The Six Attributes of User Experience — The UX Pyramid

To design something is to adjust the various attributes that the object of design possesses, in line with a goal, and to propose the form that best fits that goal. Just as an architect calibrates a space’s dimensions, circulation, light, and materials, and a graphic designer works with color, typography, and the proportions of white space, the essence of every act of design ultimately lies in finding the optimal balance among the attributes an object holds.

Designing a user’s experience is no different. The only distinction is that the object here is not a physical form or a visual expression, but the sequence of experiences a user goes through while using a product or service. Just as design in general has drawn out optimal outcomes by manipulating attributes such as aesthetics, functionality, and symbolism toward a given goal, the role of user experience design, too, is to identify the attributes inherent to experience and deliberately adjust them into a form optimized for the design goal. Naturally, this raises a question. What exactly are the attributes that make up an experience, how are they classified, and which of them can a designer actually adjust?

To examine this, let’s first break experience down into its attributes using one of the more representative frameworks among the many theories on what constitutes user experience: the UX Pyramid. The UX Pyramid is a model that organizes the attributes of user experience into a hierarchy, structured so that it begins with the most basic and essential attributes and gradually ascends toward higher-order values. This framework lets us systematically separate out the various facets of what a user experiences, and gives us a clearer picture of what role each attribute plays within the experience as a whole.

The User Experience Pyramid: Six Attributes That Make Up User Experience

According to the UX Pyramid model, user experience is made up of six layers stacked from the bottom up in this order: Functionality — Reliability — Usability — Conveniency — Pleasurability — Meaningfulness. The lower a layer sits, the more basic and essential the attribute; the higher it sits, the more it embodies a higher-order, qualitative value.

The most intuitive way to understand how each layer of this pyramid actually operates is to recall a moment when a user felt “discomfort.” When a user experiences discomfort with a product or service, that discomfort may originate from one or more of the attributes above.

It might be because the product’s or service’s functions are unsatisfying (Functionality), because it breaks down too often (Reliability), or because the steps required to use a desired function are too complicated (Usability). It might also be because it’s difficult to use (Conveniency), because it triggers an emotional aversion (Pleasurability), or because it doesn’t align with the user’s own values (Meaningfulness).

Users typically lump their discomfort together as “I just don’t like it,” but beneath that phrase there is often a tangle of attributes from these different layers. Improving the user experience therefore requires first pinpointing exactly which attribute the discomfort stems from.

Looking at these six attributes from a broader perspective, they fall into two distinct categories. One consists of attributes that are objective and can be indexed quantitatively — Functionality (Usefulness), Reliability, and Usability. These can be measured and compared using numbers and data.

The other consists of attributes evaluated as subjective, qualitative experiential value — Conveniency, Pleasurability, and Meaningfulness. Even under identical conditions, these can feel entirely different from one user to another, and they belong to a domain better grasped through qualitative methods than through numerical measurement.

If you’ve encountered Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, you may notice a similarity here. Like that pyramid of needs, this structure starts from the most basic, simple attributes at the bottom and gradually leads up to higher-order values that are difficult to quantify.

Each attribute can be briefly defined as follows.

1. Functionality: the functional utility that a product or service provides to the user.
2. Reliability: the degree to which the functions a user expects are carried out without error.
3. Usability: the number and complexity of steps a user must go through to carry out a given function.
4. Conveniency: how easily a user can carry out a given function — its intuitiveness.
5. Pleasurability: the emotional satisfaction a user feels.
6. Meaningfulness: the sense of meaning a user feels fulfilled by.

Once all six attributes are laid out, a natural question arises from a practical standpoint. Can a designer actually work with all of these attributes? The short answer is that the attributes user experience design can meaningfully engage with are the three in the middle — Usability, Conveniency, and Pleasurability.

The reason becomes clear when you look at the top and bottom of the pyramid. At the bottom, Functionality and Reliability correspond to the technical capability that constitutes the product or service. A server going down or a core function failing to work cannot be solved through design alone — that belongs to the domain of engineering.

At the very top, conversely, Meaningfulness concerns what meaning this product or service holds in the user’s life — a matter tied to the earliest stage of the product or service, namely the direction and vision of the business itself. Once that direction has already been set, it is difficult to bring about meaningful change through design.

In the end, the domain where a UX designer can most directly exercise their expertise is the three attributes that sit in between. From this perspective, I personally refer to these three attributes — the ones through which UX design chiefly does its work — as the “UX Design Parameters.”

The term “UX Design Parameters” is my own personal coinage, not a formalized theoretical term, so it should be used with that caveat in mind.

Now that we’ve identified where, among the six attributes, a designer’s hand can actually reach, the next post will look closely at each of these three parameters — Usability, Conveniency, and Pleasurability — one at a time.