The user-interface designer coordinates the design of the user interface.
User-interface designers are also involved in gathering usability requirements
and prototyping candidate user-interface designs to meet those requirements.
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The user-interface designer role is not responsible for implementing the user
interface. Instead, this role focuses on the design and the "visual shaping"
of the user interface, by:
- capturing requirements on the user interface, including usability requirements
- building user-interface prototypes
- involving other stakeholders of the user interface, such as end-users, in
usability reviews and use testing sessions
- reviewing and providing the appropriate feedback on the final implementation
of the user interface, as created by other developers; that is, designers
and implementers.
This section provides links to additional information related to this role.

The User-Interface Designer may come from a creative and visual arts background
instead of a business, engineering or computer science background. The User-Interface
Designer focusses on the usability of the system.
Especially in larger projects, a separate group of people are often formed
in which they all play the user-interface designer role. This group focuses
primarily on the user interface and the usability aspects of the system. This
is important because:
- the skills required by a user-interface designer often need to be improved
and optimized for the current project and application type, with potentially
unique usability requirements, and this requires both time and focus
- the risk of "mixed allegiances" must be delimited; that is, the
user-interface designer needs to be influenced more by usability considerations
than implementation considerations
See Software for Use [CON99].