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What is user experience design?

User experience design is a framework for designing and building products, tools, services, devices, and/or systems. It focuses on the experience of end users and puts their needs at the centre of the design and development processes.

It is sometimes referred to as UX design or UXD.

Although the concept of user experience design can be somewhat intangible and difficult to measure (Chawana and Adebesin, 2021), there are a number of useful models that can help us consider the experience that someone has when they interact with a product or service.

One such model is Peter Morville’s user experience honeycomb. It highlights seven different ways to consider the end-user experience.

Figure 1 The “user experience honeycomb“, devised by Peter Morville.

Within the life sciences, there are other elements that can be added to the honeycomb. These additions relate to aspects that users require or expect when interfacing with our products, services, and tools that support life science research.

Figure 2 UX honeycomb that defines key elements for scientific software and tools, produced by Francis Rowland.