一个出色用户体验的首要要求是精确满足客户的需求，做到不费力、不麻烦。接下来则是简洁和优雅，能够带来令人愉悦的产品体验，无论是拥有还是使用这些产品都让人感到愉快。真正的用户体验远远超出了给予客户他们所说的需求或提供功能列表的范畴。为了在公司提供的产品中实现高质量的用户体验，必须无缝融合多个学科的服务，包括工程、市场营销、图形设计、工业设计和界面设计等。
虽然用户界面 (UI) 显然是设计中极为重要的一部分，但重要的是要将整体用户体验与用户界面区分开来。举例来说，想象一个包含电影评论的网站。即使用于寻找电影的用户界面设计得完美无缺，如果该网站的数据库仅包含主要制片厂的电影，而用户想了解一部独立制作的影片信息，那么用户体验依然会很糟糕。
我们还应该区分用户体验 (UX) 和可用性：根据可用性的定义，它是用户界面的一种质量属性，涵盖系统是否易于学习、使用效率是否高、是否令人愉快等。这一点同样非常重要，但整体用户体验是一个更加广泛的概念。
The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features. In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company’s offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.
It’s important to distinguish the total user experience from the user interface (UI), even though the UI is obviously an extremely important part of the design. As an example, consider a website with movie reviews. Even if the UI for finding a film is perfect, the UX will be poor for a user who wants information about a small independent release if the underlying database only contains movies from the major studios.
We should also distinguish UX and usability: According to the definition of usability, it is a quality attribute of the UI, covering whether the system is easy to learn, efficient to use, pleasant, and so forth. Again, this is very important, and again total user experience is an even broader concept.
