# Making Order in User Experience Research to Support Its Application in Design and Beyond
## 2 General Background
### The Relation between UX and Usability  
Despite all the nuances and perspectives adopted to define UX characteristics, the actual relationship between the concept of \"usability\" and that of \"user experience\" must be fully established. This section is devoted to this relationship, which deserves particular attention.  
In an interview, [PERSON] stated that he needed a term with a wider meaning than \"usability\" to express the relationship between a user and a system [48]. According to [PERSON], the experience includes many aspects that go beyond usability and ease of use. However, [PERSON] himself admitted that the term UX has been overused over time. This led to a general misinterpretation and confusion about the boundaries of these two concepts throughout the literature.  
Some definitions are more focused on usability, while others seem to extend the meaning of UX beyond the mere usability concept. [PERSON] [27] considers all the aspects of the interaction between humans and interactive products with a stronger focus on usability than on the affective side. [PERSON] [34] deliberately focused on usability and efficiency of use with regards to product quality assessment. A more comprehensive definition is provided by [PERSON] [28]. The scholar juxtaposed the affective satisfaction and the expectations created while the user is experiencing the product with the concept of effectiveness and efficiency. Other scholars prefer to consider UX in a broader way [1,29,36]. [PERSON] [49] provides a differentiation of these concepts based firstly on time span, and secondly on the objectivity/subjectivity of measurements. [PERSON] claims that scholars usually consider usability only during the interaction, while UX should be considered \"over time\" from \"before the interaction\" to \"after usage\". Usability can be measured objectively through \"effectiveness\" and \"efficiency\", while UX is evaluated through subjective measures that deal with subjective feelings, emotions, and preferences.  
The problems of the complicated relationship between UX and usability concepts in the literature was partially solved by [PERSON] and [PERSON] [50] who divided literature contributions into three different domains depending on how those concepts were considered in the literature. These three domains were that UX included usability; UX completed usability; or UX was intended just as one of the elements that feature usability.  
[PERSON] et al. [6] tried to clarify the boundaries between UX, usability and accessibility as well. They introduced another term: Interaction Experience (IX). They also specified that IX as a general concept should be considered as an umbrella term since it cannot be measured.  
Figure 1: Graphical representation of the main visions of UX, and the influence factors related to the UX concept.  
The measurability is an important point in the relationship between UX and usability. Often, usability is thought to be more objectively measurable than UX. This consideration influenced the methodological approaches used to measure and evaluate UX and usability. Indeed, usability can be evaluated by implementing a larger spectrum of methods, while there are fewer methods and instruments to target UX [6].  
In a nutshell, we can state that while it is established that the UX concept extends beyond usability, the latter is often used as a substitute of UX for practical reasons, i.e., it represents the UX component that can be assessed and dealt with in a sufficiently rigorous way.