User+Experience

=User Experience= toc

Definition
Encompasses all aspects of a digital product that users experience directly—and perceive, learn, and use—including its form, behavior, and content. Learnability, usability, usefulness, and aesthetic appeal are key factors in users' experience of a product.

User experience, in other words, is not about how a product works on the inside—but on the outside, where a person comes into contact with it and has to work with it. This interaction would often include pushing buttons (e.g. alarm clocks, coffee makers, cash registers). Every product that is used by someone has a user experience.

Importance of User Experience
On the web, user experience becomes even more important than it is for other kinds of products. A web site is a "self-service" product, presented with no instruction manual to read beforehand, and often no customer service representative to help guide the user through the site. There is only the user, facing the site alone with only his/her wits and experience to guide his/her.

If your site consists mainly of content—that is, information—then one of the main goals of your site is to communicate that information as effectively as possible. It's not enough just to put it out there. It has to be presented in a way that helps people absorb it and understand it. Otherwise the user might not ever find out that you offer the service or product they're looking for. And even if they do manage to find that information, they're likely to draw the conclusion that if your site is difficult to work with, you probably are as well. Simply put, if your users have a bad experience, they won't come back. If they have an okay experience with your site but a better experience with your competitor's site, they'll go back to that competitor, not you. Features and functions always matter, but user experience has a far greater effect on customer loyalty.

The Elements of User Experience
This is why there is what is called a "user experience development process." This ensures a user-centered design and takes into account that no aspect of the user's experience with your site happens without your conscious, explicit intent. Every possibility of every action the user is likely to take is considered; as well as the user expectations at every step of the way through the process.

This is the five plane broken down more specifically.
 * **Surface** (series of web pages made up of images and text)
 * **Skeleton** (placement of buttons, tabs, photos, and blocks of text)
 * **Structure** (what is underneath the skeleton. i.e. site map; defines how users got to a specific page and where they could go after; also, how the site is categorized)
 * **Scope** (ways in which various features and functions of the site fit together. e.g. Amazon.ca enables users to save previously used addresses so they can be used again. determined by strategy.)
 * **Strategy** (what the people running the site want to get out of the it, as well as what the users want to get out of it. e.g. Amazon.ca wants to sell books, users want to buy them.)

User Experience Design
User experience design takes a holistic, multidisciplinary approach to the design of user interfaces for digital products. It integrates interaction design, industrial design, information architecture, visual interface design, instructional design, and user-centered design, ensuring coherence and consistency across all of these design dimensions. User experience design defines a product's form, behavior, and content.

Resources
Garrett, Jesse James. The Elements of User Experience. New York: New Riders, 2002.

Information added by Antoinette Tsang &