--- title: "User Experience" url: "https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/user-experience" language: "en" description: "What is user experience? A plain-language explanation with the ISO definition, how it differs from usability and practical tips. Learn what makes good UX." published: "2026-10-14T15:19:33+02:00" updated: "2026-10-14T15:19:33+02:00" --- # User Experience User experience (UX) covers everything people perceive and feel before, during and after using a product or service. Usability is one part of it. - **Buchstabe:** U - **Englischer Begriff:** User Experience UX glossary · engl. User Experience # User Experience User experience (UX) covers everything people perceive and feel before, during and after using a product or service. Usability is one part of it. Imagine you book a train journey online. It takes two minutes, the website is clear, and everything works. On the day of travel, your train is canceled, the app shows no alternative, and the hotline is constantly busy. The website was easy to use. The overall experience was still bad. That gap is exactly what the term user experience describes. ## Explained simply User experience, or UX for short, covers everything people perceive and feel around a product or service: before they use it, while they use it and afterwards. Think of a night out at a restaurant. What matters isn’t just whether the menu is easy to read. The booking, the wait for a table, the food, the bill and how you feel when you leave all count too. The standard ISO 9241-210 defines user experience, in essence, as a person’s perceptions and responses resulting from the actual or anticipated use of a system, product or service. That includes emotions, beliefs, preferences, physical and psychological responses, behavior and accomplishments. The word “anticipated” matters: UX starts before anyone touches a product, for example while reading reviews. The term was popularized mainly by Don Norman. He joined Apple in 1993 and held the title “User Experience Architect” there. He didn’t invent the phrase, though. It had appeared here and there before. ## User experience vs. usability The two terms are often mixed up. [Usability](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/usability) describes how easy a product is to use: whether people reach their goal effectively, efficiently and with satisfaction. User experience is broader and includes usability. Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen describe UX as every aspect of the interaction with a company, its services and its products. So good usability is a prerequisite for good UX, but no guarantee. A product can be perfectly usable and still fail to offer what people need. Content, service, delivery times, prices and brand perception shape the experience too. The same goes for the interface: the user interface is an important part of UX, but only one part. You can read more in [What Is User Experience?](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/blog/what-is-user-experience). ## An example Here’s an example: a gym offers an app for booking classes. The app is fast and well structured. Still, many members are frustrated because popular classes fill up within minutes and nobody finds out when a spot opens up. The team adds a waiting list with notifications and shows how many spots are left for each class. The app works almost exactly as before. But the whole class booking experience is much better, because it now fits the members’ expectations and daily routines. ## In practice - **Look beyond the screen.** A [journey map](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/journey-map) shows every touchpoint from the first impression to support and reveals where the experience breaks. - **Talk to real people.** [User research](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/user-research) shows what people expect and where they get frustrated, before your team turns assumptions into features. - **Measure more than clicks.** Combine behavioral data with surveys and observation, because feelings and expectations rarely show up directly in analytics numbers. ## Related terms [Usability](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/usability), [Journey Map](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/journey-map), [User Research](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/user-research), [Mental Model](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/mental-model) ## Sources - [ISO: ISO 9241-210:2019, Ergonomics of human-system interaction, Part 210: Human-centred design for interactive systems. ISO, 2019](https://www.iso.org/standard/77520.html) - [Don Norman, Jakob Nielsen: The Definition of User Experience (UX). Nielsen Norman Group, 1998](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/definition-user-experience/) - [Wikipedia: User experience. Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience) ## More terms [ ### A/B Testing An A/B test is an experiment that shows two versions of a page or element at the same time to randomly split groups of visitors. It lets you decide with real data which version works better. ](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/a-b-testing) [ ### ARIA ARIA is a W3C standard that adds roles, states and properties to HTML. It tells screen readers what an element is and how it currently behaves. ](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/aria) [ ### Accessibility Accessibility means designing websites, apps and digital documents so that everyone can use them, including people with visual, hearing, motor or cognitive disabilities. ](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/accessibility) [ ### Affordance An affordance describes what action an object makes possible and whether people can recognize it: a button invites you to press it, a handle invites you to pull. ](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/affordance) [ ### Alt Text Alt text is a short text version of an image, stored in the HTML alt attribute. Screen readers read it aloud so people who can’t see the image get the same information. ](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/alt-text) [ ### Atomic Design Atomic Design is a method for building user interfaces from small, reusable building blocks, from single elements like buttons all the way up to complete pages. ](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/atomic-design) [ ### BFSG The BFSG, Germany’s Accessibility Strengthening Act, has required many companies since 28 June 2025 to make certain products and digital services, such as online shops, accessible. ](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/bfsg) [ ### Card Sorting Card sorting is a research method in which people sort terms written on cards into groups. It shows you how they mentally organize content, so you can plan navigation that makes sense to them. ](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/card-sorting) [ ### Cognitive Load Cognitive load is the mental effort it takes to understand and use an interface. The less unnecessary thinking a design demands, the easier the actual task becomes. ](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/cognitive-load) [ ### Color Vision Deficiency A color vision deficiency means someone has a harder time telling certain colors apart than most people. The most common type is red-green deficiency. ](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/color-vision-deficiency) [ ### Contextual Inquiry Contextual inquiry is a research method where you observe and interview people in their real work environment. It shows you how they actually get tasks done, not just how they describe it. ](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/contextual-inquiry) [ ### Contrast Ratio The contrast ratio describes how much two colors differ in brightness, such as text and background. WCAG requires at least 4.5:1 for normal text. ](https://insideuxdesign.com/en/glossar/contrast-ratio)