UX (User Experience)
The overall quality of a user's interaction with a product — encompassing usability, accessibility, performance, and emotional response — not just visual design.
What is UX?
UX (User Experience) encompasses everything a user thinks, feels, and does when interacting with a product. It's not limited to visual design — it includes performance, copy, information architecture, error handling, and support.
Don Norman, who coined the term at Apple in the 1990s, defined it as: "all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services, and its products."
UX vs. UI
| UX | UI |
|---|---|
| The experience of using the product | The visual interface the user sees |
| How it works | How it looks |
| Information architecture, flows, wireframes | Typography, colour, components |
| Validated through usability testing | Validated through visual QA and feedback |
Good UI with bad UX frustrates users who can see the product is polished but can't accomplish their goals. Good UX with bad UI is functional but creates poor first impressions.
UX in the PM's scope
PMs don't design UX — designers do. But PMs:
- Define user problems that UX design must solve
- Review prototypes against acceptance criteria
- Prioritise UX improvements in the backlog alongside features
- Advocate for research budget and user testing time
Free templates for UX
Frequently asked questions
What's the PM's relationship with UX design?
PMs define the 'what' and 'why' (the problem to solve and the outcome expected). UX designers define the 'how' (the interaction model). Good PM-UX relationships involve PMs in discovery and designers in backlog prioritisation — both informing each other's work.
How do you measure UX quality?
Quantitatively: task completion rate, time-on-task, error rate, and SUS (System Usability Scale) score. Qualitatively: usability test observations, support ticket themes, and NPS open-text responses. Retention is the ultimate UX metric — users who can't accomplish their goals don't come back.
Apply UX to your real product data
PMRead ingests customer feedback, interviews, and Slack threads — and generates PRDs grounded in real evidence.
Related terms
Wireframe
A low-fidelity visual representation of a product screen that shows layout and structure without visual design — used to communicate information architecture and user flows early in the design process.
Prototype
A simulated version of a product or feature — ranging from paper sketches to clickable Figma flows — used to test ideas with users before engineering investment.
Usability Testing
A user research method where participants attempt real tasks on a product while researchers observe — revealing where users struggle, get confused, or fail to complete their goals.