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The rapid growth of RIA technology into the lives of every day people just a few years ago has carried both the usability and user experience industries to a new high in popularity. The success of software (particularly on the web) has driven both of these terms into our vernacular, and yet they are still often confused or thought to be synonymous. This post is meant to help those new to the field or unfamiliar with the intricacies of design to understand the differences between the terms.
Usability refers to the ease with which a user can accomplish his or her goals using any tool. Coming from the field of human factors engineer, usability has been applied to software in the fields of human computer interaction and includes many important ideas from psychology and statistics. Usability is fundamentally qualitative but involves the heavy application of quantitative data to identify areas of weakness and suggest improvements. The study of usability often focuses on performing extensive tests with large groups of individuals, sometimes involving in depth techniques like eye tracking to determine how users interact with interfaces and any areas in which they get lost. Highly usable interfaces are often lauded for being intuitive, simple or extremely learnable.
Somewhat in contrast, user experience refers to the way a user perceives his or her interaction with a system. User experience design encompasses both interaction design and visual design and seeks to promote an interface that is pleasing to the user. The study of user experience often focuses more on the psychological impact of interacting with the system than pure usability does, and user experience experts will spend their time performing both ethnographic and psycho-graphic research to construct their interfaces. User experience design is more qualitative than usability, though the two are not necessarily exclusive. For instance, often times user experience experts turn their designs over to usability experts to test and validate them in the field.
By far the easiest (and probably most over-cited, please forgive me) to distinguish these two comes on lauded usability expert Jakob Nielsen's homepage, useit.com. Jakob has dedicated a lifetime to the study of usability, and his website represents a page that is extremely easy to interact with. Everything is front and center, easily searchable, with important ideas stressed through bold text. Yet despite its high level of usability, the lack of interesting layout, design, or even typography makes the site rather boring and feel uninspired. I can accomplish my goals here easily, but I probably won't have much fun in the process.
On the flip side, let us consider interfaces which receive a high rating in user experience but perhaps a low one in usability. A good user experience is one in which the user is pleased with their interaction, but this says nothing about the user's ability to achieve their goals. While these two things are usually well aligned this is not always the case, and sometimes the most successful interfaces are those that can make difficult systems so enjoyable that even failing to achieve ones goals is still fun. My favorite example for this is, to the detriment of my online reputation and popularity with a large portion of the internet, Apple. Apple does an amazing job producing software that is fun to interact with but from a usability perspective much of it is atrocious. The iPhone is mired in confusing interfaces requiring a high number of clicks to achieve any goal, as anyone who has tried to use the "Maps" app for directions while driving can attest. If you need farther proof, just try and explain how to use iTunes or the app store to your grandmother. It's nearly impossible to understand without extensive time spent learning the interface and this is more or less the definition of low usability. Yet Apple's great reputation in interface design is not entirely without merit, as their attention to user experience is second to none. Failing on the iPhone is more enjoyable than succeeding on a Blackberry.
Perhaps the simplest way to distinguish the two would be to summarize them as "art" and "science", with usability representing science, though I caution you to use this callous and unrefined description sparingly and certainly not within ear shot of opinionated practitioners of either field, as it is sure to cause a (not wholly unjustified) rant. Yet the distinction is not without merit - user experience is often far more concerned with subjective artistry, and the emphasis on data crunching and numbers in true usability research is surely scientific. At the end of the day all that is really important is to understand the distinction between the two terms and to realize the massive importance of both in the design of good interfaces.
Credit for some of the ideas in this post goes to Timothy J. Wood, who let me listen in while he explained the difference between usability and user experience this morning.
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I enjoyed the simplified and yet specific differentiation that you have outlined between the two.
There is an overlap between the two and thats where most of the controversies and disagreements in demarcating these two crop up.
One more point that came to my mind was that usability focuses on function rather that feature and goal instead of path traversed.
Also, most usability benchmarks have been based on statistical studies that also measures user satisfaction. Hence its safe to say that they are symbiotic in the ultimate art of software (or product) design.
Thank you for a good read.
I agree that usability and user experience are different things, but I disagree that they are as unrelated as you imply.
From a pure "scientific" standpoint, usability is purely the ability for a user to achieve their goals, true. But the thought that something can be usable while having a poor user experience is, to my mind, ridiculous.
A very large part of the usability of the site is how easily the user can navigate it, and how they feel while doing so. The first half of my statement is usability, the second is experience. They must be wedded to truly work. A site is not usable if it has a poor experience.
For example, useit.com, while highly lauded as an ideal in usability, pushes aside the inane thoughts of user experience in the pursuit of a purely usable website. I, as a devigner of usability AND user experience, find this site wholly UN-usable. My eyes have a hard time focusing on any one link, and everything on the page seems to be the most important thing there. The site needs a lot of organization, and structure before it becomes TRULY usable. This means, the site needs a better user experience so that it can have good usability.
That's a more than interesting article. Especially in the Java Business RIA sector, there is an ongoing discussion about the importance of user experience vs. plain usability. If you are interested you can read two of our blog articles on these topics:
(1) http://canoo.com/blog/2010/01/21/the-renaissance-of-user-oriented-interface-designs/
(2) http://canoo.com/blog/2010/01/21/rich-internet-applications-for-business/
Interesting, I haven't tried to separate these concepts while designing. In fact, most redesigns we work on start with a Usability Review (using Jakob Nielsens 10 Principles). Many of these products suffer from a bad UX because of their poor usability. So we address those problems in the redesign + apply principles of rich interaction, like Keep it Lightweight, Stay on the Page...from Designing Web Interfaces. But I don't think I could design a good UX unless I had a solid understanding of usability.
I agree that the iPhone fails in some areas as far as usability as in the map example above. I have often said that the hardest thing to do with an IPhone is to make a phone call. That being said, I have an IPhone and I love it.
Part of what we need to think about as designers is that each individual task in itself can be usable or unusable, but that doesn't necessarily make or break the entire application or device. The reality is that the experience is the aggregate of all the features and functions any particular user needs. If some tasks are difficult and others are easy, the whole thing may be in fact highly usable because the features you need to use frequently are the easy ones. In the IPhone case, I spend much more time answering phone calls, checking email, texting, etc. than than I do actually initiating phone calls. My goals are easily achievable so the trade-off is worth it.
As far as ITunes goes, just last weekend, I bought my Dad his first ipod. He is not really computer literate at all. However, I was able to get him going with ITunes and the ITunes Store in under an hour. Since then he has successfully purchased music and put it on his IPod without calling me for help. So the question becomes, "was the ITunes store designed for your Grandmother or my Dad?".
Some of the core ideas of usability or user experience is that you need to know who you are designing for, what their goals are, and what situation are they in (physically, mentally or emotionally). Knowing those facts is required in order to really make a great User Experience highly Usable.
At least, as long as I remenber, this separation between usability goals and user experience goals was set in Preece´s classic book: Interaction Design.
There´s more to it in the book´s ppts: http://www.id-book.com/chapter1_teaching.htm
That´s an essencial reading.
I think you are trying to cleave an unnecessary distinction between the two terms. "User experience" has been defined by ISO, the international standards organisation, as "A person's perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service" (ISO 9241-210). This encompasses the way you are using both terms and gives us something we can measure against.
Thx RJ I enjoyed your post as usual which filled a gap in my understanding.
I appreciate the distinction from an academic standpoint and, to a lesser degree, a real-world perspective in actually designing websites and other experiences. However, I must agree with Ross R that it is a dangerous and unrealistic division in practice. Usability is inextricably linked to User Experience, perhaps they are really points along a continuum. I would actually argue that Usabiity is a subset of UX, alongside interaction design and visual design. As RJ writes, " the way a user perceives his or her interaction with a system" - and a significant part of this is purely usability as in getting a task done. Classifying UX as purely subjective and mostly focused on aesthetics sells it very far short. To me, the User Experience is the ENTIRE experience, and if the product is bone dry but "easy to use", it will be an unsatisfying user experience. Obviously, if a product is all flash and you can't get anything done, that would also be a poor UX even if it's gorgeous to look at.
I appreciate your attempt to clearly distinction between usability and user experience, but I would argue that usability factors into user experience. If a user sees some entertaining graphics, but can't accomplish their goal, clearly the experience will be frustrating, not pleasant.
I've had an iPhone for about 1.5 years. It does take quite a few taps to use Maps for directions, but iTunes and the App Store are very easy to use. I have never found the UI for either confusing. I picked up basics of the UI in minutes, and the all of the more subtle important aspects of each app UI in under an hour each, even poorly designed third party apps. I'm not sure why you're singling out the iPhone as the definition of unusability. How can you design a touch screen interface that doesn't involve a large number of "clicks" and still have a decent feature set?
Enjoyed reading this post. Very insightful on one of the rising in importance fields of design, UX and Usability. Honestly, I always used the words interchangeably.
Too many words... didn't enjoy this user experience!
Thanks. I think this is a helpful overview for people who design software and websites - it is important to know the difference. For the "advanced" version of the distinction, I would direct people to Dan Saffer's diagram of "The Disciplines of User Experience" - http://www.kickerstudio.com/blog/2008/12/the-disciplines-of-user-experience/
Can't believe Nielsen is still being quoted as an expert in this field.
What's usable or not remains a very subjective issue and to quote Mr. Green from Guy Ritchie's film Revolver "If there's one thing I've learned about experts, they're experts on F*** All."
I agree that for user experience to be in its place usability should be present. So I guess we can call usabilty as a subset of User Experience. User Experience includes all the fields starting from Usability, User Interface Design, Branding, etc. It covers up the entire experiences the user gets starting from coming to the site, explorig the site, calling the customer care. It includes everything which can add up to the exeriences he has. The newer unexpected interactions may cause the user to think over. User may like to explore new interactions which are not so obvious. And hence he gets a good 'user experience'. But again, the interaction to be in its place is part of 'usability'. To explore new things and to have 'never before' experiences has now given rise to User Experience Design. But we can not forget Usability at the same time.
Thanks RJ for your post; nice stimulus for some reflection.
I agree with earlier comments that usability is an essential part of user experience. However (as Jacob Nielsen suggested ;-) usability might be based on heuristics or expert reviews rather than extensive user testing, and in my experience rarely involves hard scientific rules, but rather a set of general guidelines and principles.
To achieve a desired user experience there is often a compromise between usability and other aspects. In fact, in areas such as gaming traditional usability principles are often purposefully negated.
Furthermore, I would add that user experience extends beyond the design of an application or product, to also include aspects such as delivery, community, service, support, etc.
It was a interestig read.
I am looking at it differently...Your examples/articulation seems acceptable but...
A product, application (anything for that matter)... can be usable but the user need not have a good experience.
Where as if a user has good experience in the product or application (anything for that matter)... it has to be usable...Exception could be your examples on apple iPhone.
As someone had mentioned above Usability is one major element of the entire user experience cyle....
I do not think this needs to be looked at as two different entities.
I would like to seek what is the contention here?
Are the terms usability and user experience different?
Yes. They are 2 different terms. As suggested in one of the replies, ISO has different definition for the two. That is all. Period.
But... if the contention is to know what is Usability and what is User experience... then the answer can be a little longer.
There seems to be this idea that user experience is measured only on visually rich and funky instructiveness. I beg to differ on this.
To quote Dr. Dinesh Katre, ‘One cannot design a user experience’. We can only design user interfaces. The resultant of user engagement with the interface is either a positive or negative user experience.
The way I see it is while usability takes care of effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction, User experience is only the satisfaction component of usability.
One of the example that was given is even if the user fails to accomplish a task on an iPhone, its enjoyable and therefore its higher on user experience, or something like that. While I completely accept that iPhone gives a great user experience, I would definitely not accept to the example cited.
Consider this. I use an iPhone, want to accomplish a task. I try it for the first time. I am blown away by the smooth panning of screen elements and I love the way the touch makes me feel. I get lost and don’t complete the task. But I was so impressed with the WOW factor, I don’t mind getting lost. I still have a smile on my face.
I start over again for another task, and again, I don’t complete the task easily, and the third task... the same story. What do you think; I would still have the smile on my face? I doubt.
Good user experience is nothing but good user satisfaction. And the only way to get a good satisfaction is to get the task accomplished effectively and efficiently. Therefore Usability = User experience.
So, here I go again, making it more confusing, first I said usability and user experience are different terms and now I derive to the formula that usability = user experience. Yes…, this is the state of things in the Usability world. I have maintained that we talk about ease of use all the time, but when it comes to practice, even the terms we use are so confusing needing clarity to be sought at every step.
Innovations and new ideas are good, but just coining a new terms, new process, etc. acts merely a marketing tool like any FMCG company would keep reinventing their products with new packaging or marketing flavor. But the nature of the product remains same.
I would not ponder upon what my team is named, e.g. UCD team, Core UI team, Advanced UI team, UXD team, Usability team, etc. Therefore I would not really make any difference between the two apart from recognizing its two different terms in the dictionary.
Your thoughts please.
I think you did a fine job of differentiating two easily confused concepts RJ. I don't know what these other commenters are on about, seems to me the majority of them are just waxing on to make themselves feel intellectually justified in spending half their day surfing blogs. I don't think I've seen so many big words tossed about with such self-satisfied haughtiness since the last Mensa meeting I attended.
Seriously though, you nailed it. Simple and straightforward and frankly, these are two terms of which there is a scant amount of ambiguity. To be honest I'm kind of surprised such an article need even be written, but knowing the lack of commonsensical sophistication with a vast number of technical managers nowadays I suppose it's a good thing that it was. I am sure this will come in handy for someone who has had their head spun by a unnecessary day-long meeting consisting primarily of techno-babble, doublespeak and hot air. God how I love those!
John
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