Discussion on the development process and thinking of web design and user interface design

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It is the two most frequently used word in web design field. In most cases, they are substituted for each other. A lot of people inside and outside this field think it's two basic words. But are they really confusing to each other? I don't have the habit of getting tangled up with nouns, for example, I don't argue with others between "art" and "designer." But I think Web design and user interface design These two words contain a lot of things, the comparison of these two words can be derived from some design areas of the development process and thinking.

Note: This blog refers to the user interface design in the absence of special instructions, especially in the Web page user interface design.

Back to the original point of user interface design

It's not archaeology, it's just a reflection. When the word "user interface" was originally mentioned in the Internet field, it was extended by the Man-machine interface in the Industrial design field. So when it comes to interfaces, there is bound to be a concept of interaction. From the understanding of the Man-machine interface itself, it is the medium of the interaction between man and machine (this paper refers to computer). If you think of a machine as a CPU, hard disk and other hardware, then the interface is a variety of software (including the operating system), if the object of interaction is some software objects (there may be data, media files, etc.), then the interface (graphics interface) is very familiar with the software interface. In the Software field, the development of interface design has been very mature, in various environments, various systems have different GUI Builder, and the reason for calling it the interface, it must be people through the interface of the media to manipulate "data." This is not the same as web design.

Looking at web design from the user's needs

What is the user's need to browse the Web? Abstraction can be summed up as 1: browsing information; 2: Manipulating data. The data here refers to the data lying in the database. Users in the simple browsing information, will not be behind the page "data" caused any operation, but users can click on the link, jump page. This is part of the web design is different from the user interface design of a major place. The former will spend a considerable amount of energy on how to accurately convey information through design, while the latter involves the transmission of information, but only a small part. This is why the designer who makes the software interface will encounter big challenges when doing web design, and it is not very successful (although "like software" style is also popular).

Is it possible to assume that Web design includes a subset of the user interface design functions, that is, the part that operates the data? In fact, it can be seen that the interactive mode of web design and the interactive mode of user interface design are all figured out. But you also need to be aware of the differences between the two in interactive mode. At present, due to network speed, browser standards and other reasons, can be perfectly applied to the Web page interaction mode is far less than the user interface design interaction mode, but the gap is gradually narrowing (such as drag&drop,real time Edit), and in the user interface design, These interactions also appear smoother.

Web design influenced by graphic design and interface design

It's hard to say that web design derives from graphic design or interface design. In the earliest years, web design should be done by the browser development company, that is, Netscape. As for the current development of such a vigorous field, is expected to surpass the traditional graphic design and interface design, in the middle of the process in my mind is a chaos. But no doubt, modern web design is influenced by many graphic design and interface design. I think the impact of graphic design is especially.

As mentioned earlier, one of the important requirements for users on a Web page is to browse the information, and a function of web design is to effectively and accurately convey information and to ensure beauty. This is an important function of graphic design. For the most common example, the typography and layout of Web design (layout), which is commonly used in graphic design, is actually the gestalt of the psychological theory of Gestalt psychology:

Close (proximity). The parts close together tend to form the whole.

Similar (similarity). In one aspect the similar parts tend to form the whole.

Closed (Closure). The parts of each other that form a closed entity tend to form the whole.

Simple (simplicity). The parts of simple graphic features with symmetry, regularity and smoothness tend to form the whole.

and color theory, composition theory, and so on, many are directly based on the development of graphic design for many years accumulated experience results. Even now many designers directly to the graphic design of the unique style introduced into the web design: Print influence.

The biggest difference between web design and graphic design is the "operational data". In fact, the development of web design has been influenced by the design of software interface, which has already mentioned that the interaction of web pages is more and more "software". and the development of interaction will inevitably affect the "visual" part of Web design. In fact, the two parts who first affect who is difficult to understand, is a chicken egg, egg chicken problem. Another web design is different from the graphic design and user interface design place, I think is CSS, html, JS three body. The development of the front-end code has a great impact on web design, even a period of time will lead to the development trend of web design, such as the easy implementation of jquery in one page style (this site is the home page is so). In the field of graphic design, there is no code link, in the field of user interface design, GUI Builder innovation speed is much slower than the front-end code. In fact, a bit of a web design that was born out of graphic design and user interface design has begun to reverse influence its ancestors.

Comparing the development of web design and user interface design in aesthetics

In this dimension, there are many aesthetic styles that affect web design: internationalism (Swiss style), retro style (Retro style), minimalist design (minimalist), Bauhaus (Bauhaus), Junk style ( Grunge style), natural analog style (Organic style) and so on. The aesthetic style of user interface design is usually in the sense of texture, such as Windows Vista style, Apple style and so on, more limited. This is also because the aesthetic style of web design is usually derived from graphic design (of course, it also has its own unique such as grunge style, Organic style, etc.), and user interface design is difficult to learn from the graphic design.

It takes so long to think about web design and user interface design, but it's more of a personal practice and thinking. In the work of these terms is actually irrelevant, but the Web page design and user interface design of the two in nature there are many different, and in the actual experience is not the same. But in the future it is possible that these two concepts will eventually become a, according to the current Internet development speed, desktop software will gradually migrate to the cloud, then perhaps only a design title.