Digital Transformation Today

UI Design Vs. UX Design And SharePoint: What’s The Difference?

Microsoft developed the SharePoint platform to be useful for a number of different applications. However, that flexible functionality doesn’t replace the need for user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design. Both are necessary to create a website that’s easy to understand and use.

While the terms UI and UX are often tossed around interchangeably, there’s a difference between the two, and appreciating the work involved in each will go a long way toward making a great SharePoint site.

What’s the Difference Between UI and UX?

The user interface is actually just one part of the user experience. When you look at a website — the buttons, form fields and other design details — you’re looking at the interface. Yet more elements are part of the user experience, including the performance of the site, as well as its functionality, architecture and content.

A SharePoint UI can be beautifully designed and a still be associated with a horrible user experience if the site is confusingly structured or the content is slow to load.

How User Experience Informs the User Interface

To make a user-friendly interface, you need to understand how most visitorsexpect a site to behave – for example, navigation. Research, including interviewing potential users about their needs, is an important step in designing a great user experience. Often, the more time put into researching the needs and wants of the user-base, the less time will be needed for designing, architecting and coding.

A comprehensive research process will also help you avoid launching a site, only to realize some or all of it needs to be redone, because the user wasn’t carefully considered at the beginning of the design process. If you’re doing a redesign of an existing site, studying the user flow, popular pages and pain points are all necessary to make improvements and innovations.

Best User Experience Methodology

Building a site with the user in mind requires following a process that has several important steps. Stakeholders and decision makers need to be established. The site’s business goals and target audience should also be identified.

After making those decisions, the next best step is to draw up a list of questions and speak with potential users about the site structure, navigation, functionality and design. Of course, agreeing on and having faith in the process from the beginning is necessary for the methodology to develop an effective SharePoint UX.

Research will inform the needs of the user, and those needs will help determine the priorities of the site architect and designer. No big decisions should be made in a vacuum. When there’s a lack of communication, trust in the process can break down, and ad-hoc decisions that have a negative impact on the site may be made.

Final Thought

While a lot of UI/UX discussions occur during a site’s development, it’s always best to remember the user. That person isn’t wondering whether a button should be green or blue; he or she just wants to do their job. Choosing SharePoint as a platform can be a good start toward making a great site, but user experience has to be a primary consideration in the development process.

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