Introduction - Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics - page 4

experience of any product. This global assessment is achieved by com-
bining different types of metrics into a single UX score, summarizing
them in a UX scorecard, or comparing them to expert performance.

• Chapter 9presents special topics that we believe are important but that

don't fit squarely into one of the five general categories. These include
A/B testing on a live website, card-sorting data, accessibility data, and
return on investment (ROI).

The third part (Chapters 10 and 11) shows how UX metrics are put into prac-
tice. In this part, we highlight how UX metrics are actually used within differ-
ent types of organizations and how to promote the use of metrics within an
organization.

• Chapter 10presentsfive case studies . Each case study reviews how differ-

ent types of UX metrics were used, how data were collected and analyzed,
and the results. These case studies were drawn from UX professionals in
various types of organizations, including consulting, government, indus-
try, and not-for-profit/education.

• Chapter 11 provides 10 steps to help you move forward in using metrics

within your organization. We discuss how UX metrics can fit within
different types of organizations, practical tips for making metrics work
within your organization, and recipes for success.

1.1 WHAT IS USER EXPERIENCE
Before we try to measure user experience, we should know what it is and what
it isn't. While many UX professionals have their own ideas of what constitutes a
“user experience,” we believe the user experience includes three main defining
characteristics:

• A user is involved

• Thatuserisinteractingwithaproduct,system,orreallyanythingwithan

interface

• Theusers'experienceisofinterest,andobservableormeasurable

In the absence of a user doing something, we might just be measuring atti-
tudes and preferences, such as in a political poll or survey about your favorite
flavor of ice cream. There has to be behavior, or at least potential behavior, to be
considered user experience. For example, we might show a screenshot of a web-
site and ask participants what they would click if it were interactive.

You might also note that we never defined any characteristics of the product
or system. We believe that any system or product can be evaluated from a user
experience perspective, as long as there is some type of interface between the
system or product and the user. We are hard-pressed to think of any examples of
a product that don't have some type of human interface. We think that's a good
thing, as it means that we can study almost any product or system from a UX
perspective.