The following is a guest post by Niraj Rajput, cofounder and Head of Engineering at Chisel Labs
Baseball and cricket both require a bat but that bat is different. To transport cargo and to transport people, both require the vehicle on 4 wheels but that vehicle is different. Both coach and team captain play the same sport but their roles are different. These three examples are just to give you a glimpse of what we are getting at.
Yes, there can be a single person with a position as a UI/UX designer. But, should you hire them for the best results and success of the developed product? Let’s find out. We’ll start by understanding the roles of UX designer and UI designer.
What are a UX designer and a UI designer?
Why do you need to hire two different people for these two roles?
Benefits of having two different designers
Conclusion
What are a UX designer and a UI designer?
UX designer
UX design means creating a product keeping in mind the needs, values, and practicality of users who are going to use the product so that they can have a positive user experience. It can be said that it is a combination of art and science.
A UX designer’s role is to make the product usable and enjoyable by matching the basic expectations of the user more simply.
Let’s add some more light to the role of a UX designer by studying his tasks and responsibilities:
- Understanding the problem well, as conveyed by the researcher, is the foremost responsibility of a UX designer. Without this understanding, it can create negative user experience and an overall loss of the brand’s product.
- A UX designer also needs to be skilled in various aspects of designing, like creating wireframes and mockups. A UX designer is responsible for creating the fundamental basis of any platform or application by making them functional enough by implementing every document in reality.
- UX designer also creates user personas based on the results offered by UX researchers. The user persona is a unique individual who uses the product or platform and based on their requirements, UX designers make changes to design.
- UX designers also need to be interactive with users as they have multiple tasks related to this aspect. He should have enough knowledge about what type of content would interest them for better engagement levels.
- UX designers use a wide range of tools through the product development journey and user flows and wireframes are amongst those. These tools are used for creating user flow diagrams and sitemaps.
- UX designers create wireframes, prototypes, mockups, and visual designs which help in better understanding of the product by everyone involved or interested in it.
UI designer
UI design is the process of building up the interface’s outlook that is going to interact with the user in a way that polishes up the work of a UX design like buttons, looks, designs, and visuals.
Hence, UI is graphic design, which is a subset of user experience but not the same task. They are distinct work departments with just a few overlapping skills.
UI designers are responsible for the presentation of the user interface. They create website layouts, controls, and other elements which make up the product’s visual design.
Let’s understand their roles and responsibilities:
- UI designers use different tools that enable them to create mockups or wireframes based on their requirements at a specific point in time during the development process. They can also build interactive prototypes using these tools depending upon the requirements of clients/project managers, and so on.
- A UI designer is skilled in collaboration as well as communication with other designers, developers, and clients. They also need to have good problem-solving skills to make sense of complex issues while optimizing the UI design process.
- Another aspect of the role involves the hands-on experience of the designer with the product design. The final product is going to be used by users who don’t have the same technical background. Hence, in that perspective, the UI designer will make it simple and efficient to use that product.
- UI designers should regularly practice prototyping and wire-framing to get user feedback. It enables UI designers to discover the flaws, since it involves repeated improvements and execution of the design to flourish.
- UI designers should be creative enough to understand what it takes to build an efficient design, what it takes on the user’s end to have a design that provides every feature yet nothing complex. Hence, UI designer is a spot of balance for the role of UX designer.
Read More: How To Create Better UI Experiences
Why do you need to hire two different people for these two roles?
Only specialists can make special products.
Having a clear idea of the roles of UI and a UX designer, we can now easily distinguish that their roles are quite different.
The skills required in both roles indeed overlap in certain places but the usage of those skills is completely different.
Thus, this is the only reason that people and even organizations are confused at some points to hire a single person who can be a specialist in both.
Well, there is no denying the fact that exceptional people do exist who have some extraordinary skills to perform both tasks with great efficiency.
However, when it comes to generalizing the concept, it is not a successful way to hire a single person for multiple roles.
Read More: UI vs. UX: A Detailed Comparison With Analogies
Benefits of having two different designers
The benefits of different designers for both roles who are specialized enough in the field can be never-ending.
- This can lead to the division of the work and hence the designers will have a clear focus of what work to do rather than multitasking things. This will result in the overall development of the product with the best output.
- This can be a successful move for the organization as UI and UX are two very different aspects so hiring the specialists for both roles will end up bringing two different worldviews to the table. Hence, there will be more successful attributes which the users can enjoy.
- This will add value to the product’s efficiency. A clear focus on the workflow is possible due to two separate roles. Hence, an approach of giving the best delivery with the most value is made possible.
Conclusion
In this article, we have discussed the roles of UI and UX designers and the benefits of having two different people for these roles.
You can boost the success and growth of the organization by avoiding hiring a single person for the job.
Through this blog, we aim to inform and make you aware of hiring two designers instead of one and the impact it can bring on your design along with its success.
Niraj is co-founder and Head of Engineering at Chisel Labs, a premiere agile product management software company that brings together roadmapping, team alignment, and customer connection. Niraj is passionate about building scalable infrastructure and systems and he also happens to be a huge fan of Cricket!
Tim Rotolo