Understanding, Scoping and Defining User eXperience:
A Survey Approach
Effie L-C. Law
University of Leicester
LE1 7RH Leicester, U.K.
elaw@mcs.le.ac.uk
Virpi Roto
Nokia Research Center
00045 Nokia Group, Finland
virpi.roto@nokia.com
Marc Hassenzahl
Folkwang University
45141 Essen, Germany
marc.hassenzahl@germanupa.de

Arnold P.O.S. Vermeeren
Delft University of Technology
2628 CE Delft, the Netherlands
a.p.o.s.vermeeren@tudelft.nl
Joke Kort
TNO ICT
9727 DW Groningen, the Netherlands
joke.kort@tno.nl

ABSTRACT
Despite the growing interest in user experience (UX), it has
been hard to gain a common agreement on the nature and
scope of UX. In this paper, we report a survey that gathered
the views on UX of 275 researchers and practitioners from
academia and industry. Most respondents agree that UX is
dynamic, context-dependent, and subjective. With respect
to the more controversial issues, the authors propose to
delineate UX as something individual (instead of social)
that emerges from interacting with a product, system,
service or an object. The draft ISO definition on UX seems
to be in line with the survey findings, although the issues of
experiencing anticipated use and the object of UX will
require further explication. The outcome of this survey lays
ground for understanding, scoping, and defining the concept
of user experience.
Author Keywords
Definition, User experience, Survey, ISO, Usability
ACM Classification Keywords
H.m. Miscellaneous.
INTRODUCTION
It is an intriguing phenomenon that the notion of User
Experience (UX) has been widely disseminated and
speedily accepted in the Human-Computer Interaction
(HCI) community, however, without it being clearly
defined or well understood. The immense interest in UX in
academia and industry can be attributed to the fact that HCI
researchers and practitioners have become well aware of the
limitations of the traditional usability framework, which
focuses primarily on user cognition and user performance in
human-technology interactions. In contrast, UX highlights
non-utilitarian aspects of such interactions, shifting the
focus to user affect, sensation, and the meaning as well as
value of such interactions in everyday life. Hence, UX is
seen as something desirable, though what exactly something
means remains open and debatable. In recent years,
conferences, workshops, forums, and similar activities
aiming to better understand UX and to develop a unified
view on UX have been held (e.g., Designing for User
Experience (DUX) Conference, [13, 14]). One obvious
outcome of these activities is a number of diverse (quasi-)
definitions and viewpoints on UX, but a consensual
definition of UX is still lacking. Interestingly, some authors
tend to eschew defining UX, while elaborating the
significance of designing (for) UX and obstacles to
attaining it [20]. The compelling question is: Why is it so
challenging to reach a common definition of UX?
There are several reasons why it is hard to get a universal
definition of UX. First, UX is associated with a broad range
of fuzzy and dynamic concepts, including emotional,
affective, experiential, hedonic, and aesthetic variables (see
[7] for an overview). Inclusion and exclusion of particular
variables seem arbitrary, depending on the author’s
background and interest. Second, the unit of analysis for
UX is too malleable, ranging from a single aspect of an
individual end-user’s interaction with a standalone
application to all aspects of multiple end-users’ interactions
with the company and its merging of services from multiple
disciplines [19]. Third, the landscape of UX research is
fragmented and complicated by diverse theoretical models
with different foci such as pragmatism, emotion, affect,
experience, value, pleasure, beauty, hedonic quality, etc.
(e.g. [2,3,4,5,12,17,21]).
Nonetheless, there would be several critical uses of a UX
definition, which makes an attempt to develop one
worthwhile: (i) a definition will facilitate scientific
discourse, especially when scholars from multiple
disciplines are involved; otherwise, communication
breakdowns are bound to occur; (ii) it will enable managing
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CHI 2009 ~ User Experience April 7th, 2009 ~ Boston, MA, USA
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practical applications of UX, for which UX will need to be
operationalized and evaluated against measurements; (iii) it
will help the teaching of the notion UX with the
fundamental understanding of its nature and scope.
While reaching a shared definition is not a panacea for
resolving a number of problems pertaining to UX, it serves
as an initial and crucial step towards an integrated
framework of UX. Specifically, outcomes of the
aforementioned scientific activities on UX have enabled us
to sharpen the focus as well as refine questions pertinent to
different perspectives and frameworks of UX. To gather
more structured feedback from a wider set of UX
professionals, we decided to conduct an online survey on
the nature and scope of UX, which constitutes the core of a
UX definition. Presumably, the exercise of invoking
collegial discussions on the basics of UX can lead to more
critical insights into just what UX is (and is not) and will
become.
During the period of the survey, the ISO 9241 standards
series were being revised, and one of the tasks was to draft
a definition of UX. Some of the members involved in this
task force attended our Special Interest Group (SIG) session
at CHI’08 [15] and addressed how the findings of our
survey would contribute to refining the draft definition.
Further discussions were carried over to an international
workshop on measurements of UX [16].
In the following sections, the design and implementation of
the survey are first presented and followed by results and
discussions. Some intermediate findings of the survey were
delivered in our CHI’08 SIG session [15], and the final
results are reported in this paper. Implications for future
research work towards a unified view of UX and for the
concurrent ISO project in defining UX are also delineated.
THE SURVEY
Rationale for Conducting a Survey
The main aim of our survey was to promote active
discussions on the nature of user experience in which a
heterogeneous group of people from the UX community
would be involved, thereby potentially leading to a shared
definition. We expected that opinions and views on UX
would diverge substantially, given that the term has been
applied (with or without it being defined) in a vast variety
of contexts by stakeholders from industry as well as
academia. Hence, we concluded that to properly take into
account these people’s views we needed to get first-hand
input from them. Based on the assumption that a web-based
survey can effectively and efficiently reach widely
distributed respondents, we developed one consisting of
definitions and statements derived from the related
literature and practical experiences of some veteran UX
researchers and practitioners.
Specifically, in response to the open questions of the
survey, respondents might come up with what they thought
would be useful additional issues to consider. Thus, the
quantitative outcomes of the survey are not intended to
provide some representative and balanced picture of the
‘truth’ about stakeholders’ opinions on user experience, but
they rather enable us to sketch a rough picture that provides
input to a further qualitative analysis of the respondents’
explanations for their answers. Such a qualitative analysis
allows us to develop an understanding of existing
differences and commonalities (despite differences in
terminology) in the various viewpoints of this
heterogeneous community of people. We hope that this
understanding together with insights to be gained from
discussion forums like our SIG session at CHI 2008 will
lead towards a shared definition of UX.
Organization of the Questionnaire
The questionnaire used in the survey consisted of a short
introduction explaining its goals followed by three sections
with a set of questions: UX Statements, UX Definitions, and
Your Background.
In the UX Statements section, respondents were asked to
indicate their level of agreement with a set of 23 statements,
using a 5-point scale (‘strongly disagree’, ‘disagree’,
‘neutral’, ‘agree’, and ‘strongly agree’). If they didn’t
understand the statement they could indicate so. Statements
were collected and formulated by us in an attempt to
address a wide variety of issues related to UX. The list of
statements (see Table 3) was inspired by a gathered pool of
UX definitions (see the section “Definitions on UX”), the
literature and our own experiences. As the last part of this
section, respondents were asked (in an open question) to
provide additional comments on the statements.
In the UX Definitions section, respondents were asked to
express their opinions on one or more of a set of five
definitions: what they liked and disliked about them and
how they thought they could be improved. Finally, they
were asked to indicate which definition they would pick,
and to explain their choice.
In the Your Background section, respondents were asked to
provide information on their work and education, why they
are interested in UX and how central UX is to their current
work. They were asked for how many years they have been
working in the field of UX and User Centred Design
(UCD), as well as about their country of residence and
gender (Table 2).
Survey Administration and Response
The survey was implemented using Instantsurvey
(http://www.instantsurvey.com/). It was administered in
two subsequent rounds but remained unchanged: the first
was prior to our SIG session at the conference CHI’08 [15]
and the second during and after the conference, which
served as a promising venue to disseminate the survey to
the HCI community at large, drawing their attention to this
endeavour and inviting their contributions. As a preparation
for our CHI’08 SIG session, we used our personal networks
to invite people to take part in the survey. In addition, we
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invited people from whom we found UX definitions on the
internet. In our CHI’08 SIG session, preliminary results of
the first round survey were presented as input for the
discussion on developing a shared UX definition.
Meanwhile, printed copies of the questionnaire with a URL
for the online version were distributed among the general
CHI’08 audience. After CHI’08, a number of mailing lists
were used to further invite people to fill in the questionnaire
(e.g., SIGCHI national mailing lists).
Table 1 shows the number of respondents in both rounds.
The category ‘fully responded’ implies that the respondent
answered all the 44 questions whereas ‘partially responded’
denotes that the respondent answered only a subset of these
questions (e.g. some skipped one or more statements, some
failed to pick a definition, and others omitted some
background questions). The category “No response”
includes those who have just logged in, perhaps simply
browsing the introductory page, but did not enter any data.
Taking these two categories into account, the response rate
for Round 1 (end-Feb to mid-March 2008) was 37%. As
Round 2 (mid-April to end-May 2008) was open to people
interested, it is irrelevant to compute a response rate.
Round Invited Fully
responded
Partially
responded
No
response
1 146 46 8 92
2 n/a 162 59 n/a
Table 1. Response patterns of both rounds
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
Respondents’ Backgrounds
Altogether 275 respondents filled in the survey completely
or partially. Eighty-two of them were female, 137 male, and
56 unknown (missing data). The median age was 36.5 years
(range: 18-59). The respondents were from 25 countries,
with larger groups of respondents from Finland (48), USA
(43), UK (36), and the Netherlands (32). While all of these
275 respondents rated at least one statement, only 210 of
them indicated their definition choice.
Table 2 shows the background of the respondents. The
majority was from industry, but with a variation in role
(researcher, manager and practitioner). Not surprisingly, the
majority of respondents were educated in HCI, followed by
Technology/Software and Psychology/Social Sciences. For
most of them, the primary interest in UX was to design
better products, and they viewed UX as very central to their
professional work.
On average the respondents worked for nine years
(SD=6.84) in UCD and for eight in UX (SD=6.49).
Naturally both measures were highly correlated (r=.73,
p<.01, N=200). Interestingly, whereas the answers from
industry showed no significant difference in the years of
working in UCD as compared to UX (diff=.12 years,
t(107)=0.29, n s.), the others did (academia: diff=3.5 years,
t(48)=4.65, p<.01; both or between: diff=2 years,
t(42)=2.79, p<.01). Industry tends to more or less equate
UX with UCD, whereas academia and others separate both
or at least perceive UX as a more recent phenomenon (see
also [22, 23]).
Variable Frequency
I work in … (54 Missing)
Industry 113
Academia 58
Both or between 50
My primary role is … (53 Missing)
Researcher 84
Consultant/Manager 58
Practitioner 43
Student/Other 37
I was originally educated in the field of … (53 Missing)
Human-Computer Interaction 55
Psychology, Social Sciences 49
Technology, Software 40
Arts, Design 27
Other 51
Which applies the best to your primary interest in UX? (53
Missing)
I am interested in understanding the nature of UX:
To design better products 123
UX per se 41
To make people happier 31
Other 27
How central is UX to your professional work? (53 Missing)
very central 126
central 80
less central 16
Table 2. General profiles of the respondents
Statements on UX
Table 3 shows the 23 statements of the survey sorted by
mean agreement in descending order (column 5 “M”).
While 246 of the 275 respondents indicated their agreement
with a five-point scale for all the statements, the other 29
responded to at least one of the statements. The average
statement response rate is 94% (cf. column 4 “response
rate” for details) and the average rate of non-
understandability (i.e. the percentage of respondents
choosing the option “I don’t understand” for a statement)
was 4%, indicating a sufficient level of comprehensibility.
An exception was the statement 2 "Imagined use of a
product can result in real experiences" (N=235) with the
statement response rate of only 85% and non-
understandability rate of 14%. We nevertheless included it
in the further analysis.
In Table 3, the columns "95ci" (7 & 8) show the upper and
lower bound for a 95% confidence interval of the mean
agreement. In other words, if the survey would be
replicated, there is a 95% chance of getting a mean within
the range of the confidence interval. In general, the five-
point scale employed can be divided into four regions
"strong disagreement" (1-2), "mild disagreement" (2-3),
"mild agreement" (3-4), and "strong agreement" (4-5).
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The confidence intervals of the first three statements
showed a strong mean agreement (column 7, see also the
relatively low standard deviation as a measure of variation
among the respondents, column 6 “SD”). The statements
emphasize the importance of users' internal states and
context for UX (statement 3, 5) and its temporal nature
(statement 8).
The next three statements were between mild and strong
agreement. The respondents agreed on the idea that UX
should be grounded in current UCD practices (statement
18). In addition, the subjectivity (statement 11) and the
temporal aspect (statement 23) of UX were further stressed.
The subsequent 13 statements were in the area of mild
agreement and are not discussed in detail.
Furthermore, the respondents mildly or strongly disagreed
with the statements hinting at the possibility that UX is
already covered by HCI (statement 21), merely a new name
for an existing concept (emotional attachment, statement
20) or just a marketing ploy (statement 4). In addition, the
respondents disagreed with an overly subjectivistic
conceptualization of UX (statement 9).
In summary, the respondents understand UX as dynamic,
context-dependent, and subjective, stemming from a broad
range of potential benefits users may derive from a product.
However, UX is not construed as something overly
subjectivistic, where prediction of and design for
experience would become futile. UX is seen as something
new, which must be a part of the HCI domain and be
grounded in UCD practices.
Agreement Levels and Background
We are also interested to know whether differences in the
understanding of UX can be attributed to differences in
respondents’ background variables. Surprisingly, we found
less systematic variation than expected. Out of the 230
possible differences (23 statements by 10 background
variables, tested either with an F-test for a categorical
background variable or a correlation for a continuous or an
ordinal background variable), only twelve (5%) were highly
significant (p<.01). In summary, differences in the
respondents’ background variables did not strongly
influence their agreement on the statements.
For the sake of brevity, we highlight and briefly discuss a
subset of six out the twelve significant differences related to
the respondents’ expertise and country of residence.
Three differences were either connected to years of
expertise in UCD, years of expertise in UX or age – three
highly correlated variables. The higher their expertise in
UCD, the less the respondents agreed on the subjective
nature of UX (statement 6, r =-.20). The same held true for
expertise in UX (r = -.21). People who have worked for
years in UCD or UX are likely to become aware of common
characteristics in product requirements and to gain similar
# Statement N Response M SD 95 ci
/275 Rate lower upper
3 Fleeting and more stable aspects of a person's internal state (e.g.. needs.
motivations) affect a person's experience of something
261 95% 4.47 .04 4.40 4.54
5 UX occurs in. and is dependent on the context in which the artefact is
experienced
265 96% 4.32 .05 4.22 4.42
8 Prior exposure to an artefact shapes subsequent UX 257 93% 4.25 .05 4.16 4.34
18 Designing (for) UX must be grounded in user-centred design 265 96% 4.11 .07 3.98 4.24
23 UX can change even after a person has stopped interacting with the artefact 259 94% 3.93 .06 3.82 4.03
11 UX is based on how a person perceives the characteristics of an artefact. but
not on the characteristics per se
251 91% 3.89 .07 3.75 4.03
17 UX should be assessed while interacting with an artefact 260 95% 3.87 .06 3.75 4.00
14 Measuring UX implies determination of merits, values, and significance of an
artefact in relation to a person's goals and needs
249 91% 3.84 .06 3.73 3.96
13 We cannot design UX, but we can design for UX 249 91% 3.82 .07 3.68 3.96
1 UX is highly dynamic - it changes constantly while interacting with a product 264 96% 3.76 .07 3.63 3.89
12 Usability is a necessary precondition for good UX 269 98% 3.70 .07 3.56 3.84
2 Imagined use of a product can result in real experiences 235 85% 3.66 .06 3.53 3.78
15 UX refers to affective states, i.e., any combination of valence (good - bad.
pleasant – unpleasant) and physiological arousal (calm – excited)
252 92% 3.60 .06 3.48 3.72
22 UX must be approached qualitatively 265 96% 3.59 .07 3.46 3.72
6 UX is not about people's performance (ability to understand and use) in their
relation with an artefact, but about the person's perception of that performance
266 97% 3.58 .07 3.44 3.73
16 UX can be quantified and thus compared across similar (or competitive)
artefacts
263 96% 3.50 .06 3.38 3.62
7 There is a definite need for a standardized definition of the term UX 268 97% 3.49 .07 3.34 3.63
10 UX should be assessed after interacting with an artefact 255 93% 3.33 .06 3.20 3.45
19 Only an individual person can have an experience. An experience is something
personal. something 'within' a person
265 96% 3.16 .08 3.00 3.32
9 People will never have comparable UX - each and every interaction with a
product results in a unique experience
268 97% 2.71 .07 2.57 2.84
21 UX is not new, it is already covered by existing engineering approaches 263 96% 2.56 .07 2.42 2.70
20 UX is equal to emotional attachment 261 95% 2.27 .06 2.15 2.39
4 UX is best viewed in terms of marketing 262 95% 1.90 .06 1.79 2.00
Table 3. Twenty-three statements about UX sorted by mean agreement (M)
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Def. Perspective Focus Who What How When
D1 Company How to design for
good UX
Customer Company. Its
service and
products
Level1. Meet exact needs
Level2. Joy to use & own
Level3. Beyond checklists
During interaction
D2 Evaluation What shapes user
experience
User Psychological
state. The system
Characteristics of the system
and context
After interaction
D3 User Types of product
experience
User Product Gratified senses. Attached
meaning. Emotion.
During/After
interaction
D4 Value-based Value as
interaction
outcomes
Not well
defined
Product or service
and its supporting
cast
Value derived from
interactions
Before/During
interaction
D5 Design-
based
Types of artefacts Person Artefacts of
various types
Quality of experience
derived from interactions
During interaction
Table 6. Perspectives and basic elements of the five definitions
experiences across a number of yet different projects. It
may then make user experience less subjective.
Furthermore, the higher the expertise in UX the less the
respondents agreed on the need for a standard definition
(statement 7, r = -.18). An explicit definition may be
viewed as a communication tool for non-experts rather than
central to experts.
Three differences were related to the respondents' country
of residence (Table 4). Note that we only included countries
with a substantial number of respondents: Finland (FI),
USA, UK, and the Netherlands (NL). The Finnish
respondents agreed the most on the subjectivity notion of
UX (statement 6), whereas those from the USA agreed the
least (F(3,152)=8.18; p<.01). Likewise, the Finnish
respondents agreed the most on UX as emotional
attachment (statement 20), whereas their counterparts from
the USA agreed the least (F(3,150)=5.65; p<.01). However,
in all these cases the agreement on this statement is rather
low. Similarly, the Finnish respondents more strongly
agreed on a qualitative approach to UX (statement 22) as
compared to the respondents from the UK or USA
(F(3,152)=4.41, p<.01).
#6: Subjectivity #20: Emotional attachment
#22: Qualitative
approach
M SD M SD M SD
FI 3.98 .87 2.64 1.13 3.89 .84
USA 2.93 1.09 1.93 .69 3.26 1.2
UK 3.71 1.02 2.03 .88 3.2 1.16
NL 3.47 1.16 2.00 .87 3.74 1.00
Table 4. Differences among countries of residence
In summary, there exist wide gaps of opinions about UX as
a subjective and emotional concept between Finnish and
USA respondents. This may imply a more fundamental
difference between a European (or, more precisely,
Scandinavian) and USA approach to UX.
Definitions on UX
In addition to indicating agreement to the 23 statements,
respondents were asked to read the five definitions (Table
5), to comment on them, to select the most preferable one
and provide reasons for such a selection.
D1 All aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company. Its
services and its products. The first requirement for an exemplary
user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer without
fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce
products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience
goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or
providing checklist features. [8]
D2 A consequence of a user’s internal state (predispositions,
expectations, needs, motivation, mood, etc.) the characteristics of
the designed system (e.g. complexity, purpose, usability,
functionality, etc.) and the context (or the environment) within
which the interaction occurs (e.g. organisational/social setting,
meaningfulness of the activity, voluntariness of use, etc.) [7]
D3 The entire set of affects that is elicited by the interaction between
a user and a product including the degree to which all our senses
are gratified (aesthetic experience) the meanings we attach to the
product (experience of meaning) and the feelings and emotions
that are elicited (emotional experience). [3]
D4 The value derived from interaction(s) [or anticipated
interaction(s)] with a product or service and the supporting cast in
the context of use (e.g. time, location, and user disposition). [20]
D5 The quality of experience a person has when interacting with a
specific design. This can range from a specific artefact such as a
cup toy or website up to larger integrated experiences such as a
museum or an airport. [9]
Table 5. Five definitions used in the survey
The five definitions used in the questionnaire were selected
from a larger pool of definitions. This pool was created by
performing a Google web search, and by searching Google
scholar as well as the ACM Digital Library. The following
keyword combinations were used: “User experience” AND
“definition”; “User experience is about”, “Glossary” AND
“user experience”. In the Google web search the following
additional keyword combinations were used: “End-user
experience” AND “definition”, and “Glossary” AND
“Product experience”. Unpublished definitions from Nokia
and Philips were also included in the pool.
We have chosen these five definitions based on the
consideration that they represent different perspectives and
variously instantiate a set of basic elements (Table 6):
• Focus: The main concern to be addressed
• Who: The experiencing agent/subject of interest
• What: What is the something/object that is experienced
• How: How is the experience brought about
• When: Three possible states: before. during and after
interacting with the object being experienced
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Out of 275 respondents 210 indicated which of the five
definitions they preferred. Table 7 displays the results:
D1 D2 D3 D4 D5
Total 46 65 44 19 36
% out of 210 22% 31% 21% 9% 17%
Table 7. Distributions of the preferred definitions
Among them, 108 worked in industry, 51 academia or 49
both/between, and 2 did not provide this specific data.
Figure 1 portrays the distribution of the choices made by
these three categories of respondents. Apparently, the
respondents from industry preferred D1/D2 whereas those
from academia preferred D2/D3. This observation is not
surprising given that D1 is authored by the industry
stakeholders [8] whereas D2 and D3 are authored by the
academic ones [3, 7]. However, results of Chi-square tests
showed no significant differences among the three groups
on their choices of definitions (χ2= 13.22, df = 8, n.s.).
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
D1 D2 D3 D4 D5
Industry Academia Both/Between

Figure 1: Definition preference by the work place
Similarly, Chi-square tests were performed to examine
whether the other background variables influenced the
definition choice. Table 8 displays the distributions over
three of these variables. Note that the category “Others” is
not included due to its relatively small size. In the case of
“Primary Role”, significant differences among the four sub-
categories were found (χ2= 22.65, df=12, p<.05):
Researchers preferred D2 whereas consultants and
managers favoured D1 and D2. In contrast, except D4
practitioners showed a somewhat even level of preference
for the other four definitions. No significant difference was
found among the four sub-categories of “originally
educated in” (χ2=11.60, df=12, n.s.). Interestingly, there
were highly significant differences among the four
countries with the highest response rates (χ2=25.40, df=12,
p<.01). Respondents from Finland (FI) and the UK
apparently favoured D2. Like their UK counterparts,
respondents from the Netherlands (NL) least favoured D4.
The respondents from the USA did not show substantial
contrasts in their choices.
Furthermore, we look into three closely related variables:
Age, Years in UX and Years in UCD. We used the four
percentiles to categorize the respondents by age (<=32, >33
and <=37, >37 and <=44, >44). No significant difference
was found (χ2=12.46, df=12, n.s.). Similar procedures were
applied to Years in UX (four percentiles: <=2, >2 and <=5,
>5 and <=10, >10) (χ2=18.57, df=12, n.s.) and Years in
UCD (four percentiles: <=3, >3 and <=7, >7 and <=12,
>12) (χ2=6.54, df=12, n.s.); neither show any significant
differences among the sub-categories.
In summary, two background variables “primary role” and
“country of residence” play a somewhat significant role in
influencing the respondents’ definition choice, when the 5%
level (two-tailed) is considered. Note that these variables
are somewhat interrelated. For instance, 35%, 39% and
41% of respondents from Finland, the Netherlands, and the
UK were researchers (“primary role”), respectively,
whereas only 16% of the USA respondents were so.
Reasons for Picking Definitions
A caveat should be emphasized that we do not aim to
discuss merits and demerits of the five definitions, which
were basically used to elicit “requirements” for a UX
definition from the community of interest and practice.
Hence, the results in the ensuing text do not report
comments on the individual definitions. Instead, we
analysed and distilled what the respondents thought about
the characteristics and substance of a UX definition. We
performed qualitative analysis on the reasons that the
respondents provided for picking a certain definition.
Whereas some respondents elaborated their reasons at
length, some did not give any. Besides, some criticized the
shortfalls of the definitions and chose the least “worst” (i.e.
elimination strategy) whilst some simply addressed the
desirable points of their preferred one.
We broke down the respondents’ comments into several
dimensions. First, the positive and negative characteristics
they ascribed to the definitions. We collated a pool of
characteristics and collapsed semantically similar terms and
counted their frequencies. In the leftmost column “Positive”

Def Primary Role Originally Educated In Country of residence
Researcher Consultant Manager Practitioner Art&Design Psyc/Soc. Tech/SW HCI FI UK NL USA
D1 9 13 8 10 5 13 10 8 5 7 11 9
D2 31 10 5 8 7 16 14 17 19 14 10 8
D3 22 3 2 10 5 10 5 12 11 7 9 4
D4 6 4 3 3 1 2 2 8 4 1 0 4
D5 11 6 3 10 7 5 6 9 8 6 2 9
Table 8. Definition preference by role, education, and country of residence
CHI 2009 ~ User Experience April 7th, 2009 ~ Boston, MA, USA
724

of Table 9, the italicized items have a frequency higher than
10 and are sorted in descending order. The respondents
regarded the quality of being comprehensive, easy to
understand, simple, clear, concise and accurate as most
relevant for a UX definition. Interestingly, some preferable
qualities such as broad and detailed are regarded as
“Negative”, indicating a range of contrasting viewpoints
beheld by the respondents. Second, some comments
referred to the potential uses of the definitions. We grouped
similar remarks and paraphrased some of them. Two most
frequently mentioned uses (>10) are the first two italicized
items in the corresponding column of Table 9. The
emphasis on disseminating a UX definition to the general
audience seems to imply that it should be formulated in
laymen terms. Third, some respondents analysed how the
definitions interpret the nature of UX and which key ideas
pertaining to UX they bespeak. A variety of views were
expressed with no particular strongly shared ones, ranging
from the debatable notion that UX is socially constructed to
the recognized one that UX comprises three dimensions,
viz. person, artefact, and context. Apparently, when
interpreting the UX definitions, the respondents projected
their own pre-conceptions about UX into the given
definitions
Furthermore, some respondents, in their comments on their
preferred definitions, addressed what a UX definition
should (not) have/be (cf. those aspects that are inadequately
or not addressed at all in the definitions). We grouped these
data into four aspects:
Temporal: This pertains to controversial arguments on
when UX is brought about: before, during or after
interacting with a system. Some respondents stressed that
the timeframe should cover the past, present, and future
(e.g. from pre-sale perception to post-sale customer
support). Interestingly, the notion of reflection has
repeatedly been addressed, for instance, some respondents
commented: “it [UX] involves reflecting past and
anticipating future at the same time” and “subsequent
reflection on experience after the initial emotion has
subsided”. It implies the respondents’ assumption about the
significance of the conscious aspect of experiencing, i.e., an
ongoing process of reflecting on as well as in (cf. Schön’s
[18] reflective practice) one’s psychological responses.
Framework: As emphatically pointed out by some
respondents, UX should be understood through the
conceptual lens of a community of practice, which
iteratively defines constructs germane to UX via its
activities such as designing and critiquing objects of
interest. Discipline of interaction design, UCD philosophy,
hedonic/pragmatic model [5], and value-based design [2]
are also relevant frameworks to consider. Besides,
particularities of application contexts such as business
models should inform how UX is defined.
Elements: Ingredients of a UX definition should be very
well defined, as remarked by some respondents. Measurable
aspects of UX such as physiological responses and user task
performances (cf. traditional usability metrics) are
considered relevant. So are other subjective, psychological
constructs like passion, types of affects, and consumer
perception. It is also important to include in the definition
for whom and where it is supposed to be used.
Scoping: Some respondents tended to understand UX in
terms of a broad scope, stretching beyond interaction.
Others remarked that UX is not necessarily good or
narrowly equated to a cognitive process manipulated by

How is the Def? (Characteristics)
Positive Negative
The Def is for?
(Potential Uses )
The Def says UX is?
(Nature of UX)
The Def bespeaks?
(Key ideas about UX)
• comprehensive
• easy to understand
• simple
• clear
• concise
• accurate
• neutral
• open
• specific
• direct
• scientific
• structured
• system-oriented
• usable
• vague
• descriptive
• dictionary-like
• high-level
• integrative
• memorisable
• ambiguous
• circular
• hard to sell
• non-scientific
• too academic
• too broad for
practice
• too cognitivistic
• too detailed
• too dogmatic
• too esoteric
• too logical
• too many
examples
• too strictly
focused
• wordy
• identify all the important
factors to be studied
• enable general public to
understand UX
• identify measurable
aspects of UX
• drive further research and
development
• provide a structure of UX
• scoping of UX
• serve as guidelines
• provide a concrete set of
attributes that people can
relate to
• provide pointers to select
appropriate combination
of methods for a product
• layered
• lived-experience
• socially constructed
• task achievement
• total brand
experience
• user's internal state
• emotion
• cumulative impact
of interactions
between users and
products/services
• cognitive
• all feelings
• experienced quality
• three dimensions:
person, artefact, and
environment
• types of interactions:
(un)conscious
• value in a set of affect
• intangible aspects of UX
• complexity of
experience
• actual usage
• entire user perceived
experience
• examples
• a broad set of
experiences with the
company
• what causes UX
• not-marketing related
Table 9. Analysis of the comments on the picked definitions
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725

designers. Some also argued that a definition should address
what UX is rather than what causes UX.
In summary, the results of the two exercises – rating the
statements and picking a definition – indicate that the
respondents understand the notion of user experience very
differently. However, no patterns describing how the
differences systematically vary with background variables
can be derived. Among others, “country of residence” is
the only background variable that plays a significant role in
influencing both the statement agreements and the
definition choice. Presumably, the observed cross-
continental contrasts between the European and USA
respondents can be understood in terms of some basic
philosophical assumptions about experience – an
implication for our future research work.
REFLECTION
In this section, we discuss the topics that have evoked
comments in the earlier workshops, our CHI’08 SIG session
[15], and this survey. We analyse these comments and share
our conclusions on how to scope user experience.
Social or Individual?
As we see in Table 3, the most controversial (with the
highest SD of .08) statement 19 was “Only an individual
person can have an experience. An experience is something
personal, something ‘within’ a person”. The underlying
topic, namely whether experience is social or individual,
has been discussed in co-experience research [1] and also in
our CHI’08 SIG session. Some of the survey respondents
and participants of the SIG session emphasized that
experience is very much bound to users’ social groups and
that a community may share the experience.
We agree that other people may influence the experience a
lot before, during, and after interacting with a product.
However, only an individual can have feelings and
experiences. A group can experience together, but the
experience we are investigating is still inside each
individual of that group. The community forms the social
context that affects user experience together with other
contextual factors: physical technology and task context (cf.
ISO13407: 1999 [11]). As agreed by most respondents, the
contextual factors are important influencers of UX
(statement 5). Some respondent comments are supporting
our social context view, for example: “Only an individual
can have an experience but I believe it can be externalised
(albeit poorly) and recognised and related to by others.”
User Experience in Relation to Other Experiences
When investigating the open answers and comments in the
survey, we find that some researchers do not want to restrict
UX to interaction with a product or an artefact. “UX is more
than interactions with products”. “Please do not use the
term ‘artefact’ to describe UX. UX is not limited to
artefacts”, “Users not only interact with services or
products but also with the company”, “For instance, when
you see a bottle of Evian crumpled up on the street, you
may well think of Evian in association with your disgust for
litter and environmental disaster. That is an indirect,
unconscious interaction with a product, but it still impacts
how you feel about the brand and the product.”
This shows the need to define the scope of user experience
more precisely. What is the relation between brand
experience and user experience? How about user experience
and product or service experience? Or just plain
‘experience’?
Brand experience includes not only interaction with the
branded products, but interaction with the company, its
products and services. Brand experience is a broader
concept than user experience. Every bit of information you
get about the company either from the company itself, from
the media, or from other people affects your brand
experience. Brand experience affects the user experience
when you interact with the product: you forgive flaws for a
loved brand and blame loudly the flaws in the products of a
bad brand. You might even refuse to interact with products
from a bad brand, see the water bottle example above. If
you have never used a product, we think all we can discuss
is brand experience or perhaps product experience, but not
user experience. Once you do interact with a product the
user experience typically affects the brand experience.
Everything before the first-hand encounter with a product
just builds up expectations for the user experience or affects
the brand experience.
Desmet and Hekkert [3] use the term product experience
when discussing the interaction with an artefact. Product
experience has a narrower scope than user experience, as
not all objects are commercial products. You might get the
best user experience from a self-made item, or prefer a
walking stick found from the woods over one bought from a
shop. Also, more and more products do not work in
isolation, but are dependent on external systems. A mobile
phone does not work without the carrier telephone network;
iTunes is an important part of iPod user experience, etc. As
user experience researchers, we are definitely interested in
interactions with any kind of items and systems, whether
commercial or non-commercial. If we want to emphasize
that experience is subjective (“I had great experience using
this”) rather than a product attribute (“this product has
excellent user experience”), we recommend using the term
user experience over product experience.
Service experience in a broad sense can refer to face-to-face
services (e.g. in a restaurant or repair point), public services
(e.g. roads), digital services on the Internet servers (e.g.
gambling site), or anything in between. Because of the wide
variety of services, we need to be careful when talking
about service experience. We argue that face-to-face
services are not in the focus of user experience, because
humans do not have a user interface and so one cannot ‘use’
humans. Customer services related to a product do affect
the overall UX of the product, similar to reading a test
report of the product in a magazine. If a company provides
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an online trouble-shooting tool for problems with the
product, we can examine the user experience of using that
tool separately from the user experience of using the
product itself. So the product user experience is separate
from the user experience of the product–related service.
In summary, we recommend the term user experience to be
scoped to products, systems, services, and objects that a
person interacts with through a user interface (Figure 2).
These can be tools, knowledge systems, or entertainment
services, for example. In this paper, we talk about systems
or products for the sake of simplicity. Face-to-face
interaction between humans is outside the scope of user
experience, unless there is a man-made user interface
involved in the interaction.

Figure 2. UX in relation to other experiences that we can study
Experience Before, During, and After interaction
The respondents of our survey agreed that the current
internal state of the person, earlier experiences, as well as
the current context affect user experience (statements 3, 5,
8). Because of the changing internal state and context, it is
natural that more respondents agreed that user experience
needs to be assessed while interacting with an artefact rather
than after the interaction (statements 17, 10). On the other
hand, respondents believed that different user experiences
can be compared, in spite of the fleeting nature of the
circumstances affecting user experience (statement 9).
Some respondents commented that UX can or even should
be investigated during and after, even long after, the
interaction (cf. the section “Reasons for Picking
Definitions”). Industry is typically interested in the long-
term user experience, as temporary feelings are less
important than the overall product user experience when
people evaluate products. It would be very interesting to
understand the formula from the expectations to different
emotions during the interaction and all the way to the
overall ‘UX score’ of a system. This is an interesting
research topic for the future [6].
ISO Definition for UX
It is interesting to investigate if the UX definition proposed
by ISO (2008) [10] is in line with the views we have
collected with the questionnaire and discussed in this paper.
The draft definition reads (we do not discuss the notes of
the definition at this stage of the ISO ratification process):
A person's perceptions and responses that result from the
use or anticipated use of a product, system or service
The definition is in line with the view by most respondents
about the subjectivity of UX. The definition focuses UX on
the immediate consequences of use (perceptions and
responses) and also introduces the concept of ‘anticipated
use’. In our questionnaire, statement 2 about ‘imagined use’
was the hardest one to answer, with 14% of respondents
choosing the “I don’t understand” option. This suggests that
clarifications are also needed for the term ‘anticipated use’,
especially its relation to user expectations, for example,
after seeing an advertisement of a product. As UX is
strongly affected by contextual factors, the authors see it
important to vividly imagine use cases with contextual
factors to evoke realistic experiences out of anticipated use.
For practitioners, it is essential to evaluate UX already in
the early phases of product development, so methods for
studying UX of anticipated use without an actual working
system will be a very valuable support for their work.
The ISO definition also addresses the object that the
investigated UX is related to: product, system, or service.
This means the definition is in line with our view that user
experience is related to usage, and so, is a narrower concept
than general ‘experience’. It is hard to pick one word for the
object of UX, but it is also hard to make a list that would be
comprehensive and unambiguous. Specifically, self-made
or natural objects do not fit into the list, and ‘service’ is a
term too broad. According to our views, user experience
focuses on interaction between a person and something that
has a user interface (Figure 2).
CONCLUSION
With our survey on UX, we have been able to
systematically gather scientific as well as practical views on
the nature and scope of UX. These heterogeneous views
were conveyed by UX researchers and practitioners from
academia and industry. The results show that the
respondents tend to agree on a concept of UX as dynamic,
context-dependent and subjective, which stems from a
broad range of potential benefits users may derive from a
product. UX is seen as something new, which must be a
part of the HCI domain and be grounded in UCD practices.
The differences in respondents’ background variables,
however, can only explicate to a limited extent the
variations in their agreements on the statements and in
definition choices.
Presumably, respondents with a relatively longer period of
working years in UX/UCD could understand UX in a way
very different from their counterparts with a shorter one,
and we also expected to see some significant differences
between academics and practitioners. However, our survey
findings suggest that years of experience and work place
seem not to have a strong impact on the respondents’
perceptions of the statements or definitions. Interestingly,
some socio-cultural factors seem relevant, given the
significant role played by the variable ‘country of
Product
Object
System
Service
Space
Art
Brand
Event
Face-to-face
interaction
etc.
Interaction via user interface
Exercise
Everything we experience
User experience
Experience
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727

residence’. However, it is hard to tease out the intertwined
issues (e.g. different professional training and practice in
UX in individual countries).
Furthermore, some topics require clarifications according to
the survey data, such as the social and temporal aspects of
UX, as well as the related terms. We conclude that the draft
UX definition by ISO is a promising one, but the used terms
will require further explanations, e.g. ‘anticipated use’ and
the list of the possible objects of UX. Our work towards a
shared definition on UX can now continue from a more
solid grounding.
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