The meanings of UX and UI imply that they are related design disciplines, yet they are very different in nature. The UI design is more concerned with the visual properties of design as well as the overall feel it conveys. But without great UX, even the most beautifully designed UI will cause a bad user experience.

The role of UX designer

Recently, many companies realized that good design is a competitive advantage and they are willing to invest significant resources in creating a great user experience. As a result, the role of a UX designer emerged and is in high demand.

In simple terms, UX design is a human-first way of designing products. UX designers are responsible for analyzing the target audience’s needs and ensuring that the company creates products that meet those needs. UX design is a multidisciplinary field where UX designers can be involved in different areas of product development such as product research, ideation, prototyping, testing.

UX designer’s responsibilities usually include:

• Understanding users. UX design usually starts with extensive research that has a goal to understand the target audience, their wants, and needs. Empathy is a crucial skill for UX designers. It helps UX designers to understand and uncover the latent needs and emotions of the people they are designing for.
• Creating a design strategy. Design strategy includes understanding the purpose of a product, mapping a logical journey.
• Analyzing the design of interactions. UX designers analyze how people use products – their interaction habits, personal preferences, and shortcuts they use while interacting with UI. All insights are used in proposing better design solutions. 
• Creating wireframes and prototypes. UX designers often need to create wireframes or prototypes to propose their ideas to design team.

UX designers are constantly involved in the execution of a product. They interact with all team members to ensure that product design is moving in the right direction.

The role of UI designer

The role of UI designers is more relevant to the visual representation of information. UI designers should have graphic design, visual design, and branding design skills to create interfaces that have a good look and feel. Usually, UI designers take the user flow and wireframes for individual screens/pages created by UX designers (skeleton of design) and turn it into something aesthetically pleasing (dressing-up the skeleton).

Being a good designer means a few things, such as:

• Attention to detail. Good designers know that “The devil is in the detail,” and they are continually perfecting even tiny elements of their solutions.
• Good problem-solving skills. No matter what you do in design, you always solve a specific problem. Designers should be ready to spend enough time finding a proper solution.

But there are a few specific things that are relevant for UI designer:

• Competitive analysis. Be able to analyze and visual design decisions that they make.
• Responsive design. Ensure UI design looks great on any screen size and resolution.
• Communication. Usually, UI designer works closely with UX designers and engineering team. Communication skills required to understand technical feasibility (whether the team can implement the design)

What are the drawbacks with a combined UI/UX role?

The definitions of UX and UI have many things in common, so that many companies advertise UI and UX design as a single role. The job description for such a position usually says that the person will work both on the conceptual part of user interactions and then transfer this knowledge into actual UI design. In reality, this looks more like a single person that wears two hats simultaneously. Every role requires a different set of skills and methods. And even when a single person has all the necessary skills, this mix of disciplines is bad because it makes the design process less focused. When a person constantly switches from the conceptual phase to implementation, she can easily miss an important part of the design.

Conclusion

Hopefully, by now you understand the nuanced differences between UI and UX design. Yes, they go hand-in-hand, but they are very different. UX design is more analytical. It’s rooted in cognitive behavior and human psychology. UI Design is focused more on the visuals—or whether a product is aesthetically pleasing.

It’s important to define the type of design that you find most interesting and focus on honoring the skills to create outstanding design solutions. If you’re new to the field of design, I suggest trying yourself in both areas. Real-world practical experience in both areas not only will help you understand which area is better for you but will also make you a better designer.