These two terms are usually often mixed and matched, or used interchangeably. In fact, they represent markedly different concepts and mean totally different things. UX design (User Experience) seeks to improve interaction between products and users. The users constantly utilize UX design without even being aware of this fact.

Trying to dig deeper into the UX design, I've decided to use two simple and everyday terms and examples. First, let's imagine the door – good UX would mean guessing what the user expects when the interaction with the door occurs.  If UX is good here, the user will have the feeling that the door should be opened by touching the doors' handle even though this may be user's first encounter with the door. Or an envelope which is the second and even better example of the UX design. When the user sees the envelope for the first time, he/she will have the feeling that the envelope should be opened if he/she wants to get to its content.

UI design, the user interface, is actually the look of the product itself. In examples mentioned above, this would be a door or an envelope appearance (door's color, material, ink, envelope's letters, shape, etc.)

When it comes to the Internet and Technology, UX design asks questions like: How to highlight things that are important to the user? What is the best way to arrange the web page content thinking of audience being targeted, etc.

UI design, on the other hand, asks these questions: Which colors should we use for a button? What are the common colors of the background? Which pictures to choose?, etc.

If you want to be UX or UI designer, it would be good to start with the learning of these technologies:

• HTML
• CSS
• JavaScript
• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Illustrator
• Adobe InDesign
• Gimp