User experience in the context of Interface design

Ergonomics, also known as human factors or human factors engineering (HFE), is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. Primary goals of human factors engineering are to reduce human error, increase productivity and system availability, and enhance safety, health and comfort with a specific focus on the interaction between the human and equipment.

The field is a combination of numerous disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, engineering, biomechanics, industrial design, physiology, anthropometry, interaction design, visual design, user experience, and user interface design. Human factors research employs methods and approaches from these and other knowledge disciplines to study human behavior and generate data relevant to previously stated goals. In studying and sharing learning on the design of equipment, devices, and processes that fit the human body and its cognitive abilities, the two terms, "human factors" and "ergonomics", are essentially synonymous as to their referent and meaning in current literature.

User interface (UI) design or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the user experience. In computer or software design, user interface (UI) design primarily focuses on information architecture. It is the process of building interfaces that clearly communicate to the user what's important. UI design refers to graphical user interfaces and other forms of interface design. The goal of user interface design is to make the user's interaction as simple and efficient as possible, in terms of accomplishing user goals (user-centered design). User-centered design is typically accomplished through the execution of modern design thinking which involves empathizing with the target audience, defining a problem statement, ideating potential solutions, prototyping wireframes, and testing prototypes in order to refine final interface mockups.

User interfaces are the points of interaction between users and designs.

User experience design (UX design, UXD, UED, or XD), upon which is the centralized requirements for "User Experience Design Research" (also known as UX Design Research), defines the experience a user would go through when interacting with a company, its services, and its products. User experience design is a user centered design approach because it considers the user's experience when using a product or platform. Research, data analysis, and test results drive design decisions in UX design rather than aesthetic preferences and opinions, for which is known as UX Design Research. Unlike user interface design, which focuses solely on the design of a computer interface, UX design encompasses all aspects of a user's perceived experience with a product or website, such as its usability, usefulness, desirability, brand perception, and overall performance. UX design is also an element of the customer experience (CX), and encompasses all design aspects and design stages that are around a customer's experience.

Unified communications (UC) is a business and marketing concept that integrates multiple enterprise communication services. These include instant messaging, presence information, IP telephony, mobility features, audio/video/web conferencing, desktop and data sharing, call control, and speech recognition. UC also links with non-real-time services such as unified messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail, SMS, and fax). UC is not necessarily a single product, but a set of products that provides a consistent unified user interface and user experience across multiple devices and media types.

In its broadest sense, the UC can encompass all forms of communications that are exchanged via a network to include other forms of communications such as Internet Protocol television (IPTV) and digital signage as they become an integrated part of the network communications deployment and may be directed as one-to-one communications or broadcast communications from one to many.

New product development (NPD) or product development in business and engineering covers the complete process of launching a new product to the market. Product development also includes the renewal of an existing product and introducing a product into a new market. A central aspect of NPD is product design. New product development is the realization of a market opportunity by making a product available for purchase. The products developed by a commercial organisation provide the means to generate income.

Many technology-intensive organisations exploit technological innovation in a rapidly changing consumer market. A product can be a tangible asset or intangible. A service or user experience is intangible. In law, sometimes services and other processes are distinguished from "products". NPD requires an understanding of customer needs and wants, the competitive environment, and the nature of the market.

Web content is the text, visual or audio content that is made available online and user encountered as part of the online usage and experience on websites. It may include text, images, sounds and audio, online videos, among other items placed within web pages.

In the book Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville wrote, "We define content broadly as 'the stuff in your website.' Web content may include webpage document pages, information, software data and applications, e-services, images, audio and video files, personal Web pages, archived e-mail messages stored on email servers, and more. And we include future web content as well as present web content roadmap."

Quality of experience (QoE) is a measure of the delight or annoyance of a customer's experiences with a service (e.g., web browsing, phone call, TV broadcast). QoE focuses on the entire service experience; it is a holistic concept, similar to the field of user experience, but with its roots in telecommunication. QoE is an emerging multidisciplinary field based on social psychology, cognitive science, economics, and engineering science, focused on understanding overall human quality requirements.

Usability engineering is a professional discipline that focuses on improving the usability of interactive systems. It draws on theories from computer science and psychology to define problems that occur during the use of such a system. Usability Engineering involves the testing of designs at various stages of the development process, with users or with usability experts. The history of usability engineering in this context dates back to the 1980s. In 1988, authors John Whiteside and John Bennett—of Digital Equipment Corporation and IBM, respectively—published material on the subject, isolating the early setting of goals, iterative evaluation, and prototyping as key activities. The usability expert Jakob Nielsen is a leader in the field of usability engineering. In his 1993 book Usability Engineering, Nielsen describes methods to use throughout a product development process—so designers can ensure they take into account the most important barriers to learnability, efficiency, memorability, error-free use, and subjective satisfaction before implementing the product. Nielsen’s work describes how to perform usability tests and how to use usability heuristics in the usability engineering lifecycle. Ensuring good usability via this process prevents problems in product adoption after release. Rather than focusing on finding solutions for usability problems—which is the focus of a UX or interaction designer—a usability engineer mainly concentrates on the research phase. In this sense, it is not strictly a design role, and many usability engineers have a background in computer science because of this. Despite this point, its connection to the design trade is absolutely crucial, not least as it delivers the framework by which designers can work so as to be sure that their products will connect properly with their target usership.

An integrated development environment (IDE) is software that provides a relatively comprehensive set of features for software development. An IDE is intended to enhance productivity by providing development features with a consistent user experience as opposed to using separate tools, such as vi, GDB, GCC, and make.

At a minimum, an IDE typically supports source-code editing, source control, build automation, and debugging. An IDE may include support for integrating tools such as a compiler, runtime environment or version control system, but sometimes such tools are bundled with the IDE. Some IDEs provide special support for constructing a graphical user interface (GUI). Many IDEs support object-oriented programming via features such as class browser and object browser. Typically, an IDE provides special support for one or more programming languages, allowing for features tailored to a language. Some IDEs can be extended to support additional languages.

A debugger is software for executing a computer program in an environment that allows for programming-level inspection and control. A debugger is often used to debug, but can be used for other goals including testing. Common features of a debugger include stepping through code line-by-line, breaking into the program's flow of control, managing breakpoints, and reporting and modifying memory.

A source-level debugger (a.k.a. symbolic debugger) provides a user experience that integrates the program's source code. Typically, such a debugger can indicate which line of source code corresponds to the execution point of the program and allows for reading and writing memory via the symbols of the source code. In contrast, a low-level debugger (a.k.a. machine-language debugger) shows the execution point as machine code or its associated assembly language and allows memory access by address only.