Understanding user interface (UI) design

- If you're into building instead of research. And if you enjoy making things pretty, you might like the world of user interface design, or UI. UI designers focus on the interface, or the front end of the website or application. That's the customer facing portion of the site. The part you see when you visit any web site. There are tons of job titles for this type of work. You might be an interaction designer, a UI specialist, a front end designer, or a front end developer, or you might just be a web designer. Whatever the name, the UI designer is a bridge between the UX researchers and the graphic designers and the programming team. As such, UI designers must do a little code and a little design work. You may have some expertise in animation, and on the web, those animations happen through code. You'll certainly know HTML and CSS, and you'll probably know a bit of JavaScript as well. However, JavaScript will focus on the interface primarily and much less on other aspects of…