Identifying the importance of UX dimensions for different software product categories

Billions of users around the world use mobile applications and computer software to achieve their professional and personal goals. This situation drives User Experience (UX) researchers and practitioners to assess the importance of UX dimensions across different products, to facilitate the design, development and evaluation of new products. To that end, this study surveyed a group of 200 end users and 8 UX experts from Canada to document the importance of 21 UX dimensions for 15 software product categories. The results confirmed that the importance of UX dimensions varies between product categories. Comparing the findings to those of similar studies conducted in Germany and Indonesia revealed that, while culture influences the rating of UX dimensions, the importance of UX dimensions is still determined by the product category. Comparisons between the importance ratings of UX dimensions between end users and experts and within end users were not significant in 77% and 97% of cases, respectively. Results showed that task-based product categories rely more on pragmatic dimensions (i.e. functionality and usability) while leisure-based products value hedonic dimensions (i.e. pleasure) as well. This study benefits researchers and practitioners by enabling them to select the most important UX dimensions for evaluating their products.

Uncontrolled Keywords

• User experience
• UX dimension
• UX evaluation
• culture