Per ISO 9241-210: a person's perceptions and responses resulting from the use and/or anticipated use of a product, system, or service—including emotions, beliefs, preferences, and behaviors before, during, and after use.
Definition: Per ISO 9241-210: a person's perceptions and responses resulting from the use and/or anticipated use of a product, system, or service—including emotions, beliefs, preferences, and behaviors before, during, and after use.
User Experience (UX) is formally defined by the ISO 9241-210 standard as "a person's perceptions and responses resulting from the use and/or anticipated use of a product, system or service."
A key clarification in the standard: UX "includes all the users' emotions, beliefs, preferences, perceptions, physical and psychological responses, behaviors and accomplishments that occur before, during and after use."
This definition is deliberately holistic. User experience is not just the moment of interaction—it begins when a person first hears about your product and encompasses their entire lifecycle with it. This introduces important distinctions like the First-Time User Experience (FTUE) versus the experience of a returning user, which relates directly to concepts like learnability.
The official standard says user experience is everything a person thinks and feels before, during, and after they use a product. It is the whole story, not a single click.
This breadth is what makes UX a sustainable competitive advantage. It is difficult to copy because it is based on deep understanding of human needs, not just a feature list. Features can be replicated; the holistic experience cannot be easily duplicated.
User Experience is a subset of Customer Experience (CX). While UX focuses on the interaction with a specific product or service, CX encompasses every touchpoint a customer has with a company—from marketing and sales to support and physical store visits.
Per ISO 9241-11: the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use.
The outermost layer of experience, encompassing every touchpoint a customer has with a company—from marketing and sales to product use and support. Broader than UX, which focuses on product interaction.
A hierarchical model of what shapes UX: Foundational qualities (QA, Accessibility), Pragmatic qualities (Usefulness, Usability), and Experiential qualities (Cognition, Affect, Values).
The systematic study of users and their interactions with products or services to inform design decisions. Distinct from market research in its focus on the specific interaction, not the broader market landscape.
This term is referenced in the following articles:
UX research is not a luxury or a checkbox, it is a systematic process for reducing uncertainty and driving measurable business outcomes. Here is how to frame its value.
User Experience is not a single thing, it is a complex result of interconnected components organized in a hierarchy. Understanding this structure is essential for translating stakeholder desires into actionable research.
Before you begin any study, you must define its scope. This involves identifying the Layer of Experience you will focus on, from broad customer journey down to individual task steps.
Standardized measurement instruments provide benchmarks and comparability. But using them effectively requires understanding what each one actually measures, and what it does not.