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Is User Experience (UX) Becoming Customer Experience (CX)?

Source: https://www.wte.net/Is-User-Experience-(UX)-Becoming-Customer-Experience-(CX)
Date: December 2022
Author: Rachelle in eMarketing

Introduction

Understanding UX and CX helps organizations create superior products, enhance customer engagement, and build loyalty. Since people experience UX and CX interactions daily, examining whether UX is evolving into CX requires deeper exploration.

Definitions

In the 1990s, Apple's Don Norman defined UX as "all aspects of the end user's interaction with the company, its services, and products." UX encompasses branding, design, packaging, marketing, usability, and functionality to solve customer problems.

Norman emphasized that "A product is more than the product...Think through all stages of a product or service...Make them all work together seamlessly."

Forrester's Harley Manning defines customer experience as "How customers perceive their interactions with your company." Customers aren't always users—a VP purchasing software for employees might never use it themselves, yet their experience suffers if the UX fails.

Differences

Key distinctions between UX and CX include:

  • Backgrounds: UX professionals typically have technical, design, or psychology expertise; CX professionals come from marketing and customer service
  • Focus: CX emphasizes sales growth through marketing and customer service; UX pursues the same goals through usability improvements
  • Vision: CX examines all customer touchpoints; UX targets specific applications and designs
  • Industries: CX dominates retail, travel, and hospitality; UX prevails in digital products
  • Research Methods: CX surveys large populations; UX studies smaller user groups

Similarities

Both disciplines employ research and share the same ultimate objective. IoT and multi-channel environments push them together, as customers increasingly expect seamless experiences across all touchpoints.

Design Thinking

The author endorses Dieter Rams' ten principles of good design:

  • Innovative
  • Makes products useful
  • Aesthetic
  • Makes products understandable
  • Unobtrusive
  • Honest
  • Long-lasting
  • Attentive to every detail

Rams believed minimalist design is crucial—avoiding over-design that complicates rather than simplifies user interaction.

Customer Thinking

The author references Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, where fishmongers create memorable experiences. LA Times writer Christopher Reynolds called this "highly curated capitalism"—a model now central to modern business strategy.

Conclusion

The distinction between UX and CX may become meaningless as businesses increasingly practice "curated capitalism," suggesting these disciplines are converging rather than remaining separate disciplines.