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For people outside of the app design process, User Experience, AKA, how the app controls in the user’s hands, can seem a little nebulous. What is it? How does it work? Why is it important? Here are a few questions solicited from around the Rocksauce Studios office to help you better understand why UX is important and what my job entails.

Why is UX an important process for creating an App? 

UX is not just an important process, it is the most important process! The UX of an application will influence everything from how a user interacts with the final product to the look and feel of the design that artist will take to create final graphics. The UX of a project defines the user flow and functionality of the final product. Without this step, a developer would not know what to build into an application. If an app was a house, the UX would be the house foundation, so to speak.

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User Interface Design — or UI — is a sizzling hot topic in the world of mobile app development. Many accredit Apple’s success to its unique understanding and implementation of UI. That is, Apple spends an immense amount of time, money and effort planning how its customers will interact with its product and visa versa. In fact, this is one of the most noticeable differences between the Mac OS and Windows: windows was designed under the influence of engineers and developers, while the Mac OS was designed for the customer. Apple focused on the end user and made their engineers figure out how to make it work. Which they did well and they did well (as their sales should attest!).

Though closely related, there are subtle differences between UI and UX design. User Interface design is the more narrow process of designing a product (app, software, computer, appliance, machine) with the needs of the end-user first. The goals of user interface design are to keep the users interaction as simple and efficient as possible. Good user interface design is understated and should go largely unnoticed by the end user. In other words, it will just work without any additional thought.

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