The Relationship between Usability and User Experience

Recently I am reading the book 用户体验：理论与实践（新编21世纪心理学系列教材）User Experience: Theory and Practice written by Liezhong Ge and Wei Xu. It is a textbook on user experience that combines theory and practice with the concepts, processes, activities and methods of “user-centered design”. Numerous user experience design principles and methods are introduced. Various examples of user research, design, evaluation and application are fully displayed in this book. So I strongly recommend that people who are in the research of user experience should read this textbook.

In the first chapter, I really understand the relationship between usability and user experience. I have mentioned about the concept of usability in the post An Introduction to Usability.

The international standard on ergonomics of human-system interaction, ISO 9241-210, defines user experience as “a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service”.

UPA 2010 defines user experience as “every aspect of the user’s interaction with a product, service, or company that make up the user’s perceptions of the whole”.

User experience expands the orientation or understanding of product usability from the following three aspects:

The use of the product is no longer simply the use in the real state, but also includes user’s imaginary use.

User’s attention to the product even includes product service, the brand of the company where the product is located, not just the function of the product.

User experience of the product covers three different levels of beauty, value and emotion, rather than a single satisfactory experience.

It can be seen that user experience is based on the concept of product usability, user-centered, and a higher level of requirements for product functions, operations and related services, and company brands. Therefore, product usability is the core content of user experience, while user experience is the expansion or extension of product usability.