User experience (UX) is the total quality of a user's interaction with a product across usability, accessibility, performance, content, design, and emotional response. It treats the product as the experience the user actually has rather than just the interface they see, covering information architecture, visual design, and microinteractions. The term was coined by Don Norman at Apple in 1993 to capture everything that shapes how a person perceives and interacts with a system, beyond just visual design.
The components of modern UX work cluster into roughly six areas: usability (can the user accomplish what they're trying to do, with what speed and what error rate), information architecture (how content and functionality are o...