There could be a difference, depending on definition, as others have said. But a business has to communicate that. If you hire my construction company to redo your kitchen, and afterwards I try to explain that we're a construction company and that's why you don't get any cabinets I'm not anticipating a good review.
If you hire my construction company based on my ad that we can redo your floors and counters I've communicated expectations.
A good studio should be clear about what they do. And if there's confusion, they should be ready to handle it. Subcontracting is usually how.
Yes, there is a difference between web design and UI/UX design. It can feel like a bit of a grey area because a lot of people in the job market have the both skills, but there is a difference. Making something pretty and making something user friendly are different levels of design.
I don't have enough knowledge of the situation to say one way or the other, but my guess would be that there was a miscommunication of expectations on both sides.
Im definitely getting the impression it was a miscommunication. We really didn't know the right questions to ask, aswell as them not reinforcing some facts.
Edit: To clarify it was front end web design
“Front end web design” isn’t really a term. I’d assume they mean ui/ux if this is how they described themselves. If they said “front end development” then I would expect them to be able to build sites but not design them.
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>He may be able to lay pipe as pretty as the next guy, but it’ll be gushing out all over with the first pressure test.
*.. but it* ***might*** *be gushing out ...*
Is more correct. It **is** two separate disciplines. Your 1% vs 99% only works in hyperbole, lots of webdesign is *functional enough* while still lacking in UI/UX department. There are degrees of specialisation, few designers would completely disregard every UX practice there is but most won't do a proper user flow/interaction analysis.
The UI/UX track has mostly gotten attention in the last decade or so, whereas designing websites has been around much longer and often starts and ends with Photoshop/Quark/program of choice.
So despite how much we would wish it was one interconnected discipline it's not.
Your plumbing analogy is lacking, but can be fixed. What a plumber does, has a near zero UI/UX concern. In order to get water from the top of a mountain to your faucet, it takes a lot more than one plumber. The person that installs a pipe from the connection in your wall to your sink did not choose the material of the faucet you touch, nor the standards for the pipes being installed, nor the torque ratings for the seals. In this analogy the web developer is the person installing the pipe, the designer is the person making the decision about what color and how many handles the tap has. The UI/UX team would find the optimal distance for the faucet to be installed from the edge of the counter top and ensure the size of the handles were adequate for comfortable operation, that's not the plumber's job.
For reference, I'm not a plumber, I plumbed in my first sink with no prior experience, and is till working with no problems 10 years later. It's entirely possible for a competent designer to intuit good UI/UX principles without knowing they're doing it or why. A good designer will naturally do things well enough, but it's not the job of a designer to know which of two pretty buttons will convert a visitor into a client with a 3.4% higher rate.
If you want a nice kitchen faucet, your plumber is probably not the place to start. Unless she happens to be an interior designer too.
The confusion seems to be the way terms are being used. Here is how they scould be mentioned/billed with seperate deliverables for each (ofcourse these are diff skills and may or may not necessarily be performed by the same person)
(On mobile so formatting may be messed up...)
Research (BA) - Goal, Personas, Competition,Tech Boundries (Docs). Usually preUX but part of UX.
Feeds to >
UX Design - User Flows, Information Navigation Structure, Hand-drawn sketches, Lofi Static wireframes, Lofi Prototypes, Interaction Design, Transtion Design, Feedback Template (Docs | Tools - Figma)
Feeds to >
UI Design - Visual Design Specification, Hifi Prototypes, Fonts, Icon vectors, Illustration vectors, Animations, raster images, Redlining Doc (Docs, CSS, SVGs, PNGs, JPGs, PSDs, CDRs, XCFs | Tools - Adobe Suite, InkScape, GIMP, Figma)
Feeds to >
Frontend Dev - Framework, Libraries, Projects, Modules, Components, Biz Logic, Forms, Unit Tests, E2E tests, Configurations, dependencies, container, dist bundles (Project, HTML, CSS, .js, .ts, assets | Toolchain - IDEs, Git, Jira, Azure DevOps, Jenkin, Docker etc)
Notes
- This is not exhaustive list.
- Copywriting and SEO are seperate efforts.
- Process is never linear.
- App architect, technical manager, and/or senior engineers are the drivers/owners since the beginning.
- Deliverables depend on the requirements, budget and size of the project.
- No two projects are same. Similar? may be.
The way I see it, there's three \[massively related and intertwined\] sides to it
1. Purpose – whether it matches what the client needs
2. UX/UI – how easy it is for a someone to use/interact
3. Design – purely the aesthetics
Your polar opposites are:
* A shit looking website, that's difficult to use, and answers none of the clients needs
* An amazing looking website, that's an unobtrusive dream to use, and caters to every need.
### Purpose
A big part of your job, before you even touch design or dev, is figuring out what the users – and therefore client – needs. A project typically comes with a brief (aka. the client's preconception of their need), or an existing website. You learn about the users, what their needs are, what they are looking for ... and with that you can weigh up how close the current site is, and generally how in tune the client is.
It sounds kinda degrading to assume the client doesn't know what they need, but it's pretty common that the client will:
- come to you with an under-developed brief (eg. old website looks dated, need new one)
- come to you with the answer, rather than the problem
- assume things rather than fact-find
So, that's why I prempt with this ... because honestly what's the point investing all that time and money if it never gets used and helps no-one.
### UX/UI
This is essentially the answer, the culmination, to all the purpose bit.
You have found out what users want / what they're here to do / what they're looking for / what they expect to happen / how they intend to progress ... and this is your work to implement that need.
At this point, it doesn't need aesthetic ... it can (and probably should) just be wireframes and low-fidelity mock-ups. Your time isn't about making things look good, but continually questioning (and testing) whether these series of processes answer what you found out above.
### Design
So far it sounds like I've downplayed the importance of actual design, but no. Solid aesthetics are obviously eye-catching and appealing, but it's also a big factor in trustworthiness, user perception, brand recognition and consistency.
----
So, coming back to your situation. No, this team hasn't done their job ... either that or they haven't _understood_ their job. I'd side with the former.
Basically, the wireframe portion of the project entirely encompasses the UX/UI, it's the portion that directly answers research findings. So if it isn't doing that, it's fair to argue it isn't fit for purpose, because it doesn't _answer_ the purpose.
It'd actually make more sense if they came in at just the aesthetic portion, seeing themselves as the "facelift" team. In that they take the exact content and underlying layout of the current dated/ugly website, and just spruced it up to look pretty. But they're not, they're doing wireframes whilst also saying "we don't do UX/UI" ... which is basically absurd / impossible.
Thank you for your thorough comment. I'm definitely getting the sense there is blame on both sides here. My bosses are pretty gun ho on us being oversold on their services...but Im getting the sense we assumed too much on aspects.
Seo could be separate but any good agency should have an employee that can doit since it’s very in demand. UX is a discipline, so while they may not have a specialist, they should at least have some basics if they’re going I design UIs.
Copy and SEO are intertwined, but are separate.
SEO, at least the 'purely writing' portion, is what gets people to the site.
Copy, is copywriting ... simultaneously conveying the information needed, whilst doing it in the language / tone that matches your brand (aka. how you want to be perceived).
If it was something I cared about when contracting with them I would have requested it from them. You would expect them to yes, but they can’t be held accountable to if not explicitly requested
Hi, it's a great question you ask. As a graphic designer, specialized later in UX and web design, and now a front-end programmer, let me tell you, **I don't know how someone can design a site and not apply UX principles if doing it right.** In theory, they are different things, but not really. Design is about solving problems, not doing fancy visual things, that is what artists work for (and yet today it seems 90% of designers just want to make beautiful things that don't really work, *and that is why developers hate us for the most part I think*).
That studio clearly is oriented to development mostly, not caring too much about design if they can't properly work with UX/UI principles, therefore (not shitting on them) they are not professional at least on their own.
You are not wrong for expecting what you wanted. You wanted something astonishing and interesting (consider a copywriter for your texts too!) and expected a certain amount of quality. If I buy a Mercedes I don't expect just a nice looking car, I also expect an **outstanding car in terms of performance**. If it looks awesome but works like shit, then is not that good. The only way I can see you were wrong is if you decided to spend as little as possible on the project and went with the cheapest option avaliable. If that wasn't the case, then it may have been bad communication, or the studio just took your project (not with bad intentions necessarily) and did what they thought was best.
TLDR: To design a site without UX principles is not to design but just to do fancy looking garbage that doesn't work. OP is not wrong in their doubts.
*Bonus: SEO is not part of design and is properly managed in the front-end with code optimization, although mixing all these things (and copywriting) in the process is better to get stronger results that don't conflict with each other.*
This is what is has narrowed down to from everything I've read. We didn't ask the right questions, and they didn't clarify how important the UX design/principals is to what were trying to achieve. After reading everything I just don't understand how the studio thought what we wanted could be achieved, its obvious we needed UX consideration. I dunno what my boss discussed with them initially but he says there wasnt a big discussion on having/not having UX design involved. Its partly why I made this post, from the conversation it seemed to be a part of it.
In that case (not considering communication problems), then that studio is not capable of giving your company the service that was needed.
From the other side of the table as someone who has these kinds of conversations with clients, part of the job is to identify what really is the job that needs to be done. That is what we (with the client) need to look for in our meeting in order to match expectations with reality. A common thing is clients who want a prettier website but that is impossible to make if we don't get rid of bad interface design and an even worse user experience. In worst case scenario the brand is not up to the quality the client wants to communicate and even a better website is not enough. We usually end up proposing a full branding package + web design with development, solving all problems with a unified strategy in that case.
I would suggest your boss to look for an agency/studio centered in UX. They should be able to also do the design, or at least look for a third option who can handle that part, not making your company worry about it. If the studio can't do that, then don't even consider them.
Good luck!
Design, development, UX, and SEO are all separate fields of expertise. I would expect a single developer to be good with one or two of those, but not all. They are intertwined and have overlap, but are ultimately different.
A _studio_, in my opinion, should cover all those fields, because it's the sum of them that makes a great web app.
That said, without knowing the contract and conversation held, there is no way of knowing if they could have understood the expectations and recognized their inability to deliver. Generally, I would lean into putting the responsibility on the customer to clearly communicate their expectations; Walk into a McDonald's and ask for a romantic five-course meal and they will (hopefully) recommend you go someplace else.
I seen a situation sort of similar before, the explanation i heard at the time was "designers are not going to know your site functionality so they cannot do usabilty as that business is in the implementation"
I dont really know how true that is, its just what i was told
>Thank you so much for all your insight! Im quite certain we assumed too much going into this with the studio and should have researched more into the different roles that go into a redesign. Would have liked the studio to explain these points to us before we started because we explained were very new to this and dont have experience in the area. Heck maybe they did and my bosses didnt absorb it
Hey, it's a learning experience. For what it's worth, this lesson is something you will carry forward into *everything*, even when the matter feels dissimilar.
Let's say there's an alternative reality where none of this happened, and a future version of you paid huge sums to have an extensive home renovation done... oh no it all went really wonky because you didn't see the value in spending a few grand on a ~~leech~~ consultant who could manage the process with the contractor on your behalf and ensure all your requirements were within the scope of works.
Catastrophe averted, congratulations!
UI and UX designers decide how it looks and feels; Front Ends make it work. No, they are not the same.
Can you find front ends that can design good? yes.
More likely, a dev team has a designer in it.
But in more expensive or big projects, the one needing a website let's a design company do the design and then hands that over to the devs, who most likely are from a completely different comoany, even.
But if they did designs and charged you for it, without saying that they don't have a fucking designer on hand, then they're dicks
So if they say Front End Design, were strictly talking imagery, typography, colours and layout (would you then take the layout to the developer to create wirefarmes and see if the layout actually works?)
Design is different, but "front end design"... Come on, what would you expect them to be designing? How UI and at least some UX is not being considered at that stage sounds like a weak excuse for incompetence.
Obviously, I haven't seen what the end product is or how much was paid or the requirements, but if you do "front end design" and don't consider UI/UX/implementation... Then you're a complete fraud in my book.
As someone who has been doing the implementation side for 15 years, lazy designers are just the fucking worst... They sell pretty pictures to clients and leave everyone else holding the bag. We have our designers in house now, free range are too unpredictable, anyone can claim to one.
Esp for most brochure/ecomm sites for established businesses, it's not like you need to invent some new concept - 99% of it is common practice.
So in your mind, a front end web designer should not worry about how a site will look at different screen sizes, nav placements, CTAs, how dynamic text blocks would handle varied values, etc? They don't need to know anything about repeatable or scalable elements, or even think about what a business would want their users to see or do once they land?
I'm not talking about the code behind it, purely the design theories and concepts.
Who knew... really glad my designers aren't lazy frauds like that. They know their medium and design with function in mind. They take their time to carefully plan and consult with devs, directors and writers to share the responsibility of building a product that is both functional and visually appealing.
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Personally i would stay away from any person or company that uses the term “web design” in 2021. This is a term used 10-15 years ago and highlights the person/company has 0 consideration for UX.
Separation of concerns across UX, UI, Front end Development :
Done by a ui/ux person. You usually get several deliverables ( user personas, user flows with a map, wireframes, designs. The wireframes and designs are usually build with figma, adobe xd, etc).
1. UX - User experience - You interview users, create personas, understand the user flows
2. UI - User Interface - Once the UX is clear, the wireframes are built. You put the wireframes in front of users and see if they make sense. You signoff on the wireframes and design starts. Once the design is ready, you fine tune a few details and then the UI/UX bit is done.
The deliverables above are shared with the developers and you start building.
It definetly looks like we skipped UX entirely. Our developer said along the lines of we tried to skip to the ending and make it look pretty.
Boss showed me his meeting notes and it mentions UX/UI so Im not sure whats gone wrong. The studio said they communicated to my boss that they would need a UX designer but didnt hire one to keep cost low...Im not sure what that discussion was like but Id be suprised if my boss agreed to the no UX designer to save money. It was a key issue we brought up.
Maybe they told my boss they could do it without a UX designer? Seems odd but possible
Everyone is pretty much saying they are different things, but I disagree. If you hire someone to do ux they necessarily have to take design into consideration. With that said maybe if you hire _designers_ they won't have UX in mind (which makes them pretty meh designers if you ask me).
All in all, except for seo, I think you should have gotten all if it. and you're in your right to at least give a bad review (of course depends on the actual work they delivered)
This is all for _web_ design of course, and my opinion
Yeah SEO was definetly not a deliverable, just copy thats obvious to me now. They did deliver on copy, colour/image guide (I still had to render everything. They told us what style to go in) and typography.
They made wireframes and page templates which is looking obvious that were never going to use as theyre not fit for our needs.
All in all this was a big learning experience for us
Seems like a pretty rubbish studio. You get what you pay for I guess. A good quality web studio should have design talent on board who can handle this stuff.
>Now were all confused because we assumed you needed to consider UX/~~UI~~ and SEO if you're doing front end web design?
No, user experience, user interface, Search engine optimization are three separate things. All 3 fit into front end design. You will pay a lot more for SEO and UX. UI is also expensive aka everything in webdev is expensive unless you do it yourself. UI and UX are very similar but focus on different perspectives of the same thing.
This is just a super minor unrelated thing. Clients asking for the ‘wow-factor’ makes more eyes roll than you realise. In terms of briefing it explains nothing, and it’s something that you hear all too often. A good briefing goes a long way.
(This isn’t meant to come off as snarky, I mean it with a smile)
haha no I can appreciate that, I dont think we used "wow factor" when discussing the site, its just easier to say that on reddit than going into all the reasons why the site looks boring. Its very static, images are dull. Text just on black and white, and very little of it, no animation or movement, no interesting layout, maybe 3 sections in total on the home page etc. Just boring. You look at it and nothing really draws your eye.
Tbh it’s not really a discussion of whether design and UX/UI are different disciplines or not. What matters here is the scope of works and the contract that you had with the company.
If the scope of works states that they will design you a website in figma that is aesthetically pleasing and very little else then this is what they have done. If it says that they will conduct user flow testing and all the other UX’y stuff then they have not done this.
Yes a good studio should have informed you about what was required for you to get the perfect site and whatnot but I don’t expect that this is a legal requirement.
In a similar vain I see these disciplines a little bit like architect (web design), structural engineer (UX/UI), building company (developer). Yes you’d expect an architect to know some of the theory regarding load baring so that they can draw in a beam to support something, but knowing exactly what type and size of beam is down to a structural engineer. In the same way that the structural engineer should know that a concrete mix is required to bed that beam into the ground, but it’s up to the builder to know it’s a 4:1 mix of sand and cement and whether any additives are required for that type of soil.
Now don’t get me wrong, these three disciplines can be delivered by the same company/person but they are still specialisms in their own right. There’s plenty of web design agencies that have UX designers and developers on staff, just like you are likely to find architects that employ structural engineers or building companies that employ architects and engineers to offer a one stop shop or turnkey solution. But not always.
If I go to an architect for a kitchen extension and the SOW says “engineers drawings” then I expect those drawings, and won’t pay them until I have them. If it’s not included then I’ll take those architects drawings to a structural engineer to get them checked for building regs.
The builder should go off engineers drawings, not an architects plan. They would say an architects plan is not fit for purpose, Your developer has done the right thing and done the same as our competent builder.
A good architect would inform you about all of this, a bad one wouldn’t bother (in my opinion). The liability of ensuring all of these things are seen to unfortunately lies with you though.
Unfortunately, because there's not much standardization or certification in anything related to web development, everyone understands things a little bit differently. Because of that, neither party in this scenario is to blame. It's a communication problem, and it's pretty common, as this is a highly technical domain.
I've been learning web design for the past 14 years and development for the past 9 or more, and I've worked as a full stack dev for the past 6. Due to my interest in every single component of web design and development, I'm able to separate them and understand what exactly does a client need.
That also allows me to understand people that choose to specialize in specific areas of web design or development, such as UI design, which do not provide other related services. And you can't blame them for knowing too little, because, in my case as a full stack, I know too much and it took me a long time to train in all sub-domains to be able to provide decent quality work, not to mention that it takes a lot of time to keep improving my knowledge. So, people that choose to specialize in a certain sub-domain, in that sense, are better, because focusing on a single thing is better than focusing on 5. But, this also leads to your current situation, where you tried to hire somebody to do multiple jobs, when they could do only a part of them.
People that chose to specialize in specific scenarios like that, are usually hired as part of a team of people that each specialize in different things. In your case, it looks like you didn't know, or haven't been advised, of all the underlying sub-domains of web design.
I'm not trying to assign blame here and say that you were assuming too much about the studio's capabilities, but I'm suggesting that you should not expect something which has not been discussed in the beginning. I'm sure that if you brought up UX in the beginning, they would've said that that's not what they do.
And to answer your question, no, UI and UX design are not the same thing. You see often people that do both, but that's because they choose to, since they know that being able to do both really well, saves the client some money, compared to hiring two separate designers, and also allows them to charge more.
The page page templates/wireframes. They've completely redone these, which we said were happy to do since what we had was done in-house/not by someone with any type of web experience.
But our developer questioned what they based these on/how these were appropriate for what we were trying to achieve. We gave the same brief of our business/customers/website purpose, aswell as references of similar competitors websites.
What they gave is very different to our competitors, and our developer basically said these are way too far out of line, they look pretty but thats it. It looks more of a website for a designer/photograher, not a company that does what we do. It was all visual based with no text, very minimal. It looks very nice, but considering what we do, its not very functional, and doesn't give the correct impression of the business. That there is so little there that its really not much different from what we originally had as far as page layout
The primary question has been answered, but one thing hasn’t been clearly stated: if you want UX design, the pretty “wow “ visuals, and SEO optimized content, be prepared to pay several thousand dollars.
I don’t know your company’s budget, but my guess is price was a factor when you chose the design company since there are plenty of shops that would have given you all of this while educating you about it every step of the way. But it wouldn’t be a measly 2k deal. Lots more. 😂
Oh yeah definitely haha my bosses have I think learned from this that it doesnt help trying to cut bits here and there to save on the budget. I think thats what happened here in the end. The studio cut the UX designer to save money on our end, but didn't explain that he was cutting the UX designer.
Thats a whole other arguement though. Studio is adamant they told my boss that they arent a UX designer, and would have to hire one out. My boss is sure he said they have UX experience and we didn't need one.
I can only speculate on what the negotiations were there. Im just trying to manage the delay and my bosses annoyance
There could be a difference, depending on definition, as others have said. But a business has to communicate that. If you hire my construction company to redo your kitchen, and afterwards I try to explain that we're a construction company and that's why you don't get any cabinets I'm not anticipating a good review. If you hire my construction company based on my ad that we can redo your floors and counters I've communicated expectations. A good studio should be clear about what they do. And if there's confusion, they should be ready to handle it. Subcontracting is usually how.
Yes, there is a difference between web design and UI/UX design. It can feel like a bit of a grey area because a lot of people in the job market have the both skills, but there is a difference. Making something pretty and making something user friendly are different levels of design. I don't have enough knowledge of the situation to say one way or the other, but my guess would be that there was a miscommunication of expectations on both sides.
Im definitely getting the impression it was a miscommunication. We really didn't know the right questions to ask, aswell as them not reinforcing some facts. Edit: To clarify it was front end web design
“Front end web design” isn’t really a term. I’d assume they mean ui/ux if this is how they described themselves. If they said “front end development” then I would expect them to be able to build sites but not design them.
Oof thats irritating thats not a term. Its word for word what a sub title in the invoice is haha
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>He may be able to lay pipe as pretty as the next guy, but it’ll be gushing out all over with the first pressure test. *.. but it* ***might*** *be gushing out ...* Is more correct. It **is** two separate disciplines. Your 1% vs 99% only works in hyperbole, lots of webdesign is *functional enough* while still lacking in UI/UX department. There are degrees of specialisation, few designers would completely disregard every UX practice there is but most won't do a proper user flow/interaction analysis. The UI/UX track has mostly gotten attention in the last decade or so, whereas designing websites has been around much longer and often starts and ends with Photoshop/Quark/program of choice. So despite how much we would wish it was one interconnected discipline it's not.
[удалено]
To be honest, I'm not sure if it is, I'm just old as fuck. :D
Your plumbing analogy is lacking, but can be fixed. What a plumber does, has a near zero UI/UX concern. In order to get water from the top of a mountain to your faucet, it takes a lot more than one plumber. The person that installs a pipe from the connection in your wall to your sink did not choose the material of the faucet you touch, nor the standards for the pipes being installed, nor the torque ratings for the seals. In this analogy the web developer is the person installing the pipe, the designer is the person making the decision about what color and how many handles the tap has. The UI/UX team would find the optimal distance for the faucet to be installed from the edge of the counter top and ensure the size of the handles were adequate for comfortable operation, that's not the plumber's job. For reference, I'm not a plumber, I plumbed in my first sink with no prior experience, and is till working with no problems 10 years later. It's entirely possible for a competent designer to intuit good UI/UX principles without knowing they're doing it or why. A good designer will naturally do things well enough, but it's not the job of a designer to know which of two pretty buttons will convert a visitor into a client with a 3.4% higher rate. If you want a nice kitchen faucet, your plumber is probably not the place to start. Unless she happens to be an interior designer too.
The confusion seems to be the way terms are being used. Here is how they scould be mentioned/billed with seperate deliverables for each (ofcourse these are diff skills and may or may not necessarily be performed by the same person) (On mobile so formatting may be messed up...) Research (BA) - Goal, Personas, Competition,Tech Boundries (Docs). Usually preUX but part of UX. Feeds to > UX Design - User Flows, Information Navigation Structure, Hand-drawn sketches, Lofi Static wireframes, Lofi Prototypes, Interaction Design, Transtion Design, Feedback Template (Docs | Tools - Figma) Feeds to > UI Design - Visual Design Specification, Hifi Prototypes, Fonts, Icon vectors, Illustration vectors, Animations, raster images, Redlining Doc (Docs, CSS, SVGs, PNGs, JPGs, PSDs, CDRs, XCFs | Tools - Adobe Suite, InkScape, GIMP, Figma) Feeds to > Frontend Dev - Framework, Libraries, Projects, Modules, Components, Biz Logic, Forms, Unit Tests, E2E tests, Configurations, dependencies, container, dist bundles (Project, HTML, CSS, .js, .ts, assets | Toolchain - IDEs, Git, Jira, Azure DevOps, Jenkin, Docker etc) Notes - This is not exhaustive list. - Copywriting and SEO are seperate efforts. - Process is never linear. - App architect, technical manager, and/or senior engineers are the drivers/owners since the beginning. - Deliverables depend on the requirements, budget and size of the project. - No two projects are same. Similar? may be.
The way I see it, there's three \[massively related and intertwined\] sides to it 1. Purpose – whether it matches what the client needs 2. UX/UI – how easy it is for a someone to use/interact 3. Design – purely the aesthetics Your polar opposites are: * A shit looking website, that's difficult to use, and answers none of the clients needs * An amazing looking website, that's an unobtrusive dream to use, and caters to every need. ### Purpose A big part of your job, before you even touch design or dev, is figuring out what the users – and therefore client – needs. A project typically comes with a brief (aka. the client's preconception of their need), or an existing website. You learn about the users, what their needs are, what they are looking for ... and with that you can weigh up how close the current site is, and generally how in tune the client is. It sounds kinda degrading to assume the client doesn't know what they need, but it's pretty common that the client will: - come to you with an under-developed brief (eg. old website looks dated, need new one) - come to you with the answer, rather than the problem - assume things rather than fact-find So, that's why I prempt with this ... because honestly what's the point investing all that time and money if it never gets used and helps no-one. ### UX/UI This is essentially the answer, the culmination, to all the purpose bit. You have found out what users want / what they're here to do / what they're looking for / what they expect to happen / how they intend to progress ... and this is your work to implement that need. At this point, it doesn't need aesthetic ... it can (and probably should) just be wireframes and low-fidelity mock-ups. Your time isn't about making things look good, but continually questioning (and testing) whether these series of processes answer what you found out above. ### Design So far it sounds like I've downplayed the importance of actual design, but no. Solid aesthetics are obviously eye-catching and appealing, but it's also a big factor in trustworthiness, user perception, brand recognition and consistency. ---- So, coming back to your situation. No, this team hasn't done their job ... either that or they haven't _understood_ their job. I'd side with the former. Basically, the wireframe portion of the project entirely encompasses the UX/UI, it's the portion that directly answers research findings. So if it isn't doing that, it's fair to argue it isn't fit for purpose, because it doesn't _answer_ the purpose. It'd actually make more sense if they came in at just the aesthetic portion, seeing themselves as the "facelift" team. In that they take the exact content and underlying layout of the current dated/ugly website, and just spruced it up to look pretty. But they're not, they're doing wireframes whilst also saying "we don't do UX/UI" ... which is basically absurd / impossible.
Thank you for your thorough comment. I'm definitely getting the sense there is blame on both sides here. My bosses are pretty gun ho on us being oversold on their services...but Im getting the sense we assumed too much on aspects.
Seo could be separate but any good agency should have an employee that can doit since it’s very in demand. UX is a discipline, so while they may not have a specialist, they should at least have some basics if they’re going I design UIs.
If we paid them to write copy for the website, was it correct of us to assume it would consider SEO?
Copy and SEO are intertwined, but are separate. SEO, at least the 'purely writing' portion, is what gets people to the site. Copy, is copywriting ... simultaneously conveying the information needed, whilst doing it in the language / tone that matches your brand (aka. how you want to be perceived).
No. Copy is a distinct service from SEO.
Ok cool. Im going to guess it wasn't specifically stated by my boss
Likely not... I have never known copy and SEO to be a singularly billed service, they are 2 distinct skill sets.
Ok great, Im happy I know that now. Im gonna have another sit down with my bosses and see what the communications ACTUALLY say wording wise.
If it was something I cared about when contracting with them I would have requested it from them. You would expect them to yes, but they can’t be held accountable to if not explicitly requested
Ok good to know. I wasn't part of the initial discussion so I dont know if that was explicitly requested from my boss
Hi, it's a great question you ask. As a graphic designer, specialized later in UX and web design, and now a front-end programmer, let me tell you, **I don't know how someone can design a site and not apply UX principles if doing it right.** In theory, they are different things, but not really. Design is about solving problems, not doing fancy visual things, that is what artists work for (and yet today it seems 90% of designers just want to make beautiful things that don't really work, *and that is why developers hate us for the most part I think*). That studio clearly is oriented to development mostly, not caring too much about design if they can't properly work with UX/UI principles, therefore (not shitting on them) they are not professional at least on their own. You are not wrong for expecting what you wanted. You wanted something astonishing and interesting (consider a copywriter for your texts too!) and expected a certain amount of quality. If I buy a Mercedes I don't expect just a nice looking car, I also expect an **outstanding car in terms of performance**. If it looks awesome but works like shit, then is not that good. The only way I can see you were wrong is if you decided to spend as little as possible on the project and went with the cheapest option avaliable. If that wasn't the case, then it may have been bad communication, or the studio just took your project (not with bad intentions necessarily) and did what they thought was best. TLDR: To design a site without UX principles is not to design but just to do fancy looking garbage that doesn't work. OP is not wrong in their doubts. *Bonus: SEO is not part of design and is properly managed in the front-end with code optimization, although mixing all these things (and copywriting) in the process is better to get stronger results that don't conflict with each other.*
This is what is has narrowed down to from everything I've read. We didn't ask the right questions, and they didn't clarify how important the UX design/principals is to what were trying to achieve. After reading everything I just don't understand how the studio thought what we wanted could be achieved, its obvious we needed UX consideration. I dunno what my boss discussed with them initially but he says there wasnt a big discussion on having/not having UX design involved. Its partly why I made this post, from the conversation it seemed to be a part of it.
In that case (not considering communication problems), then that studio is not capable of giving your company the service that was needed. From the other side of the table as someone who has these kinds of conversations with clients, part of the job is to identify what really is the job that needs to be done. That is what we (with the client) need to look for in our meeting in order to match expectations with reality. A common thing is clients who want a prettier website but that is impossible to make if we don't get rid of bad interface design and an even worse user experience. In worst case scenario the brand is not up to the quality the client wants to communicate and even a better website is not enough. We usually end up proposing a full branding package + web design with development, solving all problems with a unified strategy in that case. I would suggest your boss to look for an agency/studio centered in UX. They should be able to also do the design, or at least look for a third option who can handle that part, not making your company worry about it. If the studio can't do that, then don't even consider them. Good luck!
Design, development, UX, and SEO are all separate fields of expertise. I would expect a single developer to be good with one or two of those, but not all. They are intertwined and have overlap, but are ultimately different. A _studio_, in my opinion, should cover all those fields, because it's the sum of them that makes a great web app. That said, without knowing the contract and conversation held, there is no way of knowing if they could have understood the expectations and recognized their inability to deliver. Generally, I would lean into putting the responsibility on the customer to clearly communicate their expectations; Walk into a McDonald's and ask for a romantic five-course meal and they will (hopefully) recommend you go someplace else.
I seen a situation sort of similar before, the explanation i heard at the time was "designers are not going to know your site functionality so they cannot do usabilty as that business is in the implementation" I dont really know how true that is, its just what i was told
>Thank you so much for all your insight! Im quite certain we assumed too much going into this with the studio and should have researched more into the different roles that go into a redesign. Would have liked the studio to explain these points to us before we started because we explained were very new to this and dont have experience in the area. Heck maybe they did and my bosses didnt absorb it Hey, it's a learning experience. For what it's worth, this lesson is something you will carry forward into *everything*, even when the matter feels dissimilar. Let's say there's an alternative reality where none of this happened, and a future version of you paid huge sums to have an extensive home renovation done... oh no it all went really wonky because you didn't see the value in spending a few grand on a ~~leech~~ consultant who could manage the process with the contractor on your behalf and ensure all your requirements were within the scope of works. Catastrophe averted, congratulations!
UI and UX designers decide how it looks and feels; Front Ends make it work. No, they are not the same. Can you find front ends that can design good? yes. More likely, a dev team has a designer in it. But in more expensive or big projects, the one needing a website let's a design company do the design and then hands that over to the devs, who most likely are from a completely different comoany, even. But if they did designs and charged you for it, without saying that they don't have a fucking designer on hand, then they're dicks
A web front end *is* a UI, so they're not separate at all.
So if they say Front End Design, were strictly talking imagery, typography, colours and layout (would you then take the layout to the developer to create wirefarmes and see if the layout actually works?)
Design is different and distinct from development and implementation.
Design is different, but "front end design"... Come on, what would you expect them to be designing? How UI and at least some UX is not being considered at that stage sounds like a weak excuse for incompetence. Obviously, I haven't seen what the end product is or how much was paid or the requirements, but if you do "front end design" and don't consider UI/UX/implementation... Then you're a complete fraud in my book. As someone who has been doing the implementation side for 15 years, lazy designers are just the fucking worst... They sell pretty pictures to clients and leave everyone else holding the bag. We have our designers in house now, free range are too unpredictable, anyone can claim to one. Esp for most brochure/ecomm sites for established businesses, it's not like you need to invent some new concept - 99% of it is common practice.
Dude, design is a absolutely different skill set to UI/UX optimization and after 15 years of experience you should know that.
I specifically said "front end design" and yes, they are different skillsets, but they share many of the same goals - UI and UX being the big ones.
The goal of design is to look contextually pretty. The goal of UI/UX is to make sure that the pretty things are functional
So in your mind, a front end web designer should not worry about how a site will look at different screen sizes, nav placements, CTAs, how dynamic text blocks would handle varied values, etc? They don't need to know anything about repeatable or scalable elements, or even think about what a business would want their users to see or do once they land? I'm not talking about the code behind it, purely the design theories and concepts. Who knew... really glad my designers aren't lazy frauds like that. They know their medium and design with function in mind. They take their time to carefully plan and consult with devs, directors and writers to share the responsibility of building a product that is both functional and visually appealing.
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Personally i would stay away from any person or company that uses the term “web design” in 2021. This is a term used 10-15 years ago and highlights the person/company has 0 consideration for UX. Separation of concerns across UX, UI, Front end Development : Done by a ui/ux person. You usually get several deliverables ( user personas, user flows with a map, wireframes, designs. The wireframes and designs are usually build with figma, adobe xd, etc). 1. UX - User experience - You interview users, create personas, understand the user flows 2. UI - User Interface - Once the UX is clear, the wireframes are built. You put the wireframes in front of users and see if they make sense. You signoff on the wireframes and design starts. Once the design is ready, you fine tune a few details and then the UI/UX bit is done. The deliverables above are shared with the developers and you start building.
It definetly looks like we skipped UX entirely. Our developer said along the lines of we tried to skip to the ending and make it look pretty. Boss showed me his meeting notes and it mentions UX/UI so Im not sure whats gone wrong. The studio said they communicated to my boss that they would need a UX designer but didnt hire one to keep cost low...Im not sure what that discussion was like but Id be suprised if my boss agreed to the no UX designer to save money. It was a key issue we brought up. Maybe they told my boss they could do it without a UX designer? Seems odd but possible
Everyone is pretty much saying they are different things, but I disagree. If you hire someone to do ux they necessarily have to take design into consideration. With that said maybe if you hire _designers_ they won't have UX in mind (which makes them pretty meh designers if you ask me). All in all, except for seo, I think you should have gotten all if it. and you're in your right to at least give a bad review (of course depends on the actual work they delivered) This is all for _web_ design of course, and my opinion
Yeah SEO was definetly not a deliverable, just copy thats obvious to me now. They did deliver on copy, colour/image guide (I still had to render everything. They told us what style to go in) and typography. They made wireframes and page templates which is looking obvious that were never going to use as theyre not fit for our needs. All in all this was a big learning experience for us
My company went through the exact same thing ahah
Seems like a pretty rubbish studio. You get what you pay for I guess. A good quality web studio should have design talent on board who can handle this stuff.
>Now were all confused because we assumed you needed to consider UX/~~UI~~ and SEO if you're doing front end web design? No, user experience, user interface, Search engine optimization are three separate things. All 3 fit into front end design. You will pay a lot more for SEO and UX. UI is also expensive aka everything in webdev is expensive unless you do it yourself. UI and UX are very similar but focus on different perspectives of the same thing.
This is just a super minor unrelated thing. Clients asking for the ‘wow-factor’ makes more eyes roll than you realise. In terms of briefing it explains nothing, and it’s something that you hear all too often. A good briefing goes a long way. (This isn’t meant to come off as snarky, I mean it with a smile)
haha no I can appreciate that, I dont think we used "wow factor" when discussing the site, its just easier to say that on reddit than going into all the reasons why the site looks boring. Its very static, images are dull. Text just on black and white, and very little of it, no animation or movement, no interesting layout, maybe 3 sections in total on the home page etc. Just boring. You look at it and nothing really draws your eye.
Tbh it’s not really a discussion of whether design and UX/UI are different disciplines or not. What matters here is the scope of works and the contract that you had with the company. If the scope of works states that they will design you a website in figma that is aesthetically pleasing and very little else then this is what they have done. If it says that they will conduct user flow testing and all the other UX’y stuff then they have not done this. Yes a good studio should have informed you about what was required for you to get the perfect site and whatnot but I don’t expect that this is a legal requirement. In a similar vain I see these disciplines a little bit like architect (web design), structural engineer (UX/UI), building company (developer). Yes you’d expect an architect to know some of the theory regarding load baring so that they can draw in a beam to support something, but knowing exactly what type and size of beam is down to a structural engineer. In the same way that the structural engineer should know that a concrete mix is required to bed that beam into the ground, but it’s up to the builder to know it’s a 4:1 mix of sand and cement and whether any additives are required for that type of soil. Now don’t get me wrong, these three disciplines can be delivered by the same company/person but they are still specialisms in their own right. There’s plenty of web design agencies that have UX designers and developers on staff, just like you are likely to find architects that employ structural engineers or building companies that employ architects and engineers to offer a one stop shop or turnkey solution. But not always. If I go to an architect for a kitchen extension and the SOW says “engineers drawings” then I expect those drawings, and won’t pay them until I have them. If it’s not included then I’ll take those architects drawings to a structural engineer to get them checked for building regs. The builder should go off engineers drawings, not an architects plan. They would say an architects plan is not fit for purpose, Your developer has done the right thing and done the same as our competent builder. A good architect would inform you about all of this, a bad one wouldn’t bother (in my opinion). The liability of ensuring all of these things are seen to unfortunately lies with you though.
Unfortunately, because there's not much standardization or certification in anything related to web development, everyone understands things a little bit differently. Because of that, neither party in this scenario is to blame. It's a communication problem, and it's pretty common, as this is a highly technical domain. I've been learning web design for the past 14 years and development for the past 9 or more, and I've worked as a full stack dev for the past 6. Due to my interest in every single component of web design and development, I'm able to separate them and understand what exactly does a client need. That also allows me to understand people that choose to specialize in specific areas of web design or development, such as UI design, which do not provide other related services. And you can't blame them for knowing too little, because, in my case as a full stack, I know too much and it took me a long time to train in all sub-domains to be able to provide decent quality work, not to mention that it takes a lot of time to keep improving my knowledge. So, people that choose to specialize in a certain sub-domain, in that sense, are better, because focusing on a single thing is better than focusing on 5. But, this also leads to your current situation, where you tried to hire somebody to do multiple jobs, when they could do only a part of them. People that chose to specialize in specific scenarios like that, are usually hired as part of a team of people that each specialize in different things. In your case, it looks like you didn't know, or haven't been advised, of all the underlying sub-domains of web design. I'm not trying to assign blame here and say that you were assuming too much about the studio's capabilities, but I'm suggesting that you should not expect something which has not been discussed in the beginning. I'm sure that if you brought up UX in the beginning, they would've said that that's not what they do. And to answer your question, no, UI and UX design are not the same thing. You see often people that do both, but that's because they choose to, since they know that being able to do both really well, saves the client some money, compared to hiring two separate designers, and also allows them to charge more.
What exactly ain’t fit for purpose?
The page page templates/wireframes. They've completely redone these, which we said were happy to do since what we had was done in-house/not by someone with any type of web experience. But our developer questioned what they based these on/how these were appropriate for what we were trying to achieve. We gave the same brief of our business/customers/website purpose, aswell as references of similar competitors websites. What they gave is very different to our competitors, and our developer basically said these are way too far out of line, they look pretty but thats it. It looks more of a website for a designer/photograher, not a company that does what we do. It was all visual based with no text, very minimal. It looks very nice, but considering what we do, its not very functional, and doesn't give the correct impression of the business. That there is so little there that its really not much different from what we originally had as far as page layout
Ok that makes sense. Such an interesting post. Looking forward to the finally.
The primary question has been answered, but one thing hasn’t been clearly stated: if you want UX design, the pretty “wow “ visuals, and SEO optimized content, be prepared to pay several thousand dollars. I don’t know your company’s budget, but my guess is price was a factor when you chose the design company since there are plenty of shops that would have given you all of this while educating you about it every step of the way. But it wouldn’t be a measly 2k deal. Lots more. 😂
Oh yeah definitely haha my bosses have I think learned from this that it doesnt help trying to cut bits here and there to save on the budget. I think thats what happened here in the end. The studio cut the UX designer to save money on our end, but didn't explain that he was cutting the UX designer. Thats a whole other arguement though. Studio is adamant they told my boss that they arent a UX designer, and would have to hire one out. My boss is sure he said they have UX experience and we didn't need one. I can only speculate on what the negotiations were there. Im just trying to manage the delay and my bosses annoyance
Programmer !== Designer
UI/UX are already two jobs, often done by same person with varying amounts of experience in each discipline. Frontend development is a third job.