All to often I hear people using the term UX very loosely. In most cases, I hear people refer to User Experience while referencing the concept of Usability. And Yes, Usability is definately part of the umbrella to User Experience but they are not synonomous with each other. User Experience references the entire interaction, its percieved, learned, use of a product/software/application. I like to think that user experience is about interaction, visual design, delivery, usability, utility, and communication.
That also can go the other way, lots of great designers fail at creating usable design and in the same sense also fail at good user experience. Just today, what actually sparked this topic of which i am writing, I ran into a design for a company that had the concepts of great design: clean, nice style, trendy, but all of these things didn’t make up for the pure fact the design complicated usability. It did not seperate the elements out on the page to make it easy to navigate and use the application. Design groups need to start paying attention to User Experience, the bar is being raised by the design community to become User Aware… Think User Experience!
