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User experience (UX) is about how a person feels about using a system*. User experience highlights the experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human-computer interaction and product ownership, but it also covers person’s perceptions of the practical aspects such as utility, ease of use and efficiency of the system. User experience is subjective in nature, as it is about an individual’s feelings and thoughts about the system. User experience is dynamic, because it changes over time as the circumstances change.

* in this text, "system" or "product" is used as a general term to refer to a product, service, non-commercial item or a combination of them

UX definition in ISO standard

ISO 9241-210^[1] defines user experience as "a person's perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service". So, user experience is subjective and focuses on the use.

The additional notes for the ISO definition explain that user experience includes all the users' emotions, beliefs, preferences, perceptions, physical and psychological responses, behaviours and accomplishments that occur before, during and after use. The notes also list the three factors that influence user experience: system, user and the context of use.

Note 3 of the standard hints that usability addresses aspects of user experience, e.g. "usability criteria can be used to assess aspects of user experience". Unfortunately, the standard does not go further in clarifying the relation between user experience and usability. Clearly, the two are overlapping concepts, with usability including pragmatic aspects (getting a task done) and user experience focusing on users’ feelings stemming both from pragmatic and hedonic aspects of the system.

In addition to the ISO standard, there exist several other definitions for user experience. Some of them have been studied in ^[2].

What affects user experience?

A diversity of things can influence a person's user experience with a system. To address the variety, factors influencing user experience have been classified into three main categories: user's state, system properties, and context (=situation) ^[3]. Studying typical users and contexts helps designing the system. These categories also help identify the reasons for a certain experience.

The three main user experience factors are best illustrated by a scenario below.

An example

Lisa is on her way home by bus, and wants to know how her husband is doing on a business trip. The bus is crowded and she did not get a seat, but she wants to use the time to contact her husband by phone. What affects her user experience with the mobile phone?

Lisa’s own mental state and characteristics (motivation, expectations, mood, know-how) and current physical resources (only one hand available for the phone)

The context, i.e. the current situation:
- physical (moving bus, views passing by, lighting, noise – the environment Lisa feels via her senses),
- social (fellow travelers, code of conduct, husband's availability - how other people affect UX),
- temporal (the duration of the bus trip – time constraints),
- infrastructural (availability of network, cost of calls and text messages, legal restrictions) and
- task (sending a text message is part of a bigger ´task´ of 2-way dialogue, other ongoing activities such as monitoring when to step out of the bus, possible interruptions).

This context motivates Lisa to use text messaging as the means to communicate with her husband. The context also affects the interaction with the mobile phone and thereby the user experience.

The system needed for text messaging (mobile phone and text messaging service in this case): user interface and functionality (e.g. text messaging software and keypad), design and brand, the replies coming from the husband. The primary value comes from the discussion itself, and all other parts of the system should support this purpose.

Depending on husband's messages, Lisa's emotions may range from delight to sorrow, from excitement to despair. User experience focuses, however, on Lisa's feelings about using the mobile phone, not about her husband. Did the system enable her to communicate with the husband in the way she wanted in this context? Did the system delight her by exceeding her expectations or by attracting positive reactions from others?

Momentary emotion or Overall user experience

The scenario above describes user experience of communicating with a relative via text messaging with a mobile phone. We can investigate user experience on many temporal levels, however. In the scenario above, we could study Lisa's changing emotions during interaction, her feelings about the episode as a whole, or her attitude towards her phone in general, i.e., her overall UX. In the above example, focusing on the momentary emotions may not be the best way to understand Lisa's user experience, since her emotions were caused mainly by the content (the messages from Lisa's husband) and not by the examined system (mobile phone). However, in systems where the content has the primary focus, such as in electronic games, the flow of emotions may be the best way to study user experience.

Single experiences influence the overall UX: the experience of a key click affects the experience of typing a text message, the experience of typing a message affects the experience of text messaging, and the experience of text messaging affects the overall UX with the phone. The overall UX is not simply a sum of smaller interaction experiences, because some experiences are more salient than some others. Overall UX is also influenced by factors outside the actual interaction episode: brand, pricing, friends' opinions, reports in media, etc.

One branch in user experience research focuses on emotions, that is, momentary experiences during interaction: designingaffective user interfaces and evaluating emotions. Another branch is interested in understanding the long-term relation between user experience and product appreciation. Especially industry sees good overall UX with a company's products as critical for securing brand loyalty and enhancing the growth of customer base. All temporal levels (momentary, episodic, and long-term) are important, but the methods to design and evaluate these levels can be very different (see User experience evaluation).

History

The term user experience was brought to wider knowledge by Donald Norman, User Experience Architect, in mid-1990's ^[4]. Several developments affected the rise of interest in the user experience:

In website design, it became more important to combine the interests of different stakeholders: marketing, branding, visual design, and usability. Marketing and branding people needed to enter the interactive world where usability was important. Usability people needed to take marketing, branding, and aesthetic needs into account in web site design. User experience provided a platform to cover the interests of all stakeholders: making web sites easy to use, valuable, and affective for visitors. This is why several early user experience publications focus on web site user experience^[5]^[6]^[7].
In the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), the need for usability originated from industries that did not want to waste employees' time in fighting with hard to use tools or to recruit expensive people with the needed training for mastering the tools. Usability professionals' primary assignment was to make systems easy to learn and efficient to use. Employees were satisfied when the tool did not hamper their actual work. When usability work expanded to consumer products, the requirements became different. For example, when playing with a toy, efficiency is not the primary concern, but instead, stimulation, fun, and other pleasurable aspects of interaction are deemed more important.
Recent advances in mobile, ubiquitous, social, and tangible computing technologies have moved human computer interaction (HCI) into practically all areas of human activity. This has led to a shift away from usability engineering to a much richer scope of user experience, where user's feelings, motivations, and values are given as much, if not more, attention than efficiency, effectiveness and basic subjective satisfaction (i.e. the three traditional usability metrics^[8]). ^[9]

The field of user experience was established to cover the holistic perspective to how a person feels about using a system. The focus is on pleasure and value rather than on performance. The exact definition, framework, and elements of user experience are still evolving.

References

^ ISO FDIS 9241-210:2009. Ergonomics of human system interaction - Part 210: Human-centred design for interactive systems (formerly known as 13407). International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Switzerland.
^ Law, E., Roto, V., Hassenzahl, M., Vermeeren, A., Kort, J.: Understanding, Scoping and Defining User Experience: A Survey Approach. In Proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems conference, CHI’09. April 4-9, 2009, Boston, MA, USA (2009)
^ Hassenzahl, M. & Tractinsky, N.: User Experience – a Research Agenda. Behaviour and Information Technology, Vol. 25, No. 2, March-April 2006, pp. 91-97
^ Donald Norman, Jim Miller, Austin Henderson: What You See, Some of What's in the Future, And How We Go About Doing It: HI at Apple Computer. Proceedings of CHI 1995, Denver, Colorado, USA
^ Fleming, J. 1998, Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience. O’Reilly & Associates, Inc, USA.
^ Garrett, J. 2002, Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web. New Riders Press, USA.
^ Kuniavsky, M. 2003, Observing The User Experience – A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Elsevier Science, USA.
^ ISO 9241-11:1998, Ergonomics of Human System Interaction: Guidance on usability
^ COST Action IC0904-TwinTide: Towards the Integration of IT Design and Evaluation.

[1] ISO FDIS 9241-210:2009. Ergonomics of human system interaction - Part 210: Human-centred design for interactive systems (formerly known as 13407). International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Switzerland.

[2] Law, E., Roto, V., Hassenzahl, M., Vermeeren, A., Kort, J.: Understanding, Scoping and Defining User Experience: A Survey Approach. In Proceedings of Human Factors in Computing Systems conference, CHI’09. April 4-9, 2009, Boston, MA, USA (2009)

[3] Hassenzahl, M. & Tractinsky, N.: User Experience – a Research Agenda. Behaviour and Information Technology, Vol. 25, No. 2, March-April 2006, pp. 91-97

[4] Donald Norman, Jim Miller, Austin Henderson: What You See, Some of What's in the Future, And How We Go About Doing It: HI at Apple Computer. Proceedings of CHI 1995, Denver, Colorado, USA

[5] Fleming, J. 1998, Web Navigation: Designing the User Experience. O’Reilly & Associates, Inc, USA.

[6] Garrett, J. 2002, Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web. New Riders Press, USA.

[7] Kuniavsky, M. 2003, Observing The User Experience – A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Elsevier Science, USA.

[8] ISO 9241-11:1998, Ergonomics of Human System Interaction: Guidance on usability

[9] COST Action IC0904-TwinTide: Towards the Integration of IT Design and Evaluation.

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 Depending on husband's messages, Lisa's emotions may range from delight to sorrow, from excitement to despair. User experience focuses, however, on Lisa's feelings about using the mobile phone, not about her husband. Did the system enable her to communicate with the husband in the way she wanted in this context? Did the system delight her by exceeding her expectations or by attracting positive reactions from others?
-== Momentary Emotion or Long-term Attitude ==
+== Momentary emotion or Overall user experience ==
-The scenario above describes user experience of communicating with a relative via text messaging with a mobile phone. We can investigate user experience on many temporal levels, however. In the scenario above, we could study Lisa's changing [[emotions]] during interaction, her feelings about the episode as a whole, or her [[attitude]] towards her phone in general. In the above example, focusing on the momentary emotions may not be the best way to understand Lisa's user experience, since her emotions were caused mainly by the content (the messages from Lisa's husband) and not by the examined system (mobile phone). However, in systems where the content has the primary focus, such as in [[electronic games]], the flow of emotions may be the best way to study user experience.
+The scenario above describes user experience of communicating with a relative via text messaging with a mobile phone. We can investigate user experience on many temporal levels, however. In the scenario above, we could study Lisa's changing [[emotions]] during interaction, her feelings about the episode as a whole, or her [[attitude]] towards her phone in general, i.e., her ''overall UX''. In the above example, focusing on the momentary emotions may not be the best way to understand Lisa's user experience, since her emotions were caused mainly by the content (the messages from Lisa's husband) and not by the examined system (mobile phone). However, in systems where the content has the primary focus, such as in [[electronic games]], the flow of emotions may be the best way to study user experience.
-Single experiences influence the overall user experience: the experience of a key click affects the experience of typing a text message, the experience of typing a message affects the experience of text messaging, and the experience of text messaging affects the overall user experience with the phone. The overall user experience is not simply a sum of smaller interaction experiences, because some experiences are more salient than some others. Overall user experience is also influenced by factors outside the actual interaction episode: [[brand]], pricing, friends' opinions, reports in media, etc.
+Single experiences influence the overall UX: the experience of a key click affects the experience of typing a text message, the experience of typing a message affects the experience of text messaging, and the experience of text messaging affects the overall UX with the phone. The overall UX is not simply a sum of smaller interaction experiences, because some experiences are more salient than some others. Overall UX is also influenced by factors outside the actual interaction episode: [[brand]], pricing, friends' opinions, reports in media, etc.
-Designing [[affective]] user interfaces and evaluating [[emotions]] have invited substantial research attention and efforts in the domain of user experience. This type of user experience research focuses on emotions, that is, momentary experiences during interaction. Industry, in contrast, is typically interested in understanding the long-term relation between user experience and product appreciation: good overall user experience with a company's products is seen as critical for securing brand loyalty and enhancing the growth of customer base. All temporal levels (momentary, episodic, and long-term) are important, but the methods to design and evaluate these levels can be very different.
+One branch in user experience research focuses on emotions, that is, momentary experiences during interaction: designing[[affective]] user interfaces and evaluating [[emotions]]. Another branch is interested in understanding the long-term relation between user experience and product appreciation. Especially industry sees good overall UX with a company's products as critical for securing brand loyalty and enhancing the growth of customer base. All temporal levels (momentary, episodic, and long-term) are important, but the methods to design and evaluate these levels can be very different (see [[User experience evaluation]]).
 == History ==