Designer’s Guide: How UI and UX Designers Work Together
Last updated on September 15th, 2023 at 10:58 am
To understand the relationship between a UX Designer (UXD) and a UI Designer (UID), it is important first to understand the job responsibilities of each. To develop a UX/UI workflow, it is crucial to develop the individual style of coordinating the process with each other. For instance, some of the basic aspects of the job may involve the same requirements. To understand the relationship between a UX Designer (UXD) and a UI Designer (UID), it is important first to understand the job responsibilities of each. To develop a UX/UI workflow, it is crucial to develop the individual style of coordinating the process with each other. For instance, some of the basic aspects of the job may involve the same requirements.
There are many behind-the-scenes that keep happening while creating a great product. For the UX-UI team, this would mean mapping the customer journeys and analyzing user personas. These head start to the very first phase of the workflow process coming all the way down to implementation. It can be alluring to look for inspiration on Behance and get into the wireframing mode, but the best approach to look at the project in hand is to go via the problem-identifying and solving route.
Understanding the workflow of a UX/UI design process
Phase 1: Collecting all requirements/specifications
Perhaps, not many designers in the field realize the importance of gathering materials at an early stage. It is the most crucial part of any design process. This impacts so much that it can make or break the entire process. As the designer of the project, you should be on the same page as the client and document every possible idea out of your interactions and brainstorming sessions.
Phase 2: Splitting bigger tasks into smaller goals
One of the best phases for a designer is downsizing the project management task into smaller achievable milestones. This not only uplifts the creatives from the productivity viewpoint but also helps segregate what the project looks like.
Phase 3: Making best practices essential
The key to the success of a UX and UI design process is the initial research that helps you to identify how the campaigns of other potential competitors are performing. Browsing through similar products gives an idea of how to go about with the design and other related aspects to not commit common mistakes.
At this point, the UX/UI designer may want to start right away implementing what has been learned through these phases – but, wait! Here the single most vital thing is to consider the best course of action to use to deliver a better outcome. This is where the communication with the UI specialist in the UX-UI team is the best.
The central goal at this moment would be to realize the different ways of solving the same problem, rationalizing how these will ideally work and why and when should they be used. Getting a clear concept of the design will ensure that all future debates related to the implementation of the thought process, based upon the concrete workflow patterns would be put to an end.
Phase 4: Getting into the action mode!
On the UX front, picturing the layout with simple sketches always does half of the work trying to explain to the other partner in the project – the UI! It is much better to develop some prototypes of the design using great tools available to ease out a designer’s life!
For the specialty in UI, this is the long-awaited time since the start of the project. For inspiration, it is good to tap into the amazing work of some of the great design experts. Trying to seek ideas from the list of available website builders is also a great idea for any web design/development work. Since Phase 3 already included usability research, it will become much easier now to understand the implementation part.
In this perspective, discovering the right landscape to come up with the right solution is what works instead. Along with solving problems, comes the aspect of project management. Then, there is the ideation stage when the team has built upon an understanding of the needs of the customer.
Phase 5: User testing the prototypes
The fundamental lookout for a UX designer is to produce user-friendly designs. There are many ways by which you can get access to the specifics i.e. find out the demographic that fits with the target market. It is also realistic to reach out to a customer to try an idea. Or else the simplest way to get inputs would be to offer some compensation to the audience – scheduling interviews, starting blogging, and even doing remote testing.
Phase 6: Present findings
Once the idea has taken direction, it makes sense to showcase the implementation to the internal stakeholders. For the UX designer, this presentation is very important as those assessing the plan will be eager to visualize the final solution. But, they must understand all the steps that went into coming to such a conclusion. It’s best to summarize all the top findings and prepare an illustration. UI wireframes are then subjected to highly refined designs, which ultimately lead to presenting the output to the web development team.
Putting the designs into code supporting environment makes it easier to fetch the design and get it into the CSS forefront. Having some great tools here to bridge the gap between design and development is the final truth, per se. There will inevitably be at least a few iterations to the end product, so it is better to keep the designs tractable through the development cycle.
Wrapping up
This provides a glimpse into the steps that go into a UX/UI team’s workflow to develop a great product. As much as there’s room for improvement from the UX perspective as is with the UI, it is important to be constantly experimenting with the thought processes, ideation, and implementation to challenge the outcomes.
The more refined the workflow, the easier it is to deliver the best quality work to clients. Here it will also become possible to work creatively and improve the product usability while keeping the business goals in mind.
