User experience, or UX, is critical to a product's success or failure. But what do we mean by *UX*? All too often, we confuse UX with usability, but they aren't the same thing. To understand the difference between UX and usability, let's look at a framework described by UX pioneer Peter Morville.
Morville describes the seven factors of UX as: useful, usable, findable, credible, desirable, accessible, and valuable. The first factor of user experience is *useful*. A product must have a purpose. If a product has no purpose, it's unlikely to compete in a market full of purposeful and useful products. For example, an email app should help people communicate with one another.
An email app that doesn't let you send messages isn't useful. Usefulness is *subjective*. We may call a product 'useful' if it's fun or has aesthetic appeal. So, a game such as Candy Crush may be deemed useful even if it doesn't enable you to accomplish a goal. *Usability* is about enabling your users to effectively and efficiently achieve their objectives. Products that are not usable are not likely to succeed.
Besides giving your product a competitive advantage, a high level of usability can also make a huge difference in the safety and comfort of use. For example, when you purchase an airline ticket, Expedia's website allows you to compare different flights. You may also view the details of a selected flight to make an informed and comfortable decision and – more importantly – you're less likely to accidentally book a flight in the wrong direction!
*Findability* refers to how well a product supports navigation and finding objects. For example, a website that makes it easy to navigate to the right content has high findability. A streaming service with millions of choices such as Netflix is a great example of designing for findability. If Netflix users can't find something to watch on a Friday night, it doesn't matter how great the hidden content is – they'll stop using it.
*Credibility* relates to the user's trust in the product. It's nearly impossible to deliver a good user experience if users think the product is untrustworthy or illegitimate. They'll take their business elsewhere. For example, between 2018 and 2021 a series of scandals hit Meta, formerly Facebook. From privacy abuse to purposefully hiding research that proved Instagram was harmful to a large user base, particularly teenage girls,
each revelation damaged the company's reputation. Even as governments slapped fines and tightened regulations around privacy, Meta's own leaked internal research revealed that the company was rapidly losing users to other platforms. Emotions play a large role in desirability, which is conveyed through design, imagery, brand identity, and emotional design.
The more desirable a product, the more your customers will want to use and recommend it to their friends. Airbnb does a great job of creating a desirable experience. The app turns a stranger's home into a desirable vacation destination that people are willing to explore and recommend. *Accessibility* is about providing an experience that users of a full range of abilities can access. This includes ensuring people who have some form of disability,
audio, visual, motor or cognitive, can interact with your product without difficulty. An accessible interface uses colors that colorblind people can see, legible text, even for people with low vision, and so on. Sadly, accessibility often gets lost when we create user experiences. Some companies may feel that accessibility is a waste of resources because it represents a small portion of their users.
However, when you design for accessibility you create products that are easier for *everyone* to use, not just those with disabilities. It's the ethical thing to do, and in some jurisdictions it's the law. Finally, the product must deliver *value* to the business that creates it and the customer who uses it. Without value, it's likely that your product's success will eventually be undermined. A product can provide value to different users in different ways.
For some users, desirability is more important; for others, accessibility is more important. Essentially, value is the *sum* of all the different user experience factors combined.