*Planted: 17 March 2025 | Last Tended: 19 April 2025* User *interface* design is a separate skill from user *experience* design. It's also worth noting that UI designers are not the same as UI artists. What are the skills required for user interface design? ##### UI designers have strong graphic design skills and apply them to interactivity. UI designers employ the same skills as a graphic designer but applied to interactive surfaces. Prior to the rise of automated web design tools like Squarespace, web design was a very analogous skill for game UI design. A UI designer's skills help them understand how to prioritize visual information on a screen so the player doesn't have to hunt for what they need to know when they need to know it. ##### UI designers use prototypes to validate their design choices. Both UI designers and UX designers use prototypes to validate design choices, but UI design prototypes are targeted to specific screen layouts and menu flows -- UI designers are usually testing whether specific screens are understandable and quickly usable, or whether players understand how to go through a particular menu flow to accomplish a task. ##### UI designers *may* also spec as a UI artist, but not always. Most UI designers are concerned with layout, information architecture, and menu flow -- none of these are related to how the UI art itself looks. But on small teams UI designers may be hybrid UI designers/artists and may also determine the art style of the UI and maybe even execute on making that art, or they'll work with a team artist to create it.