Ever get confused about the differences between UI and UX design and how to use them? This is the blog post for you!
According to a recent IDG study, 63% of organizations say delivering an excellent customer experience defines their success as digital-first businesses! This means that strategic UI and UX design are super important to getting digital marketing success.
What areas are these company focusing on to get these results?
- Dynamic user experience
- Attractive interface design
- User centric content
This means that strategic UI and UX design are super important to getting digital marketing success.
UI and UX design are often confused and used interchangeably as design lingo. They are often described as doing the same thing and usually placed together into a single term – UI/UX design. They work closely together, but their individual roles are quite different!
What is UX?
UX, or user experience, is a user-centric design strategy. Don Norman, cognitive scientist and co-founder of Nielsen Norman Group Design Consultancy, describes user experience as something that “encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products.”
UX research applies to anything that can be experienced, including digital and non-digital experiences. User experience refers to the way users interact with the product or service. The job of a UX designer is to do diligent research and go through each step of the UX process to understand the user journey of the product, from the beginning when the user first experiences the product, to the end-user experience.
UX design is an iterative process!
When creating user-centric solutions, designers should consider what shapes the user experience design, including how it makes users feel and the user flow! They should ask themselves: how easy is it for users to accomplish their desired tasks?
What UX Process does Pace Creative Use When Working on Projects?
When working on a client’s project, we take the user experience process very seriously.
Take a look at the extensive and comprehensive step by step process we go through to ensure optimal user-centric design below:
What is UI?
User interface (UI) design is the process web designers use to build interfaces in software or computerized devices, focusing on looks and aesthetics. UI design is more concerned with the surface and overall feel of a design.
A UI web designer focuses on the look and feel, the presentation, and the interactivity of a digital product.
When designing a mobile application for example, one thing that the UI designer should be concerned with is creating touch controls and interactive interfaces for smaller screens, like for mobile and tablet devices.
What UI Process does Pace Creative Use When Working on Projects?
Here is the step-by-step user interface design process our web team goes through when working on UI projects:
How Do UI and UX Design Work Together?
UX design is all about the overall feel and journey of the experience and user flow, while UI design is focused on how the product’s interfaces look and surface.
In other words, UX has the skeleton of the product mapped out, whereas UI creates the skin and brings it to life!
This is a complex collaboration, as the UX designer is working on the flow of the product, how buttons navigate the user through tasks, and how the interface serves the purpose of the user, while the UI designer is working on how all the interface elements will appear on the screen, creating a rich user experience.
The two working together can be the best and most impactful strategy to achieving user-centric design!
Why Should Your Company Invest in UI/UX for User-Centric Design?
UX is a very good investment! Did you know that, according to Forrester, every $1 invested in UX can translate into $100 in ROI (in other words, a 9900% return rate)?
Here are 4 main benefits of investing in UI/UX for user-centric design strategy:
1) Improves Customer Acquisition
The first experience a user has of your app or product is vital. Having an aesthetically pleasing, user-centric product with intuitive features will attract and build trust with your users.
2) Higher Conversion Rates
Whether your goal is increasing email sign ups, contact forms, or lead generation, having UI/UX designs that match your business goals and user profiles will guide users to meet your end goal.
3) More User Interactivity and Engagement
Creating a design based on a well-researched user persona and journey will help guide and motivate your users towards a particular action. Every UI/UX design should be instructive, with a clear and direct goal in mind that aligns with the business objective.
4) Optimizes Development Costs and Time
A well designed UI/UX product will best based on the result of user research, include informational design, and involve wire-framing, several rounds of prototyping, and extensive testing of the functions. Hours are spent polishing an app before it even goes into development. This ensures that the development process is efficient and the results fulfill the project objective.
How Does Pace Creative Use UX/UI Best Practices for Client Projects?
The following are examples of user experience and user interface design for mobile applications projects that we have created for clients in a wide range of industries, including healthcare and medical devices, pharmaceutical, and SaaS (Software as a service) companies.
Grifols – Sales Team Support App
We recently worked with Grifols’ CMO to build their brand awareness and increase ROI for a new product launch. The key challenges were:
- Lack of an articulated marketing strategy
- Inadequate expertise in online and digital marketing
Chris, the marketing manager at Grifols, asked Pace Creative to develop a mobile application to support the sales team during face-to-face meetings.
Goals of the Application:
- Provide instant data to convince customers that Grifols has the best solutions
- Promote the call to action
Challenge:
Grifols’ biggest competitor had managed to launch 2 automated systems and were aggressively marketing them and targeting Grifols’ customers.
The Pace Creative Process:
- Analyzed the company’s products major selling points
- Emphasized size, efficiency, workflow, and the hand-off time of Grifols machines
- Developed an expandable multi-platform app that can be used on tablets, computers, websites, and congress applications
- Created content that is reusable for procleix.com and usable on and offline
- Focused on user-centricity for sales teams to use easily and logically during demonstrations
Results:
The mobile application is currently adopted by 100% of the sales team in North America. The app is such a success that other divisions of Grifols Global has requested for the app to be translated! So far, the app has been translated to Spanish.
BD – Hazardous Drug Check App
As part of a campaign around hazardous drug safety, Pace Creative worked with BD’s product marketing manager to build brand awareness for their new product launch for the marketing campaign.
BD is a global medical technology company that is advancing the healthcare industry by improving medical discovery, diagnostics, and the delivery of care. The company provides innovative solutions that help advance medical research and genomics, improve medication management, promote infection prevention, equip surgical and interventional procedures, and support the management of diabetes.
Pace Creative worked with BD on the design and development of an intuitive, easy-to-use web-based sales tools that help facilitate the customer’s conversion from existing BD providers to NRFit products, one of their leading lines of products.
Key Challenges:
- Differentiating BD from a crowded industry market
- Developing a sales enablement to schedule demos with MQLs
The Pace Creative Process:
- Creation of a customized calculator that allows for sales reps and customers to input historical sales data to calculate their purchase volumes for NRFit products
- Creation of an organized site map and wireframes that was inclusive of all user types
- UI and UX catered design for each page with BD brand guidelines focus
Results:
The mobile application has been used by the sales team and has been a large success in North America.
Our engaging user-centric solution for their online sales tool helped BD’s sales team increase their conversion rate substantially.
We are now working on translating the app into Japanese, French, Spanish so that the app can be used by sales teams globally.
Broke – User Acquisition App
We worked with Broke’s CEO to develop an application to raise brand awareness and meet revenue targets. The key challenges to tackle were:
- Improving user acquisition by converting leads from their existing website
- The organizations lack expertise in online and digital marketing strategies
The CMO of Broke asked Pace Creative to develop an application that will be used by three different user personas with three separate customer journeys.
We developed an all-in-one app to connect customers and businesses and also works in tandem with Broke’s social media to acquire new followers and create a community.
Conclusion
As seen in our examples above, our team has exceptional experience with designing user-centric interfaces and user experiences for mobile applications, working with clients from a set of diverse industries.
Make sure to read our blog posts on the five latest web design trends, the what’s and how’s of marketing technology, and the ultimate guide to creating a B2B video to learn more about similar topics.
Ready to take your digital marketing design to another level? Reach out to us to learn more about how our talented UI/UX designers can help boost your business to the next level!
