"What happened to usability?"

Nicolette L. Davis, PhD, asked this question in the UX Pro group on LinkedIn yesterday. She expanded on her question with the following post.

The term "user experience" seems to have replaced "usability" recently. Why, the Usability Professionals Association even changed its name to the User Experience Professionals Association a couple of years ago! Personally, I think "usability" is a much clearer term than "user experience," particularly for people not familiar with our field. Does anyone know the reason for this change? Some kind of management fad, perhaps?

There does seem to be a trend currently to conflate user experience (UX) and usability. UX is both more and less than usability, but there is significant overlap between the two.

The methods of usability and UX analysis are similar. Usability and UX are not distinguished by "measurability" as one response in the thread implies. Usability assessment is a more established field than UX assessment. As a result, there are more established methodologies for assessment and measurement as well as more established indicators for such assessment and measurement. Nonetheless, both usability and UX most certainly can be measurable. Also like usability, certain UX factors can be qualitatively comparable rather than measurable.

A current trend in companies is to focus usability on research and testing and to limit UX to design. However, both usability and UX have research, analysis, implementation, and testing aspects as well as design aspects. Design is only one aspect of a product, and there are many facets to design, among which are: interface design (IxD), user experience design (UxD), business experience design, and graphic design. None of the individual components of UX equate to UX, which is a very broad area. Even though UX in current practice seems to have an undue focus on design, design is not a differentiator between usability and UX. The UX-design connection is more clearly understood, but even with usability, there should be a focus on usability in design. The gap here may relate to the "convenient acronym" effect that Dave Lull notes. Perhaps "Usability Designer" does not have the same buzz-word ring to it as "UX Designer." It certainly does not reduce as well to a clever abbreviation: UxD (or IxD, or BxD, or XxD) versus what? UD?

Generally, but not always, user experience (UX) encompasses what I would refer to as 'fitness for purpose.' Something can be completely usable but not particularly useful. Or it can be both usable and useful, but not relevant. Or usable, useful, and relevant, but not appropriate. And so on. Tom de Haas implies this with the inclusion of branding, usability, functionality, and content in his understanding of UX. UX includes not only certain tangible components, but also intangibles. As Gary Dorst implies, many intangible aspects of UX affect the overal user experience although they are not measurable. Also, as Katie Albers points out, these are not the only aspects of UX. One of the most notable aspects missing from the de Haas list is architecture. The architecture of physical, interface, and information products and components has a profound impact on the user experience, particularly over time. Futhermore, the element of time is another differentiator between usability and user experience. Usability looks at how usable something is in an instantation (whether or not access is repeated). User experience (or its more specific counterpart, business experience) looks at the overall experience over time.

But back to the question. "What happened to usability?" It sometimes is hiding inside the larger user experience field, sometimes stuck to the side in research without fruitful application (and re-application in an iterative manner), sometimes mislabeled as UX or another related area. But usability research, assessment, application, testing is alive and well in many environments.