User experience is underestimated and under-valued for most companies and products. As I become a better communication designer I’ve discovered many of us don’t really understand what user experience really is. I found that it’s more than just the quality of a product but rather all that revolves around the product—simply it’s your experience around that product or object.

I will obviously aggrandize Apple here because they are a company built on user experience from product packaging, design and marketing on up. The iPhone is a fabulous product, arguably the best phone available, but it’s the experience around the product that makes it great not just the features (or in some cases the lack of features).

BMW claims to be the Ultimate Driving Machine but the fact is BMW really is a quality vehicle, therefore, they are able to successfully market that tag line. Thus when you are driving a BMW you share in the experience of it being in an ultimate driving machine. Stay with me here, if that same remark was made for Chevy or Saturn it really wouldn’t market itself well because that statement depends on your experience.

The Ultimate Driving Machine

Just because a product does more doesn’t mean it’s a better quality or lends itself to experience. I think MySpace and Facebook are prime examples of this as well as the meteoric rise of Twitter. MySpace will let you add music, change background images, modify layout and design, it really does everything one should expect for a social media network yet it fails miserably in user experience. What the user wants is sometimes not what the user actually needs. Twitter’s 140 characters supersedes the ideal of social media and makes it just about shared content and interaction — it even challenges Facebook’s model for status updates yet it does remarkably little.

Another relative user experience moment occurred to me when I was in Las Vegas staying at two hotels in the same duration, the MGM Grand and the Palms Place. On the onset the MGM Grands sounds fabulous, on the end of the strip near all the major casinos, boxing match that night, casino on the first level but in reality it’s not ideal from the perspective of a person who just wants to get to his room after a long evening (or morning). Also just because a hotel is on the strip doesn’t mean you can walk to everything especially in the middle of summer. You will have to eventually hail a taxi.

Palms Place

In contrast the Palms Place was a more relaxed environment with apartment-like amenities in each room. It’s off the strip however it’s connected indoor to all the major Palm structures, The Palms and Fantasy Towers. You literally can stay inside until you reach the pool at The Palms. If there is an event on the strip you need to be at, it’s a simple cab ride away. Once you get back no need to fight the boxing crowd or casino-goers just straight to your room.

Bringing it back to user experience culturally we have a tendency to think abundance is better, the more features something has the better it should be. However, it’s really doing the small things well that makes all the difference — think typography. The attention to detail to things that matter the most.

So the next times someone mentions New Orleans isn’t the most beautiful city with little to offer ask them about their experience here. I think you will find what’s more important.