The Role of Web Development in UX/UI Design

When you think of UX/UI, you probably think of artists, designers, and maybe even project managers, but you rarely think of web developers. The truth is that most UX/UI design nowadays revolves around web-first interfaces. The vast majority of the work produced by UX/UI designers is eventually implemented by web developers, so it’s important to understand how these two components work together to create the products that we consume everyday.

What is UX/UI Design?

As you probably know, UX stands for “User Experience” and UI stands for “User Interface.” Both are crucial aspects to creating a product that people want to use. Generally, a single person can serve as both the UX designer and the UI designer, which is why we usually use the term “UX/UI design.” 

In today’s world, the way a product looks and feels plays a big role in the user’s experience. That’s why a UX/UI Designer often handles both design and user experience tasks. Surprisingly, they usually work with multiple software development teams at the same time. This happens because designing how a product looks is often quicker than actually building the software.

What is Web Development?

Web development is the process of creating, building, and maintaining websites or web applications. It combines coding, programming, and various technologies to bring a website’s design and functionality to life. This involves everything from ensuring the site looks good (frontend) to managing how it works behind the scenes (backend).

Key Components of Web Development

1. Frontend Development
   Frontend development is the part of web development that users interact with directly. It focuses on creating the visual and interactive elements of a website or application, such as buttons, layouts, and navigation menus.

• Languages and Tools: HTML (structure), CSS (styling), JavaScript (interactivity), and frontend frameworks like React, Vue.js, or Angular.

Backend Development
Backend development powers the functionality of a website by managing the server, database, and application logic. It ensures that data is processed, stored, and retrieved effectively.

• Languages and Tools: Common backend languages include Python, PHP, Ruby, Java, and frameworks like Django, Laravel, and Express.js.

What’s the Difference Between Web Development and UX/UI Design?

A whole lot! While both web developers and UX/UI designers play a part in creating software products, their roles are quite different. UX/UI designers are tasked with designing a user experience that is intuitive, interactive, and that people will want to use. A web developer is tasked with implementing the experience thought up by the UX/UI designers. They both have to make many decisions as part of their jobs, but UX/UI designers are meant to answer the big picture questions and web developers create solutions that enable the user experience to come to life.

Step 1: Determining Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

First things first: somebody needs to have an idea for a product. Assuming that’s done, the next step is to get funding in order to hire a team to build out that idea. The people funding a product are what we call the key stakeholders. In the very beginning of a product’s lifecycle, the key stakeholders and product managers get together to gather requirements for what the minimum viable product (MVP) is for this idea.

Step 2: Idea Validation

In this step, the product managers, UX/UI designers, and web developers come together to discuss the feasibility of meeting the MVP. The product managers and UX/UI designers work closely to create the visual design for the product and the web developers provide input regarding how much time and effort it would take to build the product out. In this stage, the team might also identify potential competitors and determine how best to position the product in the market.

Step 3: Prototype

Here, the product managers, UX/UI designers, and web developers work closely to determine which features are essential to the user experience and how users might interact with different aspects of the website. The two work together to decide what kinds of UI elements might work best for which features and how to create a product that is able to be used on devices of different sizes and with different input interfaces. After all, a design that makes sense for a phone screen might not make much sense for a desktop computer. Furthermore, the UX/UI designers and web developers also work closely to determine how to make the best user experience in the least amount of time---which means making compromises on both sides.

Step 4: Software Development

By this step, the UX/UI design is finalized and the web developers are busy working. Their goal is to create the specified product in the least amount of time and with the maximum amount of features. If at any point the web developers realize that something they thought was feasible turns out to not be, they reach out to the product manager who then works with the UX/UI designers and web developers to re-design a more appropriate solution (back to step 3).

Step 5: Testing

If all goes well, the software team is able to create the product exactly how the UX/UI designers imagined it. Those in the industry refer to this event as a miracle. Once the software is “dev complete,” the product managers organize a round of user testing. Potential users (and stakeholders) are brought in to try out the product and make sure it works as expected. If any bugs are found, the web developers are called back in to get those fixed as soon as possible.

Step 6: Launch

If the testing goes well, the product is then ready for a product launch. Depending on how big or small a product is, the product managers and stakeholders might decide on whether to have a “soft launch” or a “hard launch,” which are two terms to describe the scale of the product launch.

Recap

So, how do UX/UI designers and web developers work together? They’re both essential to the software product lifecycle and work together to determine what features a product can have. The UX/UI designers usually take care of why a feature is important while web developers are in charge of determining how a feature can be implemented. 

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