Adaptive Path Blog

There’s a range of vocabulary that can be used to refer to user experience: ‘usability’, ‘interface’, ‘human centered design’, etc. What term we use seems to depend on what sells — within an organization, you use the terms that connect with the values and the understanding of the people you’re working with.

Adaptive Path recently conducted a survey of over 800 user experience professionals to create a base of quantitative insight into how organizations value and practice user experience. One of the simpler questions was, “If you use other terms [than 'user experience'] that are similar in meaning or intent, which terms do you use?” Here’s the terms we heard, ordered by the number of times mentioned:

93 Usability
63 Consumer experience
28 User centered design
21 Customer experience
20 User interface
14 Interaction design
13 Information architecture
11 Design
10 Brand experience
10 User interaction
8 Experience design
6 User satisfaction
5 Customer satisfaction
5 Ease of use
5 Experience
4 Customer journey
4 User interface design
3 Human factors
3 Interface design
3 Look and feel
3 User research
3 Visitor experience
2 Brand user experience
2 Client experience
2 Customer service
2 Experience strategy
2 Goal-directed design
2 Interface
2 Intuitiveness
2 Joy of use
2 Learner experience
2 Online experience
2 Product design
2 User advocate
2 User-friendliness
1 Aesthetic
1 Analytics
1 Audience experience
1 Audience-centred
1 Brand
1 Brand image
1 Brand value
1 Caller experience
1 Comprehension
1 Constituent experience
1 Consumer insights
1 Context
1 Customer centered design
1 Customer centered usability
1 Customer enjoyment
1 Customer focus
1 Customer-based product development
1 Defensive design
1 Delight
1 Donor experience
1 Ease-of-use leading to productivity
1 Educational experience
1 Emotional resonance
1 Emotional-centered design
1 Employee experience
1 End user
1 End-to-end experience
1 End-user centric
1 Enjoyment
1 Ethnographic study
1 Experience architecture
1 Experience planning
1 Experiential perspective
1 Field study
1 Flow
1 Form factor
1 Fun
1 Function
1 Functional design
1 Functionality
1 Good experience
1 Graphic design
1 Guest experience
1 Human centered design
1 Human computer interaction
1 Human experience
1 Human interface
1 Human systems integration
1 Human-machine interface
1 Humility
1 Information environment
1 Information Strategy
1 Interaction
1 Interaction model
1 Interactions
1 Journeys
1 Keeping them happy
1 Learning experience
1 Legibility
1 look-and-feel
1 Magic/Magical
1 Man machine interface
1 Marketing goals
1 Meaningful experiences
1 Member experience
1 Motivations
1 Multi-sensory experiences
1 On-brand
1 Overall customer satisfaction
1 Participant experience
1 Perception
1 Personalization
1 Product development
1 Product feature list
1 Product strategy
1 Product use
1 Programming experience
1 Rapid design
1 Readability
1 Reader
1 Research
1 Shopping experience
1 Site experience
1 Site optimization
1 Software design
1 Solution design
1 Stakeholder experience
1 Stakeholder value
1 Story
1 Total customer experience
1 Touchpoint
1 Usability evaluation
1 User
1 User adoption
1 User behavior
1 User centered
1 User centered design approach
1 User centred design
1 User design
1 User engagement
1 User environment
1 User experience
1 User experience design
1 User experience research
1 User flow
1 User friendly
1 User interaction design
1 User mental model
1 User needs
1 User perception
1 User study
1 User-based usability testing
1 User-focused design
1 User-friendly design
1 Value
1 Visitor
1 Visual experience
1 Visual interaction design
1 Visualization
1 Web experience design
1 Work practices
1 xDesign

Based on some interpretation, about 42% of these responses refer to the end person/human/being in the phrase. About 29% use the term experience, and a little more than 26% refer to the activity they perform (e.g., design, research, development).

Note that these were all “write-in” responses for alternative to ‘user experience’ used within organizations. When asked if respondents used the term ‘user experience’ within their organization, about 89% said yes. We’ll be sharing and reporting on more of the results as we study the data — there’s much more to come.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 at 11:11 am and is filed under Creativity, Experience Design, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Interface Design, ROI/Business Value. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

This post is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.