UI and UX stand for user interface and user experience and they are essential in making a users journey on your website / app / museum installation as seamless and enjoyable as possible.
Websites
Do you ever find yourself trying to unsubscribe from a companies newsletters only to be met with a ‘please enter your email’ or ‘log into your account’ wall? – you just messaged me!
Or selecting your date of birth on a website? it should be doable in 3 clicks, not 50 clicks to get to July, 1982 (yes I’m that old).
And, as a self confessed WordPress aficionado I’m all for website security, but many websites insist on a password that requires 12 characters, uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters…what’s next? retinal scans and digital ID?! There’s actually a really good website for checking the security of your password called how secure is my password luckily my default password would take 400 years to crack, you should check out to see if pa55word is still a valid choice in 2026.
There was a really amusing challenge a few years back where developers battled to create the worst UI Experiences called Bad UI battles.
Museums
Long gone are the days of simple touchscreen experiences. Kids have these devices at home; they want to be challenged, to explore, to be wowed. But I increasingly see, particularly with my own children, that there is no dwell time. You literally have 10 seconds to grab their attention.
I recently went to a museum (not naming which one) that required me to enter my email address before continuing with the “experience”, and obviously I just walked away.
Fin
The key to creating a good UX is simple: put yourself in the user’s shoes. Make everything as easy to use and enjoyable as possible. Stress-test like a blind gorilla. Ask your grandma if she knows how to use your website. People’s attention spans can be pretty low, and you have a unique chance to capture them.
Peace x