Towards Practical User Experience Evaluation Methods

In the last decade, User eXperience (UX) research in the academic community has produced a multitude of UX models and frameworks. These models address the key issues of UX: its subjective, highly situated and dynamic nature, as well as the pragmatic and hedonic factors leading to UX. At the same time, industry is adopting the UX term but the practices in the product development are still largely based on traditional usability methods. In this paper we discuss the need for pragmatic UX evaluation methods and how such methods can be used in product development in industry. We conclude that even though UX definition still needs work it seems that many of the methods from HCI and other disciplines can be adapted to the particular aspects of UX evaluation. The paper is partly based on the results of UX evaluation methods in product development (UXEM) workshop in CHI 2008.

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