Foci and blind spots in user experience research

Javier Bargas-Avila and Kasper HornbÆk review User experience (UX) from the viewpoint of researchers and users. User experience denotes new ways of understanding and studying the quality in use of interactive products, ways that represent a reaction against usability research and traditional HCI. UX focuses also on hedonic qualities of use and much more broadly on experience. According to their study, some researchers posit that the focus of UX research should be interactive products used in everyday life, whereas other researchers are willing to apply UX methods in any domain. Many researchers emphasize that UX is heavily influenced by the context of use. The authors looked at the methods currently applied by UX researchers and found that half of the studies are qualitative (50 percent), whereas 33 percent use quantitative methods and 17 percent combine the approaches. They also found that measures of UX before interaction is rare (20 percent), while after measurements are the most frequent (70 percent).