in both despite both being very unique. The speaker brings up a good point that distills the essence of the difference between UX and UI.

  1. UX is how things work

  2. UI is how things look

Building on our simple definition.

  • UX Design

    • Is the process of researching users to understand them better to enhance their satisfaction of a product/experience. It is a multi step process that requires: Research, Defining the problem, Ideation, prototyping, Testing, Implementation.

      • Research - Exploring what users are looking for

      • Definition of the problem: Define the potential problems that your service or product might solve

      • Ideate - Develop and improve your solution to the problem

      • Test as much as possible the subsequent outputs from your Ideation process

      • Implement: take your solution or product to market at its peak state—the best looking version.

  • The presentation is really focusing on user experience and the various steps in the design process as a launch pad for the presentation. The webinar barely goes beneath the surface on UI design which I would have liked to have seen.

  • What do UX and UI design have in common?

    • Developing wireframes and prototypes and fleshing out usability and accessibility of the aforementioned wireframes and prototypes.

How does UI and UX design work in a business setting?

  • We have to narrow down and cover all the stakeholders needs.

    • The needs that we have are 1. The users 2. The Business 3. The Technical constraints. What sits at the center of all these “piles of needs” is user experience design.

    • What compromises and tradeoffs to the different stakeholders make to develop and maintain a successful product/experience/ or service.

      • I.e We watch YouTube because of the content and user experience but we trade off watching little ads once in a while.

My Overall thoughts on the Thinkful webinar.

I enjoyed this quick primer to UI/UX design because it showed how interconnected UX is to the rest of the product design and deployment lifecycle. I used to traditionally think everything occurred in its own little bubble, and meetings would put people all on the same page. However, after watching this webinar, it became evident that UX, UI by association, is central to all the stakeholders throughout the product lifecycle. More specifically, when I find myself in a position working on a project this summer, at Amazon, I will make a concerted effort to consider all the stakeholders and there needs to forward the goals of the team.

Andrew Hennnessy