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When people come to us, we often hear the same story. The platforms they’ve used are clunky. Outdated. Confusing. Like navigating a maze of tabs, jargon, and complexity. Just to run a simple study.
That’s not what user testing should feel like.
At Optimal, we believe finding insights should feel energizing, not exhausting. So we’ve been working hard to make our platform easier than ever for anyone – no matter their experience level – to run meaningful research, fast.
We also know that the industry is changing. Teams want to do more with less, and platforms need to be able to empower more roles to run their own tests and find answers fast.
As pioneers in UX research, Optimal has always led the way. Today, Optimal is more powerful, intuitive, and impactful than ever, built to meet the needs of today’s teams and future-proofed for what’s next.
Our Vision is Built on Three Pillars
Access for All
We believe research should be accessible. Whether you’re a seasoned researcher or just getting started, you should be able to confidently run studies and uncover the “why” behind user behavior without facing a steep learning curve. All our latest plans include unlimited users, giving your whole team the ability to run research and find insights.
Speed to Insight
Time and budget shouldn't stand in your way. With smart automation and AI-powered insights, our tools help you go from question to clarity in days, not weeks.
Communicate with Impact
Great insights are only powerful if they’re shared. We help you translate data into clear, actionable stories that influence the right decisions across your team.
What’s New
We’re entering a new era at Optimal, one that’s even faster, smoother, and more enjoyable to use.
Here’s what’s new:
- A refreshed, modern homepage that’s clean, focused, and easier to navigate
- Interactive demos and videos to help you learn how to get set up quickly, recruit, and gather insights faster
- One-click study creation so you can get started instantly
- Streamlined navigation with fewer tabs and clearer pathways

This year, we also launched our new study flow to reduce friction with study creation. It helps you easily visualize and understand the participant experience, from the welcome message to the final thank-you screen, every step of the way. Learn more about the Study Flow.
Our refreshed designs reduces mental load, minimizes unnecessary scrolling, and helps you move from setup to insight faster than ever before.
Haven’t Looked at Optimal in a While?
We’ve gone well beyond a new homepage and design refresh. Now’s the perfect time to take another look. We’ve made big changes to help you get up and running quickly and get more time uncovering the insights that matter.
Using Optimal already? Log in to see what’s new.
New to Optimal? Start a free trial and experience it for yourself.
This is just the beginning. We can’t wait to bring you even more. Welcome to a simpler, faster, more delightful way to find insights.
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How to get started with tree testing 🌱
Are your visitors really getting the most out of your website? Tree testing (or sometimes referred to as reverse card sorting) takes away the guesswork by telling you how easily, or not, people can find information on your website. Discover why Treejack is the tool of choice for website architects.
What’s tree testing and why does it matter? 🌲 👀
Whether you’re building a website from scratch or improving an existing website, tree testing helps you design your website architecture with confidence. How? Tools like Treejack use analysis to help assess how findable your content is for people visiting your website.
It helps answer burning questions like:
- Do my labels make sense?
- Is my content grouped logically?
- Can people find what they want easily and quickly? If not, why not?
Treejack provides invaluable intel for any Information Architect. Why? Knowing where and why people get lost trying to find your content, gives you a much better chance of fixing the actual problem. And the more easily people can find what they’re looking for, the better their experience which is ultimately better for everyone.
How’s tree testing work? 🌲🌳🌿
Tree testing can be broken down into two main parts:
- The Tree - Your tree is essentially your site map – a text-only version of your website structure.
- The Task - Your task is the activity you ask participants to complete by clicking through your tree and choosing the information they think is right. Tools like Treejack analyse the data generated from doing the task to build a picture of how people actually navigated your content in order to try and achieve your task. It tells you if they got it right or wrong, the path they took and the time it took them.
Whether you’re new to tree testing or already a convert, effective tree testing using Treejack has some key steps.
Step 1. The ‘ Why’: Purpose and goals of tree testing
Ask yourself what part of your information architecture needs improvement – is it your whole website or just parts of it? Also think about your audience, they’re the ones you’re trying to improve the website for so the more you know about their needs the better.
Tip: Make the most of what tree testing offers to improve your website by building it into your overall design project plan
Step 2. The ‘How’: Build your tree
You can build your tree using two main approaches:
- Create your tree in spreadsheet and import it into Treejack or
- Build your tree in Treejack itself, using the labels and structure of your website.
Tip: Your category labels are known as ‘parent nodes’. Your information labels are known as ‘child nodes’.
Step 3. The ‘What’: Write your tasks
The quality of your tasks will be reflected in the usefulness of your data so it’s worth making sure you create tasks that really test what you want to improve.
Tip: Use plain language that feels natural and try to write your tasks in a way that reflects the way people who visit your website might actually think when they are trying to find information on your site.
Step 4. The ‘Who’: Recruit participants
The quality of your data will largely depend on the quality of your participants. You want people who are as close to your target audience as possible and with the right attitude - willing and committed to being involved.
Tip: Consider offering some kind of incentive to participants – it shows you value their involvement.
Step 5. The ‘insights’: Interpret your results
Now for the fun part – making sense of the results. Treejack presents the data from your tree testing as a series of tables and visualizations. You can download them in a spreadsheet in their raw format or customized to your needs.
Tip: Use the results to gain quick, practical insights you can act on right away or as a starter to dive deeper into the data.
When should I use tree testing? ⌛
Tree testing is useful whenever you want to find out if your website content is labelled and organised in a way that’s easy to understand. What’s more it can be applied for any website, big (10+ levels with 10000s of labels) or small (3 levels and 22 labels) and any size in between. Our advice for using Treejack is simply this: test big, test small, test often.

How to quickly and easily run user research
We all know that robust user research is key when it comes to creating human-centred, intuitive products that deliver outstanding user experiences.
But we also know that many of us (especially those in marketing and design) are guilty of not doing research as often as we should – or even not at all. Often, it’s considered expensive and time consuming. However, with the right user research tools, research can start almost immediately, and we can analyze data in days, not weeks).
All of this to say, you can work with insights that are up to date and can help you inform strong product design at any stage of the product life cycle.
Why is UX research important? 🤳 🎯
Right up front, it’s worth stating that you are not your user.
With all the will in the world your product (or website or mobile app) may work perfectly and be as intuitive as possible. But, if it is only built on information from your internal organizational perspective and applied with all of your knowledge and experience, it may not measure up in the eye of your user. Often, organizations make major design decisions without fully considering their users. User research backs up decisions with data, helping to make sure that design decisions are smart decisions.
User experience (UX) research focuses your design on understanding your user expectations, behaviors, needs and motivations. This is done through methodical and investigative approaches. Through data analysis, insights can be used to ensure that all product design decisions benefit the user. It’s all about helping you to gain insights and knowledge that may not be as apparent from the inside.
User research is an essential part of creating, building and maintaining great products. Providing invaluable insights that inform from the ground up. Helping to structure the information architecture and the underlying performance of your product.
User research throughout design, development and further into the lifecycle of your product will mean less uncertainty and risk. All good things when creating a product that ultimately is intended to generate conversions. UX is at the heart of all we design and create. User research is crucial to creating human-centred design. Creating and developing digital solutions that answer users' needs.
Building better products means a better user experience and ultimately higher retention and conversion rates. What’s better than a single user experience? A customer that comes back again and again.
This can sound like a lot of work, but with the right type of user research it can take days, not weeks, to draw out useful and actionable insights.
Getting started with user research needn’t be expensive, time consuming or only done at the start of a project. Let’s look at when research may be of most benefit. If you need a little help selling user research to your broader stakeholders, check out our article.
Discover navigation issues on your website 📍🗺️ 😡
One type of research that should be done regularly is testing how users navigate your website. Navigation issues on your website can lead to missed opportunities and lower conversion rates.
Using a tree testing tool like Treejack, at any point in your website lifecycle, allows you to work ‘backwards’ and gain a clearer understanding of where users are getting lost, or uncertain of the next step. Invaluable insights into how your website is working currently and where updates and repairs or reorganising can lead to an overall better product and UX.
This type of research can be done at any point and can be particularly useful to identify how users interact with your homepage. Over 80% of users will know within seconds if they will stay on your website, they need to be easily guided to complete tasks. Don’t lose them at the first look.
Build a new and effective mobile app 📲 🎉
A mobile app answers something that a website can’t or can’t do as efficiently. This could be booking hair appointments, updating membership loyalty points, or checking the weather.
By downloading an app a user wants quick, simple and easy interaction and access to information. While all of this information may be available on your website it may not be as readily found or easily personalized. In some cases, with personalized information (membership numbers or credit card details) this can not be held safely on websites or easily stored and accessed.
User research through first-click testing with a tool like Chalkmark can inform the usability of the mobile app interface. First-click testing on mobile apps allows you to rapidly test ideas and ensure your design supports user goals before you invest time and money in further design work and development.
Continued user research throughout the life of the app and making updates that improve the interaction will mean a long term life of your app.
Learn how people use your product 💎 👀
Undertaking usability testing at any stage can benchmark how your product is currently being used. Providing insights into how it can be improved, reordered or information sorted better.
Here are a few key user research tools that can be picked up and used quickly and with a small investment, meaning they can be done regularly.
- Card sorting is a great tool for investigating how users intuitively sort information. Find out how they would like to see information sorted that would make the experience easier and more intuitively. You can get started with OptimalSort now and have data and insights back in days, not weeks.
- Tree testing is an investigative tool which follows where users go when they arrive at your website. Highlighting where they get lost and where they get stuck. All valuable information when relying on responsiveness and conversion. Getting started with Treejack is simple and quick, allowing data driven results to inform decisions for a new or existing website.
- First-click testing looks at where users go first. Where do they click on your website or your mobile app? This information will highlight how users view the interface and what they are drawn to first. Allowing your design to be influenced by intuitive behaviour and ultimately driving usability. Chalkmark is a tool which you can quickly and easily get started with, allowing your product to be intuitive from the start, or enhanced with data driven insights.
Build better products 🧱
Learning how your product usability, backed with data and insights means that product design can be more intuitive, human-centred and ensure a more positive end user experience. Working with data driven insights also helps stakeholders to understand why design may be challenged, updated or changed.
All of this needn’t be at the high cost of time, energy and delay. These tools are all readily available and can be implemented in days, not weeks. They are easy to use, and data can be easily digested and transformed into real changes.

Why you should be using card sorting
On the fence about card sorting and why you should be using it to improve your user experience? Let’s take a look at why you should take advantage of this powerful user research method.
Simply put, card sorting can help you discover how your users think your content should be organized and categorized. Card sorting gives you insight into how people conceptualize, group and label ideas, enabling you to make confident, informed information architecture (IA) decisions.
What is card sorting?
In a card sort, participants sort cards containing different items into groups. You can use the results to figure out how to group and label the information on your website in a way that makes the most sense to your audience.
Using card sorting at the start of your website build means you’re able to make decisions based on data, not assumptions. Being informed at the start of your website build can mean saving a lot of time later with revisions or rebuilds. Better to build something intuitive now, than be left wondering later why parts of your website aren’t working as you expect.
When should you use card sorting?
It’s best to do card sort research when you want to answer a specific, information-related question. For example, maybe you’re adding a new range of “natural products” to your Health and Beauty site. On the other hand, you may want to redesign how information is grouped together across your entire website.
Card sorting is at its most effective when you’ve got the information and detail you need but you just need guidance on how it's best (most intuitive) to organize it.
While card sorting is typically used in the early stages of the design process, when there’s no live IA, it’s also common to use the technique to make changes to a live IA down the line.
Card sorting: A powerful way to understand users’ mental models
Card sorting is a powerful tool to understand your users and how they make sense of information when they arrive on your website. A good rule to keep in mind is that what makes sense to you and your colleagues may not make sense to your users.
Using an online card sorting tool like OptimalSort it can be useful to check in with users to understand where they think information should sit on your website. As product ranges increase or change over time, it can also be useful to undertake card sort research when updating your website.
Let’s take a look at how card sorting might work for an e-commerce website.
Imagine you run a health and beauty e-commerce business with an active and successful website with a vast range of products that can be grouped in many different ways. At worst the website is clunky and hard to search, making it difficult for shoppers to find the right product, quickly. At best everything is there but it doesn’t quite answer what the user is looking for. It can be incredibly powerful to have a fuller understanding of how our website is viewed from our shoppers (rather than just internally). The goal of our website should be to showcase our products in a way that makes shopping easy, quick and even intuitive.
We are introducing a full range of natural based products that include products intended for babies, children, women and men. These products have previously been categorized by who they are intended for. But we want to know if there is a better way that these could be made available, especially with a market shift to an increased demand in natural based products.
By doing some card sorting with OptimalSort, we gather data from users and the pattern that our audience use to group these products. Through the data analysis we have discovered that a large majority of our users would group by natural products first and then by who the product is intended for (baby, children, women, or men). Armed with this insight (amongst others) we can use it to influence our IA. Ultimately, we end up with a far more intuitive and streamlined user experience (UX).
Three ways to use card sorting
Did you know that there are multiple ways to use OptimalSort card sorting? Let’s take a look– you may be surprised.
1. Building a new website
This is by far the biggest use-case for card sorting. When looking at building a new website or making better use of an existing one, utilizing card sorting at the research stage can be insightful and informative. Seeing your website, products and/or navigation from your end user’s perspective can enlighten, inform and assist in creating an enhanced user experience.
2. Combine card sorting and tree testing
When combined with card sorting, tree testing, with Treejack, can help you to improve your navigation and give you a fuller understanding of how your website is used. Tree testing is a technique for evaluating the findability of topics on a website. It’s also commonly known as reverse card sorting and is the perfect technique to complement card sorting. After you’ve analyzed your card sorting results and transformed them into a draft IA, you can test these insights using a tree test. Using this technique, you task users with seeking as opposed to sorting. This technique aims to replicate the experience of using a website – without visual distractions.
Unlike usability testing, tree testing only focuses on the IA of your website. It makes the process of developing an IA much faster, as you can easily make refinements and tweaks without needing to get bogged down in costly redesigns.
3. Make collaborative design decisions
You can use OptimalSort to get your team involved and let their feedback feed your designs — logos, icons, banners, images, the list goes on. By creating a closed image sort with categories where your team can group designs based on their preferences, you can get some quick feedback to help you figure out where you should focus your efforts.
Use OptimalSort to run your first card sort
Card sorting can take place in person, or online with a tool like OptimalSort. OptimalSort gives you the flexibility to conduct moderated and unmoderated card sorts online. Now, you can collect the data you need, how and when you need it. Plus it only takes a few minutes to design and launch your study.
Not only is OptimalSort simple to use, but it’s backed up with the strength of powerful analysis functionality. Taking the pain of trawling screeds of information, OptimalSort pulls out useful, usable insights from your card sorting data. This allows you to quickly identify common groups at a glance with comprehensive and vibrant visualizations and use this data to support design changes and recommendations.
What is 3D Cluster View?
Part of our OptimalSort analysis is the 3D Cluster View (3DCV). While the addition of ‘3D’ may throw off red flags of being a gimmick, it’s actually entirely appropriate.
The 3DCV basically allows you to visualize the similarity between cards as three-dimensional spatial relationships. Each point in the 3D visualization represents one of the cards from your original sort. Cards that are closer together were more frequently sorted into the same category. Likewise, when you see 2 cards that are quite far apart, they weren’t sorted together as frequently. If you’d like to find out more take a look at OptimalSort 3DCV, we think it’s pretty clever.
Wrap Up
If you’re now interested in a card sort of your own, we obviously recommend OptimalSort (which you can get started with for free). Or you want to find out more, take a look at our Card Sorting 101.
Happy sorting!

The powerful analysis features in our card sorting tool
You’ve just finished running your card sort. The study has closed and the data is waiting to be analyzed. It’s time to take a look at the analysis side of card sorting, specifically in our tool OptimalSort. Let’s get started.
A note on analysis 📌
When it comes to analysis, there are essentially two types. There’s exploratory analysis (when you look through data to get impressions, pull out useful ideas and be creative) and statistical analysis (which really just comes down to the numbers). These two types of analysis also go by qualitative and quantitative, respectively.
You’re able to get fantastic insights from both forms.
“Remember that you are the one who is doing the thinking, not the technique… you are the one who puts it all together into a great solution. Follow your instincts, take some risks, and try new approaches.” Donna Spencer, Maadmob.
Getting started with analysis 🏁
Whenever you wrap up a study using our card sorting tool, you’ll want to kick off your analysis by heading to the Results Overview section. It’s here that you’ll be able to see how many people actually took part in the study, the average time taken and general statistics about the study itself.
This is useful data to include in presentations to interested stakeholders, just to give them a more holistic view of your research.
Digging into your participant data ⛏
With the Results Overview section out of the way, you can make your way over to the Participants Table. This is where you can find information about the individual people who took part in your card sort. You can also start to filter your data here.
Here are just a few of the different actions that you can take:
- Review your participants, and include or exclude certain individuals based on their card sorts. This is a useful tool if you want to use your data in different ways.
- Segment and reload your results. This function can allow you to view data from individuals or groups of your choosing.
- Add additional card sorts. If you also decided to run manual (in-person) card sorts using printed cards, you can add this data here.
Analysing open and hybrid card sort data 🕵️♂
The Categories tab is the best place to go for open and hybrid card sort results. Take some time to scan the categories people came up with and you’ll be able to quickly build up a good understanding of their ‘mental models’, or how they perceived the theme of your cards.
Consider how different the categories might look for cards containing food items, for example. Some participants might create categories reflecting supermarket aisles, while others might create categories reflecting food groups.
A good place to get started here is by refining your data. Standardize any categories that have similar labels (whether that’s wording, spelling or capitalizations etc). Hybrid card sorts have some set categories, and these will already be standardized.
Note: Before you start throwing categories with similar labels together, take a closer look to see if people had the same conceptual approach. Here’s an example from our card sorting 101 guide:
Of the 15 groups with the word ‘Animal’ in the label, 13 had a similar set of cards, but two participants had labeled their categories slightly differently (Animals and Environment’ and ‘Animals and Nature’) and had thus included extra cards the others didn’t have (‘Glaciers melting faster than previously thought’, for example).
Reviewing the Similarity Matrix 🤔
One really useful tool for understanding how your participants think is the Similarity Matrix. This view shows you the percentage of people who grouped 2 cards together.
The most closely related pairings are clustered along the right edge. Higher agreement between participants on which cards go together equates to darker and larger clusters.

There are a few different ways to use the insights from the Similarity Matrix:
- Put together a draft website structure based on the clusters you see on the right.
- Identify which card pairings are most common (and as a result should probably go together on your website).
- Identify which card pairings are least common so you don’t need to waste time considering how they might work on your website.
Spotting popular card groupings 🔍
Dendrograms are a tool to enable you to spot popular groups of cards, as well to get a general feel of how similar or different your participants’ card sorts were to each other.
There are two dendrograms to explore:
- More than 30 card sort participants: The Actual Agreement Method (AAM) dendrogram gives you the data straight: “X% of participants agree with this exact grouping”.
- Fewer than 30 card sort participants: The Best Merge Method (BMM) tells you “X% of participants agree with parts of this grouping”, and so enables you to extract as much as you can from the data.
Looking for alternative approaches 👀
The Participant-Centric Analysis (PCA) view can be useful when you have a lot of results. It’s quite simple. Basically, it aims to find the most popular grouping strategy, and then find two more popular alternatives among participants who agreed with the first strategy.
This approach is called Participant-Centric Analysis because every response (from every participant) is treated as a potential solution, and then ranked for similarity with other responses. What this is telling you is that if you see a card sort with a 11/43 agreement score, this means 10 other participants sorted their cards into groups similar to these ones.
Taking the next step: Run a card sort and try analysis for yourself 🃏
Now that we’ve taken a bit of a deep dive into the analysis side of card sorting in OptimalSort, it’s time to take the tool for a spin and start generating your own data.
Getting started is easy. If you haven’t already, simply sign up for a free account (you don’t need a credit card) and start a card sort. You can also practice by creating a card sort and sending it out to your coworkers, friends or family. Once you start to see results trickling in, you can start to make sense of the data.
For more information, check out the card sorting 101 guide that we’ve put together, or our introduction to card sorting on the Optimal Workshop Blog.
Happy testing!

Hot off the digital press: CRUX#2 is here!
Time really does fly when you’re having fun. Rewind to November of last year (2020) and we’d just launched the first issue of our UX magazine, CRUX. If you haven’t read that inaugural edition, you can still find it right here. It’s digital, so there’s little chance of it disappearing. Anyway, I digress.
I’m here (and very eager) to tell you that, as of today, we’ve just launched the second edition of CRUX! It’s an exciting day for all of us here at Optimal Workshop, as well as the fabulous bunch of intelligent, creative and amazing people from the research and design communities who helped us to put this issue together.
Before we delve into what you can expect to see in this next issue, let’s recap on CRUX #1.
Creating a UX magazine: A brief retrospective
As you can probably guess, publishing a magazine is a bit of a labor of love. This is especially the case at Optimal Workshop where creating a magazine isn’t the only project we’ve got going on (we’re pretty busy down here in Wellington, New Zealand).
But, we managed to get the first issue of CRUX out the door and by all accounts, it was a tremendous success. In the 30 days following the launch we had just over 1500 readers, with an average page per reader count of 27 (out of 34), and an average time spent reading of over 9mins. It has been viewed in over 62 countries worldwide. So, a success!
Four people also spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day tucking into CRUX, with one reader based in Ireland managing to flick through 109 pages.
With these results, your feedback (we appreciate it) and an appetite to create an even better second issue, we stuck our heads down and got to work. Now, CRUX #2 is here!
What you’ll find in CRUX #2
It’s important to keep pushing yourself. While the first issue of CRUX got a great reception, we knew that we could do even more if given the opportunity to publish a second issue. While we talked about the idea of each future issue focusing a different theme, we instead decided to keep the brief broad – we wanted diverse opinions from a range of contributors. We think that the end selection reflects this goal.
Here are just a few of the topics that you can expect to find in this issue:
- How user research helps product teams to move faster and work more effectively
- Tips for making your participant recruitment process more efficient
- The case for a new role in the world of UX
- Building great content design teams
- How to start your own UX practice
- What the future holds for conversational user experiences
There’s all of the above and so much more to discover in CRUX #2, so go ahead and read. We’ll be waiting and we can’t wait to hear what you think.
Put the word out: We want you!
Finally, let’s talk about the future of CRUX. We want to keep creating the best UX magazine as long as people like you want to keep reading it. But we need your help. We’ve had a great bunch of people contribute to CRUX #1 and #2, but we know there are more people out there who don’t have a platform. If you, or someone you know, wants to share their ideas with the world, drop us a line directly here.
But for now, go and have a read of CRUX #2. We worked hard on it – and it’s all for you.

What’s the difference between UI and UX?
UI and UX are two terms that are often used interchangeably and confused for one another, but what do they actually mean? And is there a crossover between them?
These two terms have only grown in use in recent years, thanks largely to the exploding technology sector. This is great news. For organizations, effectively harnessing UX and UI enables them to build products and services that people will actually want to use – and continue using. For users, they’ll have access to products designed for them.
What is UX? 🤳🎯
User experience (UX as it’s commonly called) refers to the experience that a person has with a product or service.
We can determine whether a user experience is good or bad based on how easy (or difficult) it is for users to interact with the various elements of a product or service. Is the sign-up flow easy to use? Does the CTA button on the homepage encourage users to click? UX design exists to answer questions like these – and here’s how.
At the core of UX design is user research, which you can use to understand customer pain points and actually build products designed for the people using them. Typically, user research involves the use of a number of different research methods designed to answer specific questions. Card sorting, for example, can show you how people think the information on your website should be arranged.
Designer and information architect Peter Morville came up with the user experience honeycomb, which demonstrates the various components of UX design.

Don Norman of Nielsen Norman Group defines UX as “[encompassing] all aspects of the end-users interaction with the company, its services, and its products”.
If this seems broad, that’s because it is. UX actually extends beyond just the digital products of an organization and can be used for areas like retail, customer service and more. In fact, there’s actually a growing movement to replace UX with customer experience (CX), as a way of encompassing all of these disparate elements.
What is UI? 🪄📲
User interface (UI), in the most stripped-back definition, is the interface by which a user and a computer system communicate with one another. This includes the touchscreen on your smartphone, the screen on your laptop, your mouse and keyboard and countless other mechanisms.
With this in mind, user interface design is focused on the elements that users will see on these interfaces, such as buttons, text and images. UI design is all about layout, look and feel. The objective of UI design is to visually guide users through an interface so they can complete their task. In a nutshell, you don’t want a user to think too hard about what they’re doing.

UI has its origins in the 1980s, when Xerox developed the very first graphical user interface (GUI). Instead of needing to interact with a computer through a programming language, people could now use icons, menus and buttons. The rest, as they say, is history. Apple came along with the Macintosh computer in 1984 (bringing with it the first point and click mouse), and now we’re all carrying smartphones with touch screens that even a baby can operate.
Like UX, UI has grown significantly – going far beyond what you’ll see on a computer screen. Those involved in the field of UI design today will work as much on the interfaces of computer programs and apps as they will on the user interfaces of cars, wearable devices and technologies in the home. If current trends continue, UI design is likely to become an even bigger field in the years ahead.
What’s the difference between UX and UI? 👀
UX and UI are both essential components of a product or service. You can’t have one without the other, and, as we’ve explored, neglecting one could have serious consequences for your product’s success.
The difference between UX and UI is that UX is focused on the experience of using something and UI is focused on the look and feel of the interface.
“User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) are some of the most confused and misused terms in our field. A UI without UX is like a painter slapping paint onto a canvas without thought; while UX without UI is like the frame of a sculpture with no paper mache on it. A great product experience starts with UX followed by UI. Both are essential for the product’s success”. - Rahul Varshney, co-creator of Foster.fm
The difference between UX and UI is that UX is focused on the experience of using something and UI is focused on the look and feel of the interface.
Or, if you’d prefer a statement from venerable Nielsen Norman Group: “It’s important to distinguish the total user experience from the UI, even though the UI is obviously an extremely important part of the design. As an example, consider a website with movie reviews. Even if the UI for finding a film is perfect, the UX will be poor for a user who wants information about a small independent release if the underlying database only contains movies from the major studios”.
With this in mind, let’s now take a look at the people behind UX and UI. What do the roles look like in these fields? And, more importantly, what do they involve?
UX and UI jobs guide 📱🧑🏻💻
- Visual designer: This role works with other design roles in the organization (brand, marketing, etc) to ensure designs match brand guidelines. Visual designers also work with UX designers to verify that designs meet accessibility and usability requirements.
- UX strategist: At the core, a UX strategist should act as a champion of good UX. That is to say, work to ensure the principles of usability and human-centered design are well understood and utilized. They should also assume some of the responsibility of product-market fit, and work with product managers and the ‘business’ side of the organization to mesh business requirements with user requirements.
- UX designer: The most common UX profession, UX designers should have a strong understanding of the principles of UX design as well as some research ability. Essentially a jack of all trades, the UX designer will float between all stages of the UX lifecycle, helping out with usability tests, putting together prototypes and working with other areas of the organization.
- Service designer: The service designer looks at the entire end-to-end process and works with other designers, pulling them when required to liaise on visual designs and UI work. In a smaller organization, the responsibilities of this role will typically be absorbed by other roles, but eventually, there comes a time for the service designer.
Wrap up 🎬
UX and UI as terms are only going to continue to grow, especially as technology and technology companies continue to proliferate across the globe. If you want to make sure that the user experience and user interfaces of your product or service are fit for the people using them, there’s no better place to start than with user research using powerful tools.