Anders Lundgren

The goal with this article is to describe Quality of Experience in a general manner. The term is used in many areas using different kind of rewritings but they mean in general the same. In business terminology it can be called “Quality of User Experience” and in medical terminology “Quality of Patient Experience” but both the user and the patient are individuals.

A general definition of Quality of Experience is the, by the individual or individuals, experienced quality of a given service provided by a arbitrary service provider. So what does that mean and what differs this from Quality of Service?

Generally speaking, Quality of Experience is a subjective measure from the individual perspective and thus can’t be contracted, unlike Quality of Service that can. Quality of Experience, from now on called QoE, varies depending on the individuals background, age, religion and even height, weight, knowledge, mood or even the present situation or environment the user is in. How do we cope with that?

I can’t, and will not, deal with any concrete solutions here but will discuss some general things that most areas will have in common. In my discussions I will focus most on services rather on products since products often are a tool to be able to offer a service at a given time or place. At least in this discussion.

As always you should know the target of the service. By knowing the taget you also know the do’s and don’ts for the targeted group of customers. For example if the service is focusing on users with the same ethnic background and geographic area then you can adapt the service accordingly. When you have a global taget this may not be possible.