If you have designed or developed a digital product, you know that it’s crucial to incorporate visual-design elements that are not only aesthetically appealing but also functionally effective. Balancing these two attributes requires both interaction design and visual design.
In fact, these design elements also shape how customers perceive your brand. In fact, 50% of customers consider a Web site’s design to be vital to a brand’s image, as Figure 1 shows.
But how can you employ interaction design and visual design to create a seamless user experience? In this article, I’ll discuss the core differences between these two design disciplines and explain how interaction design and visual design can work together to deliver optimal user experiences.
What Is Interaction Design?
Interaction design primarily concerns how users engage with a product’s interactive elements. Interaction design’s main objective of is to streamline the user’s interactions with a system, focusing on functionality, responsiveness, and overall user flows. Figure 2 depicts the interaction design process.
For example, consider a software-as-a-service (SaaS) customer-relationship management (CRM) system with complex workflows. Interaction design involves creating and optimizing interactive elements such as dynamic dashboards, advanced search systems, and context-sensitive Help features.
When designing a data-visualization tool, interaction design requires meticulously planning the placement and behavior of interactive elements such as filters, sliders, and other user-interface elements, ensuring that they perform predictably and efficiently in response to user actions.
Key Principles of Interaction Design
The key principles that drive interaction design include the following:
matching users’ expectations—Align designs with users’ prior experiences and expectations to minimize friction and simplify learning.
ensuring consistency and functionality—For ease of use and to enhance usability, maintain a consistent user interface, while avoiding any overly complex features.
promoting user engagement and control—Design for user engagement by allowing the user to control the user experience, making it enjoyable to use and enabling users to be more productive.
improving perceptibility and learnability—Present clear, visible interaction points to make systems easy to understand and learn, boosting user confidence.
minimizing errors and cognitive load—Provide clear guidance to help users avoid errors, reduce their mental effort, and ensure smooth navigation of the user interface.
What Is Visual Interface Design?
Visual design concerns how the user perceives a product. The goal of visual interface design is to create user interfaces that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also add value to the brand for users. Visual interface design determines the implementation of a product’s aesthetics rather than its utility. Figure 3 depicts the visual design process.
Consider the SaaS CRM system I mentioned earlier. Visual design focuses on the user-interface elements that appear on the screen. Visual interface design makes interacting with user-interface elements such as data charts or dashboards easier for users by employing optimal aesthetics.
Key Principles of Visual Interface Design
The key principles behind visual interface design include the following:
unity and balance—Ensuring a cohesive design by harmonizing page elements, maintaining balanced layouts, and avoiding a cluttered or chaotic appearance.
similarity—Helping users perceive the overall design rather than its individual elements by arranging UI elements clearly and maintaining continuity
proximity and hierarchy—Using effective spacing to enhance readability and employing hierarchy to distinguish the most important elements using font size and color
contrast and scale—Highlighting the differences between UI elements; adding depth by varying size, color, and direction; and creating visual interest and emphasis
dominance—Drawing attention to a single key element, making it stand out, while supporting elements play a subordinate role
Core Differences Between Interaction Design and Visual Interface Design
Both interaction design and visual design aim to create a more effective user experience. However, the differences between their objectives, techniques, and skills are much more nuanced. Let’s dive deeper to understand the key differences between interaction design and visual design.
Focus and Objectives
Interaction design and visual design address different elements of the user experience.
Interaction Design
Interaction design focuses primarily on a user interface’s workflows and interactive elements. Interaction design ensures the UI elements that users click, touch, or use to navigate are well placed and function effectively. The concerns of interaction design include the following:
Ensuring the usability and functionality of interactive elements
Creating seamless workflows
Ensuring accessibility and inclusivity by accommodating users with disabilities or different abilities
Minimizing the time it takes users to complete their tasks by providing fast, efficient UI elements
Enhancing features to encourage user engagement
While the appearance of interactive elements is still important, the main focus of interaction design is on providing a smooth, engaging user experience.
Visual Interface Design
Visual interface design, on the other hand, focuses on how an application appears to users, including making UI elements visually appealing and ensuring visual consistency throughout a digital product. The primary concerns of visual design include the following:
Creating an aesthetically pleasing user interface that attracts and engages users
Maintaining a company’s visual brand identity across various platforms
Ensuring that colors, fonts, and other design elements don’t interfere with the user experience
Making the visual elements display well across multiple device types
Visual design applies to all of an application’s UI elements, whether they are static or interactive.
Tools and Techniques
The objectives of visual and interaction design differ. Therefore, designers use different tools and techniques for each design discipline.
Interaction Design
Interaction designers rely on techniques and tools that help them design UI elements that respond appropriately to the user’s actions. The greater complexity of interaction design requires more sophisticated techniques, as follows:
wireframing—Designers use this method to create basic layouts of interactive UI elements. Wireframing is usually the first step in interaction design. Designers use tools such as Sketch, Figma, which is shown in Figure 4, or Balsamiq to create foundational wireframes. Advanced designers might also use complex tools such as Axure RP or Framer.
prototyping—Designers create a rough, interactive model of the final user interface to test user interactions. Tools that designers frequently use for prototyping include InVision Studio and Webflow.
gathering and implementing users’ feedback—Once a prototype is complete, designers can collect feedback on workflows and UI elements from beta testers or stakeholders, then implement their feedback in creating the final user interface. Marvel App is a tool that designers commonly use for capturing feedback and improving interaction designs.
Figure 4—Figma
Depending on the purpose and complexity of the application they’re designing, designers might also use tools such as Bootstrap or Adobe XD, which are helpful in creating and validating user flows and interactions before their final implementation.
Visual Interface Design
Visual-design elements are simpler than their interactive counterparts. The visual-design process often focuses on making UI elements more attractive and involves creating design elements such as illustrations, digital art, layouts, and imagery, using typography, contrasting colors, gradients, and other techniques. Visual designers use tools such as Canva, which is shown in Figure 5, Adobe Illustrator, and Typekit to create visual UI elements. They can use these tools for creating high-fidelity mockups, choosing color schemes, and designing typography.
Figure 5—Canva
Generative AI software development now enables designers to use artificial intelligence to draw inspiration for visual-design elements.
Necessary Skills
Both visual design and interaction design require creative skills. Now, let’s consider some of the additional skills that designers might require.
Interaction Design
In addition to creating design elements, interaction designers also need to analyze how their placement and functionality impact the user experience. Creating a seamless user experience requires a thorough understanding of user psychology, customer behaviors, and users’ painpoints. For example, 51% of users want search and filtering functionality on an ecommerce Web site. Understanding such requirements helps interaction designers create better user interfaces.
Knowing the basics of coding is also useful for interaction designers. While teams typically include developers that are dedicated to testing features, designers must also test their initial prototypes themselves before handing them off for implementation and testing.
Visual Interface Design
Visual interface design requires artistic skills and a knowledge of color theory, contrast, and typography. It also requires understanding user psychology. This knowledge helps designers create design elements that appear attractive and are clear to users. Even though visual designers rarely need to code, having some coding knowledge might still be useful.
The Synergy Between Interaction Design and Visual Design
Interaction design and visual design must work together for an application to be successful. Let’s consider how interaction design and visual design work together:
Improving the Usability of UI Elements
Users prefer features that are attractive and easy to use. Creating such UI elements requires a combination of interaction design and visual design. Interaction design ensures that features are easy to use and are placed optimally. Visual design provides aesthetic appeal. An effective design prompts users to click or interact with a feature and doesn’t present any difficulties.
Building Better Customer Relationships
Interaction design and visual design can work in harmony to deliver a better user experience for your digital products. While consistency in visual design promotes brand recognition and trust, users would be more inclined to interact with a product that is simple and easy to use. A product that is visually consistent and easy to use creates a user experience that results in improved customer loyalty and a positive brand image.
Streamlining the Design Process
A strong, seamless collaboration between the interaction-design and visual-design teams can streamline the design process and expedite the creation of the final product. By working together from the beginning, the interaction-design and visual-design teams can ensure that the final product is aesthetically pleasing, useful, and usable, minimizing the need for significant adjustments down the road.
While visual design focuses more on aesthetics and making a product visually appealing and engaging, interaction design concentrates on the functional aspects of a product and making it efficient to use and usable. In combination, these two aspects of design can help you create a seamless user experience that satisfies users’ emotional and practical needs. Interaction design and visual design serve different purposes and both are necessary to produce a successful product.
Wrapping Up
Both interaction design and visual design are important disciplines in creating a Web site’s or product’s user experience. Successful design teams must successfully incorporate both of these disciplines into their design projects to ensure optimal functionality, usefulness, and visual appeal, resulting in a more successful product. Whether you’re creating a Web site or a SaaS product, be sure to balance interaction design and visual design. The result will be an attractive, seamless, and easy-to-use user experience.
Sapna specializes in writing data-driven articles and blog posts about business-to-business (B2B) marketing and software as a service (SaaS). She has over five years of experience in writing content and marketing. When she’s not writing, you can find her chitchatting with her sisters or reading books. Read More
