User Experience Curve

When using a product (or when purchasing a device, sending it for repair, etc.), you can try to imagine the feelings that the user will have in different situations. Positive feelings mean that the user experience curve goes up, Negative feelings mean that the curve goes down. If the curve goes down too much—or drops repeatedly during the process—you will most likely lose the customer even before purchasing; or the customer may end up being pretty unhappy most of the time using your product. And they will most likely not purchase a product from you again.

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Figure 1-1 shows an example of this “user experience curve” in a first-usage situation for a mobile device.

Figure 1-1. Example of user experience curve

One problem with feelings (and hence the user experience) is that different people react differently in different situations. And the same person may get different feelings in the same situation depending on the context. If the user, for example, had a very stressful day, he may easily drop rapidly on the user experience curve compared to the same user going shopping on a relaxing summer vacation.

And as with a personal relationship, the feelings may change over time, or even from day to day. Certain things may even make us go from happiness to anger in just seconds (e.g., if a software program crashes when you have just been using it for an hour, typing a long letter). Other things may become annoying to use when the user knows that there are better solutions out there.

The goal is of course to maximize the positive moments for users when they're using your product. And ideally to make your consumers love your product—at least some or most of the time.

Another very important element—which is also described further in Chapter 9—is to eliminate the worst negative feelings during usage of a product. One negative user experience may need ten good experiences to make the user happy again.