Research: Usability or User Experience--What's the Difference?

Usability or User Experience--What's the Difference?
E-Consultancy (04/02/08) Stewart, Tom

User experience is often contrasted to usability, with the latter frequently being defined as a system's ease of use while the former is considered a blanket term for the relationship between people and technology, writes Tom Stewart, chair of the ISO subcommittee responsible for the International Standard for Human Centered Design. He says ISO's definition of usability is much closer to the concept of user experience as encompassing issues that include usefulness, desirability, credibility, and accessibility, and the new version of ISO 13407 will employ the term user experience. "In the revised standard we define [user experience] as 'all aspects of the user's experience when interacting with the product, service, environment or facility' and we point out that 'it is a consequence of the presentation, functionality, system performance, interactive behavior, and assistive capabilities of the interactive system," Stewart says. He hopes that incorporating the user experience within the human-centered design process will avoid marginalization and turn user experience into a primary business motivator for a wide array of systems. "Whatever we call it, getting the relationship between people and technology right is critical to a project's success and the intelligent application of a structured, people-centered approach to design can only be a step in the right direction," Stewart says.
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