[johnday]

Ironically, this seems like a good example of someone not knowing the difference between UI and UX.

To recapitulate:

UI: User Interface. The design and aesthetics of the interactive and informative parts of an application.

UX: User experience. The ways in which the UI enables users to navigate and use the application with ease, understanding and minimal effort.

Many of the products (which others have mentioned) have a lovely UI, but the UX leaves a lot to be desired. For example Google Hangouts might __look__ pretty but that's no use if it's making it harder to locate the relevant actions.

My rule of thumb is this: If the average Joe would have more luck finding their way around if it was just a HTML list of links to the right activity, then your UX is crap.

[unabst]

> My rule of thumb is this: If the average Joe would have more luck finding their way around if it was just a HTML list of links to the right activity, then your UX is crap.

These are the objective metrics that designers should rely on. A UI needs to be simplest and most obvious. It should draw from what Joe already knows. So if your UI is less simple or less obvious than a clear design option such as the above, you're doing it wrong.

But the distinction between UI and UX is a hard one. It's muddled, and different parties have different stakes in the meaning itself (their jobs depend on it), so they need to be left alone. You just need to predicate your definition with "the definition I go by".

The definition I go by is this:

UI: The interface. This can be observed and designed without the user, and just by looking at the app and applying best practices from expertise on UI.

UX: The experience. This can only be observed and designed with the user, and them using the app. This will include feedback on the UI, but also on the product/service, on performance of the app/site, and on the user themselves.

UI's that have been designed without any user feedback are often the technical, developer-centric interfaces. They may simulate the user, but they prioritize what they believe is right, as a developer. Worst case, the developer goes with their gut on aesthetics as well.

UI's that have been designed only with user feedback tend to become generic, arbitrary, and often user-unfriendly. The unfriendliness stems from the designers adamant on the data. They insist on user behavior that fits their models. The problem with this is that no user exactly matches any statistic. So you've tailored the entire product to someone who does not exist.

The solution is in communication. The app/site needs to communicate exactly what it is you're offering. And the user needs to be able to communicate exactly what it is they want. Users should be able to tailor their experience. By this, we don't mean UI, but UX, and this is often where many apps go wrong. And this conversation about the experience is exactly what you want. At the end of the day, you are there to serve the user, and by user, we mean their experience.

[Silhouette]

the difference between UI and UX.

This sort of criticism is neither helpful nor accurate. UI has always been about more than just cosmetic details. We've been talking about usability, accessibility, information architecture and so on for almost as long as we've been making UIs. Certainly that means several decades before someone in need of a new buzzword for their blog/presentation/resume first coined the term "user experience".

[dmitriid]

> We've been talking about usability, accessibility, information architecture and so on for almost as long as we've been making UIs.

All of the above is UX, and should be integral part of design. Too often it isn't.

> Certainly that means several decades before someone in need of a new buzzword for their blog/presentation/resume first coined the term "user experience".

--- start quote ---

Early developments in User Experience can be traced back to the machine age that includes the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The term user experience was brought to wider knowledge by Donald Norman in the mid-1990s. He never intended the term "user experience" to be applied only to the affective aspects of usage. A review of his earlier work suggests that the term "user experience" was used to signal a shift to include affective factors, along with the pre-requisite behavioral concerns, which had been traditionally considered in the field. Many usability practitioners continue to research and attend to affective factors associated with end-users, and have been doing so for years, long before the term "user experience" was introduced in the mid-1990s.

--- end quote ---

What's that shiny new buzzword you are talking about?

[Silhouette]

What's that shiny new buzzword you are talking about?

Just to be clear, it's not the term "user experience" itself that I object to, so much as people making artificial distinctions between UI and UX. Using UX instead of UI to try to sound more qualified or authoritative most certainly does qualify as a buzzword, and it most certainly is a relatively recent and IMNSHO undesirable trend. I have never seen an expert of the standing of Don Norman claiming that UI is limited to no more than design or aesthetics, as the comment I replied to claimed.