As you point out, the customer is a user. I don't really see a difference, except that not all users are customers.

Dear Dr. Moss,

I think the difference comes from the different relationship of a customer and a user to a product. As actors, they are not necessarily the same, as correctly stated by Dr. Wynn, therefore may have different objectives, contexts, experiences, and last but not least, personality. The interaction relationship is where I would put the attention if the aim is to make the potential differences tangible.

Kind regards,

I.H.

Dear Dr Moss

I feel that a customer is a user in the first place, all be it a user with a more specific task to accomplish: buying a product. The UI interaction is always to complete a task and if the interaction is good and allows the user to complete the task with minimal effort it is a good UI. I would therefor argue that customers are a subset of users, the same way any user of a software application is a subset of the overarching group called users.

Customer experience design would therefore be a subfield of user interface design.

Regards

D.H.

I agree with Imre Horvath that the contexts are different for an employee and a consumer. Consumer has a choice and can opt not to use if the experience is unsatisfactory, whereas an employee might have to put up with something unusable. The cost then is to the employee's experience of working, and to time lost for the company. Several things can happen: time spent tackling the UI is time taken away from other tasks. If the UI is bad enough, the user may have to take as much as 15 minutes to recover from the frustration. If the user is part of a team depending on their work, the loss of time cascades through the entire team and on to the next group that receives the work. If the user is a customer service employee and becomes confused on the phone with a customer, customer may be dissatisfied, request an escalation and even change providers. However, these costs are all indirect. So a bad user interface on a consumer product is reflected directly in sales or repeat sales, online complaints, discouragement of other buyers, whereas bad UI in a workplace is more indirect and takes more time to assess, if it is ever even identified. Good user interface for customer creates current and repeat sales and good word of mouth. Good user interface in employment has exponential effects in productivity that reflect across the whole workflow.

Hello Jennifer,

that is an interesting question. For quite some time I would have agreed to Imre, completely. I still think that he is right. But I changed my mind because I learned that there is more to it than just the perspective of the actors. The reason is, that these two terms have different origins.

- User Experience (UX) is the descendant of usability. The field of usability is (almost?) exclusively related to digital systems which implies that the term User Experience refers to experiences with regard to technology. UX isn't solely about HCI! It intends to cover the whole product lifecycle, thus including every touchpoint starting with the first rumours, then advertising, packaging, use, and finally disposal (etc.) But all in all, user experience is always about an IT product.

- Customer Experience does not have this focus. It is stronger related to service design, hence including non-digital services, too. It is possible, that there is a digital component to support the service. But it isn't necessary.

And now I want to add a question: would you think that the need to handle non-digital aspects as well, customer experience design employs methods and approaches not needed in user experience design? For example, does it demand a broader theoretical bases. For example, service with face to face contact you have to consider aspects of social interaction; or you may have to consider the physical environment where the service is provided which may require knowledge about phenomena like crowding.

No matter how we are going to answer that question, due to the recent developments when services were transferred more and more to the digital world (ticket machines, online banking, online shopping, ...), it became harder to distinguish the two approaches.

Best regards,

Jan

Thank you for your helpful answers. I have a follow up question for Dr. Heukleman regarding:

Customer experience design would therefore be a subfield of user interface design.

Am am guessing advertisers, who create a concept for customers to interact with a brand would consider UX and UI design a subfield of the customer experience as they are only one possible expression of "the message" (if done well). If this is the case, do you think the relationship between customer experience and ux design were reversed depending on the user's / customer's first touch point?

I find Jan Seifert's response very interesting. My own views of user interface design extends beyond pure digital content. Which leaves me with the dilemma of UI being a subfield of HCI!

I therefore still think customer experience, from first touch point, whether it is digital or not, is a subfield of UI. 

So, to try and resolve my own dilemma, I would regard the digital component of UI as a subfield of HCI. Indeed UI borrows from many disciplines, some psychology is used to design user models, some economics is used to identify user patterns, etc.

This discussion is very stimulating! Thanks for posing the question.

Hello All!

If I had to present the different fields in a hierarchy I'd choose this: Usability Engineering (UE) is a part of HCI is a part of User Experience Design (UXD) is a part of Customer Experience Design (CXD). I am not sure, though, a hierarchy is really adequate. It might work on a theoretical level (wouldn't vouch for it without taking a closer look). But it sure fails on a practical level. Someone capable of working in CXD is not necessarily qualified to do usability or UXD. Working in CXD you can completely ignore the technological aspects. You cannot if you work in UXD. But, while I am typing this, my own words raise doubts. All these areas are interdisciplinary by definition. Of course, no one has all skills required in each field. It may just be wrong to look at the skill set on an individual level. The hierarchy may still work then.

Something else comes to my mind. I based the hierarchy above mostly on aspects like "field of practice", "required skill and knowledge set", "the designed product" (IT products or not). What if we try to approach this from a different point of view? When I talk with colleagues I sometimes get the impression that when referring to User Interface Design they have a certain design approach in mind. That approach is related to Simon (1969) who theorised that design is about creating artefacts. On the other hand, that is clearly not the case in UXD. It is much closer to theories outlined by Krippendorff (2006) who considers the goal of design to be creation of meaning. Maybe that would be a way to get a better grasp on how to distinguish the variety of terms?

• User Interface Design would be about designing objects then? Not by definition, but in designers heads.
• Usability would then be about designing behaviour (the interaction between user and computer)? That is difficult, because it seems to ignore the  "satisifaction" component in effectivity, efficiency, and user satisfaction. I could only save it by claiming that satisfaction is based on the fit between the users' expecations and the actual behaviour. But I don't think questionnaires about usability would reflect that. Still, my impression is that the major focus of usability work was/is behaviour.
• User Experience and Customer Experience would mix up into a single approach trying to design the users experiences.

Finally, a question (@Delene): does that still mean that you would speak of "UI Design" even if there is no IT component and, thus, no user interface to be designed? I'd be very interested what criteria this is based on or how you define UI.

Sorry for the long answer. I got carried away :-)

Jan

Very interesting and a comprehensive look at it, Jan. I regard a User Interface as anything a user has to use as a tool to complete a task: the registration form a company wants you to complete, whether it is electronic or not, the bizhub which allows you to copy things, my microwave oven settings panel, etc. As a user I have to interact with it, if the form is not clear my user interaction will be difficult resulting in an unsatisfactory user experience. Similarly if the microwave oven options are unclear it would limit my ability to use my microwave to its full extent. This is especially true about cell phones.

I therefore have a very wide concept of user interface, which may or may not be accurate...

The customer is someone who makes the decision to adopt a product, which in many cases means purchasing the product. That customer may not be someone who actually uses the product. A user is someone who uses the product. Customers and users will not always have the same needs. A user may need a product that enables them to accomplish a specific job, and a customer may require a product that can be leased over a three-year period and includes a maintenance agreement. A UX designer will primarily work on the user experience, and a product manager must additionally deliver for the customer.

The difference lies in the focus of the person-product relationship - the elements of the experience that relate to having purchased the product (finding out about it, packaging, warranty, service and repair, end-of-life, etc) are customer experience, whereas those that relate to getting something done with the product are user experience. The customer may often not be the user and the user is very often not the customer.

There is clearly plenty of scope for overlap (which is a large part of the reason for user experience having been defined) but at the same time it is a big mistake to think of them as equivalent.

Sorry, I cannot support this view. May I quote the ISO 9241-210 which defines User experience as "a person's perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service. [...] User experience includes all the users' emotions, beliefs, preferences, perceptions, physical and psychological responses, behaviors and accomplishments that occur before, during and after use."  This definition explicitly goes beyond the view that UX is merely about "getting something done". Not only, because user experience also includes social and emotional aspects but because it isn't only about using a product.

I have followed this conversation with great interest and I am in line with what both Dr Wynn and Dr Imre Horvath point out. The difference and the focus may be in the interaction relationship. A user may eventually become a customer and therefore the user experience may suddenly and drastically change. This process is of great importance and for a UX designer it is vital to know different types of circumstances and contexts in order to support this user-customer transformation in the design. Values (social, cultural...), task, goal and context among other things may be of importance.