Usability and User Experience

This chapter presents the notions of usability and user experience (UX) from a research perspective. The theoretical view of usability and UX focuses on the tensions between local and global cultural views of these basic notions of human-computer interaction (HCI). First, the analysis of usability presents what is commonly known about usability and then shows how historically the notion of usability has moved from applied psychology and computer science to a science of usability and then into a cultural-contextual view of usability. Thus, the global and local usability evaluation methods in academic HCI research need to be replaced and complemented with indigenous usability methods fitting the local research needs. Next, the analysis of UX points out that it is different from usability since UX is a projective phenomenon that belongs to the experience economy. UX should be seen in the context of emotions, time, and human activities. UX evaluation methods for capturing projective UX phenomena are presented together with the introduction of other methods. This chapter argues for rethinking usability and UX as advocacy approaches that go beyond the original empowerment of end users in Western economies to support sensible digital empowerment of people in a geopolitical and climate-threatened multipolar and diverse world.