Thu 29 Jun 2006
As the phrase “user experience” was coming into vogue, people adopting the term took pains to distinguish it from “usability”: usability makes it easy to use something, while user experience makes you enjoy using it. To me, this always seemed like a fairly straightforward proposition.
Today I ran across a blog entry entitled “The Battle Between Usability and User-Experience”. The author starts off with this rather provocative sentence:
The main reasons why it is so hard to create usable products is that there is a conflict between a high-usability level and great user-experience.
He then goes on to describe how he sees the distinction, using the example of a road trip: a straight freeway is usable but boring; a twisty mountain highway is not usable, but provides you with a much more interesting experience.
While I appreciate a number of the points in his article, I actually think it’s wrong to position usability against user experience, as if there were necessarily a trade-off between the two. The point he’s missing, I think, is that there’s a difference between challenge and frustration. To follow his analogy, some drivers may prefer straight roads and some may prefer twisty roads, but no one likes to drive over a road full of potholes. Many people enjoy challenge, but nobody enjoys frustration.
Back in the software realm, take video games as an example. Some people prefer casual, relaxing games; some people prefer deep strategy games; some people prefer tense shoot-’em-ups; and some people, like me, play too much of all of them. But nobody enjoys a game with unresponsive controls or bad level design (except in the way that one can enjoy watching, say, Mystery Science Theater 3000).
When we say something is unusable, I don’t think we generally mean that it’s challenging; I think we mean that it’s frustrating. It’s challenging to use a graphic design tool to draw a nice picture (especially if you can’t draw your way out of a paper bag, like me), but you can have a good experience trying. It’s frustrating to fight the interface, and that’s never a good experience.
So, while it’s true that you can have a usable product with a boring experience, it doesn’t follow that it’s difficult to build a good experience around a usable product. In fact, the exact opposite is true: you can’t build a good experience around an unusable product. Pitting usability against experience just obscures this basic fact.
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NJ, Excellent post. As the author of the article in question you have a number of very valid points and I agree with you.
I do think that there is a difference between usability and user-experience – but I do not see them as opposites either. Usability and user-experience both tries make good products but from two very different directions. Usability tries to do it by making easy and useful – while user-experience tries do the same by making it enjoyable.
While you can make a semi-good product by only focusing on either usability or user-experience, you need both to create a great one. This why I wrote:
“The result is that you use usability to take away all the things that distracts you from happiness, and you use the elements of user-experience to empower what people can do.”
Your example of using a graphic design application is excellent. Here you use user-experience to make drawing fun – even when it is challenging. And, you use usability to take away all the things that frustrates you. This way you end up with a great product. It is enjoyable and easy.
The reason I wrote the article was because of 3 things. One, I wanted to illustrate that there is a difference between usability and user-experience. A distinction that I believe is important to remember. Secondly I wanted to point out that you cannot create great products by only focusing on one of them. The third thing I wanted to point out was that you cannot create greatness by trying to do both either.
You need to use the best parts of usability and user-experience in any given situation. You use user-experience to define and form the way you feel about the product (challenges, enjoyments etc.). And then you use the best parts of usability to take away all those things you so eloquently define as frustrations.
Thomas–thanks for your comments. Overall, I agree with you, but I think the difference is that I think of usability as a component of user experience, rather than as a separate thing that can vary completely independently. You can’t enjoy something you can’t use! So I disagree that you shouldn’t try to do both. Usability is necessary for good experience, though it’s not sufficient.
“I think of usability as a component of user experience, rather than as a separate thing that can vary completely independently.”
I think this statement is key to this discussion. I too believe that usability is part of the grander picture that is the overall user experience. That is, I believe it is not about finding a balance between usability and user experience, but instead to find the right balance between all the elements that create the user experience. I.e. finding the right balance between aesthetics, usability, and technology etc for any given project creates a good user experience.
Although i did like the “road” analogy, i think it is wrong to say you have to have one extreme or the other, otherwise settle in the middle for mediocrity. Why not just make the freeway a much more interesting experience when designing it? But I guess that’s your point about taking away the distractions from happiness.
Dear NJ,
Maybe a small contribution to the discussion and shameless self-promotion: a blogpost I wrote a while ago about the relation between usability and pleasure, partly based on the work of Patrick Jordan.
http://uselog.blogspot.com/2005/06/usability-and-pleasurable-products.html
Best regards,
jasper
[…] And I’m not saying that the interface level is any less important than the deeper behavioural and conceptual levels; both are just as important. And its best illustrated with this example from nj’s Much Ado about Something blog: …take video games as an example. Some people prefer casual, relaxing games; some people prefer deep strategy games; some people prefer tense shoot-’em-ups; and some people, like me, play too much of all of them. But nobody enjoys a game with unresponsive controls or bad level design (except in the way that one can enjoy watching, say, Mystery Science Theater 3000). […]