Skip to main content

Role of a UI Designer

When people ask me what do I do? I try to explain them in all sorts of manner to impress and be proud of something great I do. And they accept me as a photoshop designer... phew!! It is so difficult to make them understand the myriad capacity of a Designer. The Design process is crucial to be followed as each step adds quality to the final output.

Mainly the Product Development Life cycle has 4 phases:
Discover, Design, Develop and Deliver.
Although as the name suggests, the involvement of a UI designer is not only in the Design Stage but also expected in the Discovery Stage. Lets take a brief understanding.

Step1: Understanding

UI Designer needs to work closely with a cross-functional team that includes product development, business analysis, quality assurance and marketing teams to provide his experience in creating elegant UI.

Customer Touch Point Analysis

A Graphic Designer, is not expected to have in-depth knowledge of Usability, hence he is not involved in the discussion.

Step2: Wireframing

Once the UI team receives the Product Requirement Document, they study them to make a low fidelity Wireframe(Experience in tools like Balsamiq, Axure or even a sketch on white board).

Rough Sketch Wireframe

Wireframe is the backbone of the Interface. It is important to adhere in there
  • the main groups of content (what?) 
  • the structure of information (where?) 
  • a description and basic visualization of the user – interface interaction (how?) 

The fastest way to get something out of our heads is to grab a pen and a sheet of paper and quickly sketch it out.


Step3: Prototyping & Designing

These wireframes are approved and detailed pixel perfect UIs and interactive Prototypes are created then. Focusing on usability the team need to leverage rapid prototypes.

Here the Graphic/Web Designer(Experience with InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator)'s role is crucial. He needs to create color palettes, set Grid Layout, choose the right typography, create detailed iconography and deliver the design with final production assets.

Wireframe to Prototype


Many a times the Project Manager pushes to follow the Use Case. But there is a need to understand that at times part of use case may fail. A UI expert is expected to understand when to tweak the laws.

Step4: GUI documentation

The UI designer needs to make a Design Guideline / GUI document simultaneously for maintaining
consistency of design. It may contain more or less the following:
  • Language /Tone Style
    • Mission, vision, and value proposition
    • Target audience description and persona
    • Brand attributes
    • spelling and punctuation, numbers, capitalization, lists
  • Visual Style
    • Logo: colors, minimum size, clear space
    • Fonts
    • Service description and tagline
    • Brand vocabulary
    • Web elements: color, size, style

Logo and UI Guideline

The visual design specifications need to be documented for project managers, programmers to refer on timely basis. 

Step5: Front-end Development

The UI developers (Fluent in UI modeling tools like Adobe Suite and Languages like HTML/CSS/Jquery) work with the development team to implement front-end design into actual code.

Developer's job done easy
  

Step6: UI Testing

UI designer also does the usability testing through direct observation and A/B testing.

If you’re the stereotypical “technical” or “business” founder of a startup, partnering with a designer co-founder can give you an important advantage and help you achieve early success.

Source: designerfounders.com also designstaff
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

I Salute The Mother In You

I have been traveling through BEST bus since a month now. Observing passengers especially ladies. I prefer the reserved seat for ladies. I usually get to sit immediately there.  A lady in burkha sat beside me with her 7months boy. I started. Me: "Does he have teeth yet?" She was very welcoming and showed me his tiny milky teeth. He was cute, enjoying that he was travelling. Me: "Is he your first child?" She said, “No its my third, I have other two girls. I just dropped them to school and am returning from there.” It is a personal opinion on how many kids a couple wants to have but what amazes me is how a mother takes care of as many kids she has with all the love and attention. Today while at the bus stop for boarding my ride i meet a lady. She lost her husband at much early age and had two kids to take care. she started her career at 30 and didn’t look back. Its cool how she manages her home and work together with kids. No personal life! I salute th...
1 comment
Continue Reading

Lets go seed collecting

This is a post on how something that interested me so much got passed down to my son naturally. Nature always interested me although staying in Bangalore for a couple of years made it evoke.  I started noticing various fruit trees in my locality like coconut, papaya, jackfruit, pomegranate, fig and banana. It was surprising to me how food was grown in some households. The beauty of various seasons was much prominent in HSR Layout, making me exploring more about other trees and searching them on google. Few months ago I was much frustrated by my son's rag picking all day. He would stop at various intervals on our way to pick up things like tobacco wrappers or used plastic bottles from the roadside. While in the park he would keep searching for chips packets or used lollipop sticks. I was worried about his health and overall his habit. I would explain him with logic and multiple repetition, yet no gain. I myself was frustrated with so many NOs to him. I thought there need to ...
Post a Comment
Continue Reading

Pawna Lakeside Camping (Day 2)

Next morning I could wake before the birds chirped. It was gloomy and fog lay on the banks. I was trying to figure out east while reminding me where the sun set to the west.  The boys were still sleeping and my eyes was wide awake wanting to soak in more of this beauty. After the sun rose and my son rose... We all did a group hug and headed to the play area.  H made few friends and we had poha, chai and bread muskah for breakfast. The Resort people were kind enough to serve warm milk for my son. Hello Sun H starting to interest in photography New friends H was keen in exploring the place more. He showed me some red chilly plants, a sugarcane grass and few grasshoppers over a Chikoo tree. We spotted a green cocoon, a praying mantis and a grasshopper. Chilly Chili Sugarcane Stages of Butterfly Now you see me A Praying Mantis Today was the day to leave. Its very tough for my son to accept end of any event, be it school or visit to his Nani'...
Post a Comment
Continue Reading