The Difference Between Usability and User Experience

Some good points made. I agree that the days of having to trade-off between the usability and the user experience are long gone. Users are demanding both now and rightly so. I also think it is a fallacy that a product or service can deliver a great user experience without being usable.

I always define the UE as ensuring an effective mix of being useful, usable, accessible and compelling. It needs to solve a user's problem, in a way that is effective, efficient and satisfying for *all* users, while being interesting and enjoyable enough to ensure they return to use it again and tell others about it.

Apple has the knack for delivering on these criteria. They know their audience, they know their needs (even if the audience don't know themselves!) and deliver elegant, desirable and usable solutions.

Interesting article. Usability is a component of User Experience. On the designer side, user experience can be a convenient term to describe several disciplines and/or several different methodologies that places the user at the center of the design process. On the consumer side, user experience is the cumulative experience that is remembered and talked about. If a product is beautiful, but has poor usability, then it will probably not be as well received as a product that is both beautiful and usable.

Good article. I've always positioned Usability as what happens when a user is visiting a site and making their way around it. Experience Design on the other hand is what they do and how they feel once they've left.

People has been discussing User Experience and Usability for a very long time, long before there was something called The Internet. Ergonomics and Human Factors emergered around WW2.

The terms User Experience and Usability are applied to a lot more than just websites and applications, including physical objects, places or companies. Any service or product will provide some kind of user experience as the user interacts.

For the difference (simply put): Usability is how fast the user learns how to use a product/system. User Experience is how he feels about this interaction (including feelings that happen before and after interaction, such as expectations and disappointment/satisfaction).

I can´t remember having seen a trade-off between the two before. A high degree of usability will is one of the most important factors when you create good user experiences.

Great post.

I would say that the iPad will succeed not because of what it has, and not even because of what it does. It will succeed because of HOW it does it.

Great article, everything I wanted to say, has allready been said by previous commenters.

I've always found Peter Morville's UX Honeycomb (http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000029.php)as a really interesting way to describe the relationship between User Experience and Usability. It has been around a while, but is still relevant.

Good article; this is something we often have to explain to our clients, and something a lot of people seem to have difficulty understanding.

I'm just wondering what kind of tools for performing usability testing? How do ensure you have a usable design?

We've recently created a tool for performing usability testing at http://intuitionhq.com — we've tried to keep it simple and easy to use as possible, and we find it really helps clients understand the design process too. It certainly helps to differentiate between usability and UX! If you'd like to have a play, you can hit us up on twitter @intuitionhq

Looking forward to more articles on usability in the future. Cheers.

I came across this video that humorously sums up the disconnect between client expectations and the possibilities of technology. http://www.youtube.com/webwownow

You still need a designer that gets web design and you need a content management system that supports standards and is able to deliver on functionality expectations.

So will it be possible to measure “user experience” by some index just like what we did in usability tests?

The article provokes thought, but alot of specific HCI terms are thrown around & equated to one another that are actually very different. i.e. usability > useful. So I suggest readers to dig deeper into these issues, it is good for the industry

But anyway, UX versus usability in defintion is likely one of those issues that could be defined and related a number of ways. Some may say, UX is a collection of factors of which one is usability. Others may say, UX is a collection of factors, each of which should have optimum usability to produce a good UX.

I have always known usability to be a measure of user performance given a context. Part of that measure is satisfaction. In my opinion, UX is largely purpose & context driven and is a case of prioritising the usability performance measures of effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction (also training time). e.g. very novel & innovative could be saying Satisfaction > efficiency or effectiveness.

UX is also a case of striking a balance between these usability performance measures. An interactiom that is too heavily weighted towards a particular measure at the expense of the others will undemrine the UX in my opinion. This aspect is highlighted when comparing usability in recreational systems (i.e. computer games) versus business systems (i.e. accounting software). A computer games will have emphasis on satisfaction, but if efficiency & effectiveness of use (e.g. navigating menus to play the game & “exactness” of installing the game) are not given their due attention, that UX will be undermined.

So I would say, don't make a hard fast rule when relating UX and usability OR get stuck in semantics. Rather always consider your context & purpose for the system & design interactions accordingly. establish which usability performance measures are priorities for the various features of the system or interaction. And strike an appropriate balance between them, so as not to let one measure of usability undermine the UX.