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.

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.

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
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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