What Do We Actually Mean by “Experience”?
What Do We Actually Mean by “Experience”?
Start readingYou send some money.
The transfer goes through.
Great.
Except the screen doesn’t really tell you that.
No clear confirmation. No reassuring little “done.” Nothing that makes you completely sure your money actually went where it was supposed to go.
So now you’re staring at your phone thinking:
Did that work… or did I just send my money into the void?
Technically, everything worked.
And yet, what you went through didn’t exactly feel like a successful transfer.
That tiny difference is where this whole conversation starts.
Because when we ask what is experience, we’re not only asking what happened.
We’re asking something slightly more interesting:
How did you experience what happened?
What Do We Mean by “Experience”?
Here’s the definition I find most useful:
Experience is the way a person perceives and responds to what they go through.
Simple sentence.
But there’s quite a lot hiding inside it.
It also sits close to how designers already talk about UX. ISO 9241‑210, the international standard for human-centred design, describes it as a person’s perceptions and responses to using, or expecting to use, a product, system or service. The version here simply widens the lens beyond products.
So let’s open it up a little.
What does “perceives” mean?
When I say perceives, I don’t just mean what you literally see.
I mean the way you notice something, understand it, interpret it, and make sense of it.
Go back to the transfer.
The system knows: Transfer completed successfully.
You might perceive: I’m not actually sure whether this worked.
Same moment.
Very different story.
And that’s important, because people don’t walk around experiencing raw system facts.
We live what those facts become to us.
Something can be clear.
- Confusing.
- Familiar.
- Suspicious.
- Easy to understand.
- Or weirdly difficult for no obvious reason.
That perception is part of the story.
What does “responds” mean?
This is where I’d be careful not to shrink the idea into:
“How did it make you feel?”
Feelings matter.
They’re just not the whole thing.
Your response can show up in different ways.
- Maybe you feel uncertain.
- Maybe you stop and check the transaction history.
- Maybe you read the screen again.
- Maybe you understand immediately what happened and move on without thinking about it twice.
- Maybe you hesitate.
- Maybe you trust it.
- Maybe you don’t.
So when we say responds, we’re leaving enough room for what you think, feel, understand, notice, sense, and do in response to what you’re going through.
Which is why “Experience is how someone feels” sounds close…
but it’s still too small.
Why “what they go through”?
I like this part of the definition because it stays deliberately ordinary.
It doesn’t say:
- product.
- Or service.
- Or app.
- Or interaction.
- Or workplace.
It just says:
what they go through.
Because it isn’t owned by one particular context.
- You go through something.
- You perceive it in a certain way.
- You respond to it in a certain way.
That whole loop is what we’re talking about here.
And once you see it that way, another question becomes useful.
If that’s what it is…
what are we accidentally confusing it with?
What Do We Not Mean by “Experience”?
Sometimes the easiest way to understand an idea is to draw a few clean borders around it.
Not because those other things are unrelated.
They are.
They’re just not the same thing.
Nielsen Norman Group draws a similar set of lines when it separates UX from the things it is often mistaken for, like usability or the technology itself. These are the four borders I find most useful.
Experience is not simply what happened
This is probably the biggest distinction.
What happens and how it is experienced are related, but they are not the same thing.
The transfer succeeded.
That describes what happened.
You spent thirty seconds wondering whether it succeeded.
That begins to describe what you went through.
The event matters, of course.
You can’t completely separate the two.
But describing the event alone doesn’t automatically tell me what it was like to go through.
- A meeting can finish on time and still be confusing.
- A form can successfully submit and still leave you wondering whether it did.
- A door can open perfectly and somehow make you pull when you’re supposed to push.
We’ve all lost a tiny battle with a door before.
- Operationally?
- Door works.
- Experientially?
- You and the door are no longer on speaking terms.
Same reality.
Different layer.
Experience is not just emotion
Another easy shortcut is:
Experience = feelings.
Not quite.
Emotion can absolutely be part of it.
But something can be confusing without you being deeply emotional about it.
You can find something effortless without feeling joy.
Something can come across as familiar, awkward, clear, slow, uncertain, or reassuring.
Sometimes there’s a strong feeling.
Sometimes there isn’t.
Something is still being lived.
So emotions belong inside the picture.
They just don’t own the whole picture.
Experience is not the same as satisfaction
This one sounds similar until you look closely.
Satisfaction is more like a judgment.
Was that good enough?
Did it meet what I expected?
Experience is broader.
You can be satisfied with the final outcome while still having gone through an annoying process.
Imagine the transfer again.
The money arrives.
Perfect.
You got what you wanted.
You might ultimately say:
“Yeah, I’m satisfied. It worked.”
But that doesn’t magically erase the uncertainty of staring at the screen.
Satisfaction can tell us something useful.
It just isn’t the whole story.
Experience is not automatically positive
And one last little trap.
When people hear this word, they sometimes instinctively hear:
good Experience.
But the word itself is neutral.
- It can be positive.
- Negative.
- Neutral.
- Or a messy mix of all three.
- Something can be convenient but confusing.
- Fast but stressful.
- Exciting but uncomfortable.
Life is annoyingly resistant to neat little labels like “good” and “bad.”
So is the way we live it.
Conclusion
So if we strip all of this back down to the core idea, we end up somewhere pretty simple:
Experience is the way a person perceives and responds to what they go through.
- Not simply what happened.
- Not just how they felt.
- Not merely whether they were satisfied.
What happened matters.
But so does the way it was lived.
And that small distinction?
It changes quite a lot.