You may also be asking yourself this question.
UI Developer, Web UI Developer — with what roles, functions, scope of tasks, responsibilities, competencies, and experiences should you associate these terms?
UI Developers — who are they?
A UI Developer is a user interface programmer. They're a technology-oriented specialist responsible for writing the code and providing an attractive and satisfactory in terms of UX design of an interface.
Is UI Developer a new term used to name well-known positions and specialties?
Or is this some kind of naming trend? And maybe it is actually an entirely new type of specialization?
You may ask, what is the difference between a Front-end Developer and a UI Developer?
You may wonder, what is the difference between a UI Designer and a UI Developer?
Are these differences similar to the distinctions between a UX Designer and a Product Designer, which we wrote about in the article "What is a Product Designer?"
Following this trail of differences, similarities, and scopes of competencies, you can confidently ask: What kinds of skills (hard and soft) and experiences are expected from specialists employed in the position of UI Developer?
You can also ask a very reasonable question: What role a UI Developer fulfills in the development or design team?
Is this a specialization similar to full-stack specialization in which developers are responsible for creating both layers of an application, website, or web app — Front end and Back end?
In this article, we'll try to discuss all these matters. We'll settle dilemmas and talk about tasks that a typical UI Developer handles.
We'll also discuss expectations that the market, owners of UX agencies, and web development companies have toward specialists designing user interfaces.
We cordially invite you to read on!
The UI Design that your business needs!
How to define a UI Developer?
To be fair, the name of this position reveals all. A UI Developer is a specialist who needs to have the competencies of a UI Designer and a Front-end Developer.
In other words, they have a unique perspective that allows them to understand, feel (empathize) and use the potential of designing and coding.
A UI Developer understands much more profoundly and broadly the limitations, risks, and dependencies that characterize both domains.
They also understand their nature when you try to combine them to offer end users the most satisfying experience (user experience).
The distinguishing trait of a UI Developer is the ability to understand the uniqueness of designing and coding and effectively combining them.
To communicate distinguishing features and attributes of a brand that are present in the end-user interface.
The position of a UI Developer in organizations requires various soft and hard skills (in programming and designing).
Some time ago, design teams in which UX/UI Designers worked and development teams in which, among others, Front-end developers worked were strictly separated.
Today this rigid division blurs, mainly because of the appearance of people in the market who can combine the knowledge and skills of these two fields.
UI Developers are a combination, a common part of these domains, competencies, experiences, and skills.
And all in all, there's nothing surprising about that. For some time now, the combination of interdependent, interconnected, and adjacent competencies has been a trend.
These specialists who can bring a unique perspective into a company or a UX agency and offer added value are incredibly desirable.
What is the point of user interface design?
Let's start with something obvious but nevertheless worthy of mentioning.
The end-user graphical interface is the most direct element the user interacts with when using a web or mobile application.
The first impression effect, which we wrote about in the article "Designing a good first impression," appears, in most cases, during contact with interfaces of digital products.
To what extent they will be assessed as attractive, friendly, inviting, and simple in the automatic and unconscious reactions will determine the course of further interaction.
From the perspective of a Front-end Developer who will ensure that the interface is maximally efficient and functional, the matter of attitudes appearing in fractions of seconds can have minor importance. That is easy to dismiss with the label of excessive psychologizing.
From a UI Developer standpoint (and also a UX/UI Designer), this problem is crucial and essential. It determines to a large extent what kind of relationship the digital product will manage to create with the user.
Will this be a love/hate relationship or a long-term relationship?
Remember that even the most functional interface that is unfriendly and unattractive can't build a long-lasting bond with the user. This bond translates into market, business, and economic success.
A UI Developer's perspective is unique, simultaneously beneficial, and essential. By combining two crucial dimensions of designing and coding, they can provide new and fresh value to the design.
To better understand the character of this combination, we need to briefly and illustratively describe the nature of the interface design.
What is an interface? It's a tool for communication. Thanks to interfaces, users can interact with a system — web or mobile application — to perform various tasks and achieve goals. They can communicate with an app, a system, or software.
An interface is a tool that enables users to use digital products. What does interface design involve? How an interface is designed and, thus, how it works strongly influences how a digital product is seen, assessed, described, and treated.
End-users' interfaces serve to make the navigation from point A to point B as short, simple, quick, and intuitive as possible.
Similar to navigation which the user is familiar with, which they learned to use with other applications.
The task of a UX/UI Designer is to design visual, functional, and interactive elements so that this process will be simple and pleasant for the user.
An interface needs to work according to habits, expectations, and needs. Or even better than that.
With that said, this added value, which goes beyond technical, aesthetic, and design attributes, is an ability to look at an interface as a tool people use.
With all associated consequences.
Regarding, for example, the fact that people make mistakes, have different perceptions, mental models, emotions, and attitudes.
Even though a developer can create a perfect, in terms of technology, interface which will execute functions as efficiently as possible, it's still not enough to make a liked and highly-praised interface.
To do this, it's essential to have the competencies of a designer who understands these purely human needs, capabilities, limitations, and typical behaviors. Who, based on research and test results, can face them.
The appearance, way of working, presentation, interactiveness, and accessibility of a user interface, to name a few of the important features, can't only result from personal preferences or biases of a designer but from data, research, and a unique, specific approach to the design process.
At the end of this segment, we would like to remind you that an interface needs to have the following three features, it needs to be:
- Functional
- Convenient and intuitive
- Visually attractive (aesthetic).
In summary: Specialists responsible for creating user interfaces use the data acquired from UX research, thanks to which they can make interfaces efficient in terms of technology and satisfactory in terms of user experience.
They can offer end users navigation elements in a way that makes the navigation more effective, satisfactory, and error-free as possible.
UI Developers have the skills, knowledge, and competencies of UI Designers and developers. They can bring to the process of interface design a value that will make it more friendly and counteract the first impression's negative effect.
The role of a UI Developer — the end user interface developer
By combining two crucial competencies — technology and design — a UI Developer, while creating a user interface, can translate design, graphical, aesthetic, and branding concepts related to usability into a technological language of specifics.
They can give them the most optimal and efficient form through appropriately adapted technology.
In practice, when the roles are separated, and different specialists work on the design and programming side, it's hard to understand some nuances.
It's hard to achieve understanding and find a satisfactory compromise.
The ability to understand the conditions, goals, methods, and limitations of both sides is valuable because it leads to better use of the potential of design and technology.
Metaphorically speaking, thanks to UI Developers, it's possible to achieve a valuable effect, the core of which is mutual intertwining.
Technology functionalizes design, and design humanizes technology.
Equally important, a UI Developer is also tasked with the following:
- Enhancing the experience of the user as a design problem
- Remembering business goals
- Finding the best possible ways of fulfilling the needs of business owners and end users through technology
- Analyzing customer flows
- Studying users' behavior
- Prototyping the user interface
- Designing interactions
- Creating mock-ups, prototypes, and MVPs
- Designing navigation systems
- Designing icons and graphical elements used in an app
- Ensuring the consistency of a graphical user interface (GUI) of digital products
- Coding.
In summary: UI Developers, on the one hand, are specialists who have technical competencies (Front-end) and, on the other hand, design skills.
Their role is to orchestrate technology with usability and find simultaneously efficient and satisfactory solutions.
With that said, UI Developers aren't UI Designers or Front-end Developers.
They're specialists who — based on the cooperation of various factors and elements, resulting in an effect far exceeding the sum of the components — bring new quality and value to creating digital products.
Hard and soft skills of UI Developers
The usefulness of UI Developers primarily depends on the range of hard and soft skills they possess.
Hard skills that are most frequently desired in UI Developers include the following:
- Knowledge of programming languages, technologies, and frameworks (e.g., React, AJAX, JQuery, JSON, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Angular, Vue, Swift)
- Familiarity with development tools (e.g., MaterialUI, Chrome Dev Tools)
- Knowledge of tools used in creating prototypes (Adobe XD, Sketch, InVision, Axure, Figma)
- Familiarity with content management systems (e.g., WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, Magneto, osCommerce)
- Knowledge of social media APIs
- Code optimization skills.
Soft skills that are most frequently desired in UI Developers include the following:
- Communication, interpersonal skills
- Creativity and openness
- Flexibility and curiosity
- Inquisitiveness and empathy
- Taste, aesthetic sense
- Ability to think analytically and synthetically
- Self-reliance and being goal and result-oriented
- Ease of learning — willingness to learn continuously is a crucial attitude the market expects from a UI Developer
- Knowledge of Agile methodologies.
Front-end Developer vs. UI Developer
UI Developer as a position, role, collection of competencies is frequently confused or compared to the position, role, collection of competencies of Front-end specialists, programmers.
Naturally, these two roles have a big common part; however, they aren't synonymous. Differences are apparent and can be boiled down to a few dimensions.
A Front-end Developer differs from a UI Developer primarily in terms of the following:
- Scope of work — a Front-end Developer creates websites and applications, and a UI Developer develops mainly interfaces for the product user
- The main goal they want to achieve — a Front-end developer mainly focuses on optimal integration of a digital product, and a UI Developer aims at offering satisfactory interactions and experiences and increasing engagement of users
- The extent of knowledge of technologies — a Front-end Developer has much broader technical competencies.
Moreover, user interface developers are primarily trying to make sure that the interface they create is visually attractive and fulfills the needs of an organization in terms of consistency with the design of a system and branding.
To a large extent, Front-end Developers focus on the reliability of the interface, the smoothness of its operation, and integration with the back-end layer.
In other words, a UI Developer and a Front-end Developer also differ in proportions.
A UI Developer focuses more on matters related to aesthetics and usability and pays less attention to technological issues.
A Front-end Developer does the exact opposite. Their main concern is technology. Its efficiency, up-to-dateness, and security.
And you can't forget, as the authors of the article published on the Interaction Design Foundation blog, "User Interface Design," remind that users are quick to assess designs.
Creators of interfaces — Front-end Developers and UX/UI Designers — should remember that their primary goal is to optimally combine usability, functionality, and attractiveness.
UI Developers, as they understand this need, bring to the design a perspective that doesn't allow you to forget that an interface should be:
- Effective and attractive
- Not work-intensive but characterized by low interaction cost, the amount of work put into its operation should be minimal
- Transparent — it should support the execution of tasks and shouldn't attract the users' attention with its form and aesthetic
- Trouble-free and familiar
- Satisfactory and frustration-free
- An expression of values that a brand represents, realizes, for which it's famous for
- Not only perfect in a functional and technical sense but also "human," it should evoke emotions.
What is a UI Developer? Summary
- The graphical user interface (GUI) is the most direct element the user interacts with when using a web or mobile application.
- Interfaces allow users to interact with a system.
- Interfaces enable users to perform tasks and achieve goals.
- The first impression effect usually occurs during contact with digital products' interfaces.
- Even the most functional but unfriendly and unattractive interface won't be able to build a long-lasting bond with the user, which conditions the market and business success.
- The term UI Developer (user interface programmer) determines technically-oriented specialists responsible for writing the code and for an attractive, UX-satisfying interface design.
- A UI Developer is a specialist who needs to have the competencies of a UI Designer and a Front-end Developer.
- A UI Developer has a unique perspective, which allows them to use the potential of designing and coding.
- By combining two crucial dimensions of designing and coding, they can provide new and fresh value to the design.
- Combining interconnected competencies has been a clear trend for a long time.
- A task of a UI Developer is to design and program visual, functional, and interactive elements to make navigation easy and pleasant for the user.
- UI Developers can bring value to creating interfaces that make them friendlier and counteract the first impression's negative effect.
- In practice, when different specialists work on the design and programming side, finding an understanding and a satisfactory compromise isn't easy.
- The ability to understand the conditions, goals, methods, and limitations of both sides is valuable because it leads to better use of the potential of design and technology.
- UI Developers aren't UI Designers or Front-end Developers.
- They're specialists who bring new value to the process of creating a digital product.
- A UI Developer focuses more on matters related to aesthetics and usability and pays less attention to technological issues.
- In turn, a Front-end Developer does the opposite. Their main concern is ensuring the technology is efficient, up-to-date, and safe (e.g., digital services).
