User experience: challenges and opportunities

Abstract

User expectations, motivations and feelings when using a product or encountering a system have urged the need to investigate beyond the traditional functionality and usability concerns by assessing and designing for the user experience. Having this realized, we can ensure positive user experience as well as desirable products. This paper aims at providing an overview of the main concepts and principles related to user experience. The topics discussed in this paper cover both theories from the academia as well as empirical studies from the industry. Due to misconception of user experience, it was found that industry depends on and uses the traditional usability methods in the product development as user experience practices. As a result, this paper discusses and elaborates the relationship between conventional usability and user experience in addition to the variety of methods which can be used for user experience evaluation during different time spans. Furthermore, user experience extends over different areas such as human computer interaction, and product design and development. Knowledge and concepts related to user experience are scattered due to the dynamic concepts of user experience. In other words, authors tend to discuss the user experience from their own perspective and interest. Hence, this paper is trying to provide and establish a holistic understanding of the user experience by covering different topics related to user experience. The output of this paper may provide and assist researchers and practitioners to establish a base to aid in proper understanding of user experience, its concepts and principles.