The Coefficient of User Experience

Quick physics review. Friction is the resistance an object encounters in moving over another object. The Coefficient of Friction is a number that represents the friction between those two surfaces. So I pose to you a new concept related to these physics terms: The Coefficient of User Experience is a quantity representing the friction between the user and the experience.

The first thing to understand is that, just like with the coefficient of friction, you’re dealing with the intersection of two surfaces; the user and the experience. What’s different is that you have little to no ability to affect the grittiness of the user’s “surface” so you must rely on making your experience as smooth as possible to reduce your overall coefficient of user experience. In UX design, constantly thinking about the weight of this value, and even obsessing over keeping it as low as possible, is going to drive you to create a better experience. The coefficient of user experience makes you ask questions like “how can this be easier, more engaging, fun, exciting?” and “how can I solve this problem in a new or different way?” You can’t really pinpoint this number with a formula like you can in physics, but I do think that you can estimate it, feel it even, as you step into the shoes of the user while you design. And as you get better at building near-frictionless user experiences you will also get better at measuring the coefficient of user experience.