The Thin Red Line Between Usability and User Experiences

This paper intends to debate about two often-used terms in the field of designing interactive systems: Usability and User Experience (UX). The need comes from observing (in a non-empirical way) that both software and interface design industries, and even academia, use such terms interchangeably, without knowing clearly their exact meaning, according to the "current fad". To gain empirical knowledge about these terms and their use, we studied the existing literature and conducted a survey to obtain first-hand information, coming from the different actors involved with User Centered Design (UCD) and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) in general. The main motivation for this paper is to verify if current UCD approaches are enough and adequate for the development of both usable and high-grade UX systems.