UI vs UX vs Visual Design vs Product Design vs Web Design: Types of Designers Explained!

Back in the old days we really only had two umbrellas that designers fell into graphic design or web design now so many as technology evolved all the terms for designers came about and now it's really confusing if you don't know the differences what's even more confusing is that a lot of the kind of overlap in this Blog I'm gonna go over the different types of designers you see out there and this will especially help you if you're looking for a job what type of job to look for and where you fit in the best stay tuned hey everyone it's designer Madiha Muzzamil thanks for checking out this post really hope this helps clear somethings up for you so let's get started now I already did a post on graphic design versus UI UX design which I will link below but a high-level an overview is that traditional graphic design typically deals with print advertising logo design business collateral etc we're not going to go over that much today we're gonna focus on the more digital designer terms first I'm going to cover web design which is also sometimes referred to as interactive design web designers specifically, deal with designing for the web and usually means responsive web design as well typically a web designer or interactive designer does not  create mobile apps software or digital products now something that's kind of confusing is that this can also be known as interaction design but in my opinion those are two slightly different things where interactive design you're working like I said a website interaction design sometimes means you're dealing with the specific micro-interactions that a user may make say on an app so for example, they might decide what happens when the user hits that button on the app maybe it grows maybe it moves in some sort of way may be the shadow expands and then contracts those types of subtle animations are typically very focused on the actual interaction but in In most cases interaction interactive web usually mean the same kind of thing now let's move on to the visual design visual design is similar to graphic design and it may even include graphic design in a job but it typically focuses purely on the design direction of an app a website product or software a visual the designer may or may not design fully design comps but they will definitely design color palettes typography styles and styles the design of repeatable components say in a website or an app there are also sometimes responsible for creating a style guide and a style guide is what a UX designer or developer can use to go off to build out the rest of the design an easy way to think about visual design is that you're basically a graphic designer but for digital products now let's move on to the more popular ones you're seeing out there today UX and UI I'll start with UX UX tantric user experience design and unlike any design that has a visual component UX designers are purely focused on the actual experience that the user is gonna have with the product they're not concerned with colors typography anything like that they want to make sure the user can navigate the product or the website or the app they can find what they're looking for easily they enjoy using the product and ultimately they want to make sure that the user is able to meet their specific goals as well as achieve the business goals of the product UX designers typically create things like information architecture user personas and do a lot of user testing refining and iterating their wireframes for example those things fall under UX no visual design whatsoever now when we talk about UI design that's something a little bit different UI design stands for user interface design and like it sounds you are designing an actual interface of the product UI designers are not graphic designers because they deal with an interface even though technically a piece of paper kind of is an interface that's not what they deal with at all UI designers are purely for digital design in bigger companies UX and UI are typically separate roles so the UI the designer will take the wireframes and other deliverables made by the UX designer and put that visual varnish right on top of it or they can take the direction from the visual designer and apply that to the product once again the UI designer strictly designs that top the visual layer of the product not what's underneath and no graphic design now if you're in a smaller company sometimes the UX and UI roles are combined so you'll see a lot of job postings for UX UI or combination UX UI if you're hired to do and you I you're doing all the research and the planning as well as the visuals that go on top of it this brings me to my last one to go over product design now product design is similar to what we combined UI UX role but you have more control and more directly over the entire project you typically have other designers working beneath you you may have separate UX designers and UI designers underneath you and you're really driving the vision for the product's more of a management role then a direct hands-on role in some cases you'll be meeting with stakeholders you'll be gathering requirements and really directing the the direction of the product it is a little a bit similar to a project manager but a product manager specifically is about the product, not a project whew that was a lot thanks for hanging in there with I hope this helps you clear some things up if you have any questions or need me to clarify anything else, please leave a comment below and I'll get back to you, it seems like the UI UX topics are a little more popular on my Blog so I'll definitely be doing more Posts like this, in the future, if you like this Post please share I'd really appreciate it subscribe if you haven't already stuck around for the next one thanks.