Table of Contents

Table of Contents

UX vs UI: Your Brief Recap

UX vs UI: Your Brief Recap

6 Prerequisites to Successful UI Design

6 Prerequisites to Successful UI Design

From UX to UI: 6 Steps to Unforgettable Interfaces

From UX to UI: 6 Steps to Unforgettable Interfaces

Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts

UX to UI: How Ideas Become Interfaces

UX to UI: How Ideas Become Interfaces

UX to UI: How Ideas Become Interfaces

You’ve completed the user and competitor research. You’ve designed the information architecture, your blueprint for key user flows and decision points. You’ve even refined and validated the user flows with the help of low-fidelity prototypes.

But your product’s UI isn’t finished yet. So, what’s supposed to happen next?

At Fivecube, we know just how blurry the line between UX and UI design may be to the uninitiated. Here’s what you need to know about the transition from UX to UI design, along with best practices for the latter.

UX vs UI: Your Brief Recap

User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) are two sides of the same coin, and you can’t have one without the other. UX design guides UI design, and UI design impacts the overall user experience.

The product’s UX refers to how it feels in use: whether it’s convenient, intuitive, and easy to navigate, for example. The UX can also make the product valuable and useful. In practice, when we provide UX design services, we:

  • Conduct user research to analyze the target audience’s behavioral patterns, preferences, and needs

  • Ideate and create wireframes to describe the user flows

  • Turn wireframes into a low-fidelity functional prototype

  • Test, refine, and validate the user flows using the prototype

UI is what users see when they use your product: the page layout, the color scheme, the product’s logo, the animations, and so on. UI designers are usually brought on board to turn the validated low-fidelity prototypes into high-fidelity mockups.

That said, our UI design services also include user research, testing, and validation to inform the design decisions and ensure the interface is user-friendly and easy to use.

6 Prerequisites to Successful UI Design

Before you can move to UI design, you’ll need to complete several steps we mentioned in the introduction. Here’s what they entail.

User Research

It involves gathering data and conducting interviews to understand users’ preferences, needs, pain points, and behavioral patterns. Based on this stage, UX designers create personas of the product’s ideal users.

Competitor Research

It helps you understand what works in your competitors’ UX and what doesn’t. Capitalizing on the proven best practices and resolving unaddressed pain points and sources of friction will help differentiate your product.

Information Architecture

This is a visual blueprint for your product’s main components and user flows that reflects its navigation, content hierarchy, and key features. It also provides a high-level overview of how users will interact with it.

source: https://dribbble.com/shots/3874744-Information-Architecture-for-charity-app/attachments/879556

Wireframes

Typically created by UX designers, these are rough sketches of the product’s screens. They’re meant to visualize screen layouts, navigation bars, components, and interactive elements.

source: https://htmlburger.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Wireframe-Example-2.gif

Low-fidelity Prototypes

The wireframes are turned into low-fidelity prototypes that will then be used to test and validate the user flows. These prototypes are simple: they use a grayscale color palette and placeholders instead of visuals or copy.

Testing and Validation

UX specialists test and refine user flows using the created static or interactive low-fidelity prototypes. As a result, you get validated user flows ready for UI design.

From UX to UI: 6 Steps to Unforgettable Interfaces

So, what happens after the prototypes are validated? Put simply, UI designers come in to create high-fidelity prototypes and mockups. Here’s what it means in practice.

1. Color Scheme

Any product has the main colors and accent, or secondary, colors. Shades of gray are usually included for headings and main text, as well. By explicitly stating the hex values and purpose of each color, the scheme ensures design consistency when it comes to the color.

UI designers can rely on your existing brand book to create the product’s color scheme or come up with one from scratch.

2. Typography

Just like the color scheme ensures color consistency, the typography guidelines provide the baseline for how different text should look across the product. UI designers select the main and, if needed, secondary fonts, font color, and type size for the main text and headings.

3. Visual Elements

UI designers then prepare the visual elements required to turn the initial prototype into a high-fidelity mockup. Some, like icons, can be pulled from open-source libraries. Others, like the product’s logo or vector illustrations, are usually created from scratch.

All the visual elements are assembled into the product’s library for future use and reuse. If you decide to design certain elements from scratch, document the style and design guidelines for future visuals.

4. Layout and Composition

This is where UI designers combine the validated prototypes’ layout and composition, selected color scheme and type, and prepared visual elements into mockups. They may also add animations to the UI at this stage if necessary.

5. Testing and Iteration

Just like UX design, UI design is also an iterative undertaking: the high-fidelity prototypes have to be tested for usability and refined accordingly. UI designers also take stakeholder feedback into account when iterating.

6. Documentation

This step is sometimes overlooked, but it’s crucial for ensuring UI design consistency long-term, especially if you hire an agency to complete it. The documentation should describe:

  • Color scheme

  • Typography guidelines

  • Layout and composition rules

  • Guidelines for specific elements (e.g., links, buttons)

So, what happens after the prototypes are validated? Put simply, UI designers come in to create high-fidelity prototypes and mockups. Here’s what it means in practice.

1. Color Scheme

Any product has the main colors and accent, or secondary, colors. Shades of gray are usually included for headings and main text, as well. By explicitly stating the hex values and purpose of each color, the scheme ensures design consistency when it comes to the color.

UI designers can rely on your existing brand book to create the product’s color scheme or come up with one from scratch.

2. Typography

Just like the color scheme ensures color consistency, the typography guidelines provide the baseline for how different text should look across the product. UI designers select the main and, if needed, secondary fonts, font color, and type size for the main text and headings.

3. Visual Elements

UI designers then prepare the visual elements required to turn the initial prototype into a high-fidelity mockup. Some, like icons, can be pulled from open-source libraries. Others, like the product’s logo or vector illustrations, are usually created from scratch.

All the visual elements are assembled into the product’s library for future use and reuse. If you decide to design certain elements from scratch, document the style and design guidelines for future visuals.

4. Layout and Composition

This is where UI designers combine the validated prototypes’ layout and composition, selected color scheme and type, and prepared visual elements into mockups. They may also add animations to the UI at this stage if necessary.

5. Testing and Iteration

Just like UX design, UI design is also an iterative undertaking: the high-fidelity prototypes have to be tested for usability and refined accordingly. UI designers also take stakeholder feedback into account when iterating.

6. Documentation

This step is sometimes overlooked, but it’s crucial for ensuring UI design consistency long-term, especially if you hire an agency to complete it. The documentation should describe:

  • Color scheme

  • Typography guidelines

  • Layout and composition rules

  • Guidelines for specific elements (e.g., links, buttons)

So, what happens after the prototypes are validated? Put simply, UI designers come in to create high-fidelity prototypes and mockups. Here’s what it means in practice.

1. Color Scheme

Any product has the main colors and accent, or secondary, colors. Shades of gray are usually included for headings and main text, as well. By explicitly stating the hex values and purpose of each color, the scheme ensures design consistency when it comes to the color.

UI designers can rely on your existing brand book to create the product’s color scheme or come up with one from scratch.

2. Typography

Just like the color scheme ensures color consistency, the typography guidelines provide the baseline for how different text should look across the product. UI designers select the main and, if needed, secondary fonts, font color, and type size for the main text and headings.

3. Visual Elements

UI designers then prepare the visual elements required to turn the initial prototype into a high-fidelity mockup. Some, like icons, can be pulled from open-source libraries. Others, like the product’s logo or vector illustrations, are usually created from scratch.

All the visual elements are assembled into the product’s library for future use and reuse. If you decide to design certain elements from scratch, document the style and design guidelines for future visuals.

4. Layout and Composition

This is where UI designers combine the validated prototypes’ layout and composition, selected color scheme and type, and prepared visual elements into mockups. They may also add animations to the UI at this stage if necessary.

5. Testing and Iteration

Just like UX design, UI design is also an iterative undertaking: the high-fidelity prototypes have to be tested for usability and refined accordingly. UI designers also take stakeholder feedback into account when iterating.

6. Documentation

This step is sometimes overlooked, but it’s crucial for ensuring UI design consistency long-term, especially if you hire an agency to complete it. The documentation should describe:

  • Color scheme

  • Typography guidelines

  • Layout and composition rules

  • Guidelines for specific elements (e.g., links, buttons)

Final Thoughts

While UI design is key to making your product visually appealing, it has to rely on thorough UX research, design, and validation. Think of UX design as the foundation for your product’s UI that helps you foster user engagement, loyalty, and satisfaction.

If you started getting subpar user feedback post-launch or can’t seem to hit your KPIs, your product’s UX may need improving. We can help you identify key friction sources and pain points in your user flows and remove them with UX audit services by Fivecube. Get in touch with us to discuss how our UX/UI expertise can help bring your product’s value into the spotlight.

Jul 1, 2025

By

Fivecube Team

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