Reflection User Experience Evaluation vs. Usability Evaluation

One important dimension of the User Experience Evaluation is that of emotions that users show towards using the product. Some of the emotions might have objective grounds, but many of them will be subjective and based on previous experiences with similar products in similar situations or just experience of dealing on their own with the problem that the product is trying to address.

Usability Evaluation can sometimes be done through an expert analysis and even exclude the implication of users in the actual evaluation of the design. It depends, of course, on the product and its design. It is sometimes the case that analyzing similar products and taking into account existing bibliography on the research subject can be considered sufficient. Checking that available design patterns are used and comparing to similar products are the grounds for telling if the product is usable. My opinion is that referring to studies that even include results from User Experience Evaluations still doesn’t cross the borders of Usability Evaluation, as long as the studies don’t refer to this exact product.

User Experience Evaluation, on the other hand, is not possible without the implication of users. How they feel about the product and the experience of using the product is, in that case, the actual goal of the evaluation.